Topic- The Wedding Plan Project Case Exercise

Level- Project Management   – Exercise 4:

This exercise is NOT related to The Wedding Plan Project case. It is an exercise to familiarize you with Risky Project Software (either stand-alone or MS Project-integrated) and, more importantly, the overall process of QUANTITATIVE risk analysis of projects.

In Exercise 1 you completed WBS (and project network) of The Wedding Plan Project case.

In Exercise 2 you focused on “Identify Risks” process techniques. You also created an initial Risk Register and a Risk Breakdown Structure.

In Exercise 3, you focused on “Perform Qualitative Analysis” process and prioritized individual activity risks into groups using Risk Matrix schemes.

In Exercise 4, you will understand the process of examining effect of cumulative risks on OVERALL PROJECT cost and schedule. You will understand both (1) deterministic and (2) probabilistic (using simulation) aspect of overall project risk analysis. Again, Exercise 4 is not related to The Wedding Plan Project case, but uses some made data for a simple project to make things easier for you.

Your task is as follows:

 

Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1rUybwfTMA (about 1 hour)

B.

Use the following data:

Activity	Precedence	Optimistic	Normal	Pessimistic	Expected	Variance of Duration	Average Cost (000’$)	Minimum Cost (000’$) (Uniform distribution)	Maximum Cost (000’$)
		Duration (months)	Duration	Duration	Duration (using Beta distribution)				(Uniform distribution)
A	-	2	4	6			12	10	14
B	-	3	5	9			30	29	31
C	A	4	5	7			5	2	8
D	A	4	6	10			16	10	22
E	B, C	4	5	7			23	21	25
F	D	3	4	8			30	25	35
G	E	3	5	8			12	6	18

 

a.  Fill the table above. Using the data above develop a network using expected durations. Find the critical path. And show project network (and Gantt chart). You need to do this by using just MS project or by using MS Project with Risky Project integrated in it or by using MS Excel (or combination).

b . What is the expected duration of the project (in months)?

c. What is the duration of the project (in months) that will be met with at least with 95% chance?

d. What is the expected cost of the project?

e. What is the worst case cost of the project? What is the best case cost of the project?

f. Use Risky Project and do schedule-based (assuming beta distribution for all activities) Monte Carlo simulation using 10000 runs and find (1) expected project duration; and (2) histogram of project duration.

g. What is a tornado diagram in project management? How will you use it in schedule analysis? And total project cost analysis?

Please see the videos to see “under the hood” of how sensitivity analysis and tornado diagram are constructed in general. See links:

• • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UkXYF0tKDA
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjQgbaHHA8s
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlOO0rCOk10
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxhvFgM-Sz8

 

h. Using RiskyProject do cost-based simulation (using uniform distribution of cost of activities) using 10000 runs. Report (1) Expected Total Project Cost; (2) Sensitivity Analysis of Total Project Cost and first and third quartiles of Total Project Cost; (3) Develop a Tornado chart of Total Project Cost.

I. What is the criticality index of each activity in the network given above?

See following link for example of criticality index:

http://www.pmknowledgecenter.com/node/136

Deliverables:

Each of the above from Risky Project output (and supplementary MS Excel or MS Project; if necessary) outputs.