Project and Quality Management Term Project

1. Establish the project objective, and make a list of your assumptions about the project. Project objectives
The project aims to transform the previous annual report done by the research center into a more eye-catching, organized report that can used to effectively promote the ‘not-for-profit’ nature of the center and enable past & potential donors to realize the contribution made by the center as well as reveal the center’s capability to manage resources and make good use of the donations granted. The content of the project will be useful to arouse the interests of donors to donate money in helping the center conduct researches.

Project assumption
1) Track project process once a week to ensure the project going smoothly 2) Staffs will work for 8 hours a day
3) Dedicated staff will stay in their current roles and devote most efforts into the project 4) Project staffs will be available as they are needed
5) Required hardware resources for the project will be available when they are needed 6) Information required by the project will be available at the time when it is needed and is accurate. 7) Testimonial targets will agree to be interviewed, if not, substituted targets will be listed in advance and adequate testimonial will be obtained within the assigned period. 8) All activities of the project are subject to the project objectives and requirements.

1) Preparation
We will first hold an internal meeting within our group to clarify the requirement of the report and identify the information and skills required to accomplish the report. Then we will have cross-functional communication to develop the relative skills and knowledge. Then, an outline of the annual report will be created to list out what should be included in the report.

2) Take pictures
We will do some preparation beforehand to facilitate photo-taking process, including selection appointment of sites, arrangement of transportation to the sites and preparation of photographic equipment. After that, our photographer, Lekysha, will visit the different locations to take photos within the period set. The photos will then be selected and organized to be included in the annual report and facilitates the understanding of potential report readers.

3) Testimonials
Preparation for interview will be done in advance, such as selecting targets from patients and families patient and families who benefit from the center’s research to collect testimonials, making appointments with each target, setting questions that have to be ask, arranging transportation for visits. In the expected time period, our staffs will visit the targets and conduct interviews with them. The content of interviews will be extracted and organized to prepare for writing the annual report.

4) Collect non-financial information
Our group will make a list of the past researches and activities done before and introduce each of them to enable donors and stakeholders be familiar with the center’s works. Furthermore, we will obtain information and objectives about future plans of the center from various departments so that past and potential donors will have a basic understanding about the center’s future targets and activities. Also, we will state how the center will spent the donation contributed by the donors.

5) Combine marketing strategies
Our staff will be responsible to propose suitable marketing strategies and included them into annual report.

6) Open tender
In the first place, we will set the standard and requirement for contractor selection. Then we will release the open tender announcement for companies to submit the bid. After the deadline for the bid, our group will start to screen out those companies to select the most suitable contractors to deal with the design, printing and distribution issues of annual reports. Furthermore, our members will discuss with the selected contractors to produce a satisfactory outcome.

7) Combine information to get a draft
In order to make a draft of the annual report, our staffs will combine all information that are collected and organized, including photo, testimonials, financial & non-financial information.

8) Design and edit issues
We will discuss with the contractor to communicate what our requirement and design are to make sure that the contractor will design the report according to our needs. When the draft is out, we will examine the sample report to see if any adjustment is needed. Then we will confirm the design and edit issues.

9) Add the financial statement into the draft report
When the financial report is ready for us, we will add the data to our report and make a brief analysis about the data.

10) Review and justify the whole report
We will provide detailed and useful description and data in our report and make a review on that to make sure the report is prepared with powerful evidences and proofs.

11) Publish
We will submit the final version of the report and discuss the final issues for publishing such as the list of people to deliver to the contractor. When the contractor produces a sample of the annual report, we will have a look on this before it is published in the required quantity. Eventually, the report will be published and distributed by the contractor to the desired receivers.

2. Develop a Work Breakdown Structure for your project.
3. Prepare a list of the specific activities that need to be performed to accomplish the project objective.

4. For each activity, identify and assign the resources needed. Present your ideas in a RACI Chart.

5. Create a network diagram that shows the sequence and dependent relationships of all the activities. 6. Develop an estimated duration for each activity and identify the ES, EF, LS, LF as well as the total slack for each activity. (note: You have only a total of 6 months or 24 weeks (4×6) to complete your project. Adopt “week” as the time unit for your project schedule.)

7. Determine the critical path and identify the critical path activities. (1.1) (1.2) (1.3) (6.1) (6.2) (6.3) (6.4) (7) (8.1) (8.2) (8.3) (9) (10) (11.1) (11.2) (11.3) 8. Present your project schedule in Gantt Chart format.

9. Based on the schedule you’ve developed, estimate the normal cost for each activity. We estimate each activitie’s normal cost by adding up direct labor cost(300/d for grace,levi,lakysha and 500/d for alexis), the material used(office consumption, computer), equipment(camera,recorder) and outsourcing expenses(with design, printing and distribution contractors).

Questions
1. Your Board of Directors would like to have the new annual report be ready by 1st Nov, instead of 15th Nov. That means, your project needs to be completed 2 weeks earlier than what you’ve originally scheduled. In doing so, you may need to compress your original project schedule. a. Prepare your assumptions (crash time and crash cost for each of the project activity) that would be need for the crashing process.

b. Work out the possible crashings that may compress your project schedule.

c. Present a conclusion on how you’re going to complete the project based on the new requirements. In the situation that the project should be finished on Nov 1st, we decide to compress our project schedule. In the original schedule, we can complete our report on Nov13th, so we have to compress 13 days of the project. Firstly, we identified the critical path and we decided to focus on the activities on it. After comparing the compress cost per day, we decided that we are going compress the activity 6.3 first. After compressing activity 6.3 from 15.6 weeks to 15 weeks, we cannot crash this activity anymore. Then we crash activity 6.4 with the second lowest cost in the critical path for 0.4 weeks. Two critical paths appear after we compress the activity 6.3 and 6.4. We start to crash two paths at the same time according to the crash cost minimization criteria. So we continue to crash the activity 3.3, 6.2, 6.4. Finally we can finish our schedule on 1th Nov. Next, we descried what we will actually do to compress each activity. Activity 6.3: Select suitable contractors

We decide to work overtime, and therefore the labor cost will increase. Activity 6.4: Discuss more detail information with the contractor In order to increase the efficiency, our teammates keep on communicating with the contractors. As a result the transportation cost and labor cost will increase. Activity 3.3: Summary the useful information obtained from the interview We decide to work overtime thus the labor cost will increase. Activity 6.2: Announce the opening of tender

In order to get a quicker response we decide to use multiply channel to distribute our announcement. As result the open tending cost will increase. Activity 8.1: Discuss with contractor
Make more effort to prepare our proposal and materials for discussing with contractors. Labor cost, cost of materials and cost of energy like electricity increase. 2. Using the responsibility assignments you’ve made and the original schedule you’ve developed, now develop a resource requirements table for each activity, based on an as-soon-as-possible schedule