Crosby Manufacturing Company

Compose a synopsis of the case, using a maximum of 120 words. The president of the manufacturing company of Crosby Manufacturing Corporation Wilfred Livingston, called a meeting with the department managers to resolve the current problem that the company have with their management cost and control systems (MCCS). The case study showed an update of the current MCCS, and also a plan to work on increasing the company’s business base and growth.

Wilfred Livingston desires to bring in new computers with more advanced models to replace their current computers which are incapable of keeping two to three different sets of books for their customers. During this meeting, the feasibility study, the cost and time constraints were discussed and outlined. The EDP manager suggested that the project should include an evaluation of vendors besides the benchmarking tests. At the end of the meeting, Livingston appointed Tim Emary, who is actually inexperienced or not as knowledgeable as the others in regards to computers, as the project leader of the planning group and gave a timeframe of which he expects the project to be completed.

Discuss whether or not Livingston’s selection of Emary as project manager a mistake. In this case study, the president of Crosby Manufacturing Corporation’s, appointed Tim Emary as the project manager over the management cost and control system project due to the fact that Emary is a capable planner who knows how to lay out a schedule and get the job done. Now the point of the matter is that Emary is not from either the formal project management group or the EDP department, which are the functional departments from which project managers usually come. Because of the nature of this project which seems to require good knowledge base of computers in other to execute, I would say that Livingston’s selection of Emary as the project manager was a point blank mistake.

This is a very important project for the success of the company, which to my opinion would have been better to select someone who had the experience on computers to work on it. The fact of the matter is that Tim Emary is simply not experienced in this field and would struggle to lead such a project successfully. I don’t think he will be able to tackle every of the situations that will arise during the implementation of the project. To me knowledge has to be a key factor in managing a project, especially one that has to do with computers, in other to be successful at it.

Discuss the possible reaction of the functional employees to the appointment of Emary as project manager. The fact of the matter is that because Tim Emary is in the planning department and not in any of the departments that has to do with the project, the functional employees of this project are going to detest him and have no respect for him. Especially being that he is only good with scheduling but not as knowledgeable in regard to computers as other department managers. The first issue may be that the functional employees may think that Livingston was biased in the appointment of Emary as the project manager over a management cost and control system project. The second issue which may also be the major issue is that they may not be willing to cooperate with Emary since they will view him as not being knowledgeable at the project.

A third issue may be that since some of the functional employees are other department heads, who might have wanted to be appointed as the project manager may not be willing to work under Emary as the project manager, which will weaken team work. Issue number four could be that their may be major conflicts on how to successfully implement the project and will all probably directed to the point of proving that Emary’s appointment as the project manager was a total bad idea. The final issue may be that since Emary is inexperience in this field, he may just let the others run the show discretely in other to manage the chaos and not look bad, which can also lead to an unsuccessful project if control and management is being shift around through the different departments.

Discuss the impact of cost and time constraints on networking techniques and project schedules. During the course of the meeting, the major focus was based on the impact of cost and time constraints on the networking techniques and project schedules. With the situation at hand, being the start and end dates of the project are fixed, adding resources will not be feasible as it will increase the cost. Balancing of time and cost constraints are very necessary in other to be able to avoid wasting of the resources, based on the fact that people may accept the fact that costs could Exceed expectations, and might even take a perverse delight in recounting past examples, but may not accept the same for time constraints. Time, in project management, is analyzed down to its smallest detail. Cost over runs can be easily resolved in-house, but schedule issues are open and visible to the customer. Choices have to be made about which work to do and how to allocate resources.

Which may lead to constraints specifically in regards to time constraint and the cost constraint? Every components of the project are analyzed on the basis to the time that is required for completion of the project. When completion of this analysis is met, the components are then broken down further into the time required to do each task. And out of all of this we will be able to estimate the duration of the project as well as what and how many/much resources need to be dedicated to that particular project.

Costs are usually related to the resources which are required in the project. Cost of a project refers to what needs to be applied or assigned to the project in terms of effort and money in order to complete the project. This includes resources like materials, manpower or any third party resources that night need to be secured. However, when we allocate additional resources to the project we need to redesign the schedules which may lead to different critical paths and therefore, make it even more difficult to manage the project. In other words, we cannot change cost or time without affecting the other.

Discuss which constraints ultimately compromise the project’s performance quality. The constraints which ultimately compromise the project’s performance are the quality the driver constraints. These are constraints that do not fail without dragging the project down to failure along with it. This is also the least flexible of all the constraints. The other constraint is the middle constraint which are constraints that are not as rigid as the driver constraints neither they are very flexible. The last one is the weak constraint which is the most flexible constraints. These constraints are very important but still possess the greatest flexibility. The project performance quality actually depends on how well the weak constraints are being managed keeping intact the driver constraints. Usually time, cost and scope constraints are the three constraints which are the ones which take on one of the roles of driver, middle constraint and weak constraints in a project.

REFERENCES:
Kerzner, H. (2009). Project management: A systems approach to planning, scheduling, and Controlling (10th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sawyer, D., & Johnson R. (1987). The Importance of Project Management in Every Project. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.