Amber Cars Project

The company Amber cars were established in 1998. It was registered as a family-based taxi firm in Northampton, the current staff includes the owner and a general manager, and the rest are the controller and five general managers and accounts assistants. The system works by a taxi booking office with the customers calling the office through phones in booking a taxi, the system to be developed and other customers are attracted through Yellow Pages and constant newspaper adverts (Zhou, Love, Wang, Teo and Irani, 2013). Some bookings are done via email and fax as well. Currently the booking system work by entering a whole system to the controller which pics up the new passengers via the new system (Churchill, 1988).

The system is to cover a range of 100 taxi drivers and manage their daily traffic, another use of the system is the management of the local accounts while ensuring there is no breach in the data by external intruders.

Planning

The planning tools to be used include a work breakdown structure, PERT diagram and the Network diagram.

Work Breakdown Structure

WBS

Task Name

1

AMBER CARS PROJECT

1.1

Requirement Analysis

1.1.1

Elicit client needs

1.1.2

Target audience analysis

1.1.3

Gain server access

1.1.4

Gain required resources

1.1.5

Produce requirements specification

1.1.6

Gain approval from client to proceed

1.1.7

Prototyping

1.2

Create prototype

1.2.1

Approval of prototype by a client

1.2.2

Test prototype

1.2.3

Amend prototype

1.2.4

Gain approval from client to proceed

1.3

Development

1.3.1

Create coding templates

1.3.2

Create HTML and CSS documents

1.3.3

Develop and test interactive components

1.3.4

Add content

1.3.5

Verify site links

1.3.6

Verify functionality

1.3.7

Gain approval from client to proceed

1.4

Testing

1.4.1

Cross browser testing

1.4.2

Error testing

1.4.3

User group testing

1.4.4

Amendments arising from testing

1.4.5

Gain approval from client to proceed

1.5

Training

1.5.1

Provide client with training on using website backend

1.6

Project Close

1.6.1

Connect website to the database

1.6.2

Launch website

1.6.3

Project Review and Close

Estimations Of The Activity Durations

Activity

Activity Name

Best

Likely

Worst

Duration

Variance

ID

(a)

(m)

(b)

E (D)=

Var (D)=

A

Elicit client needs

1

2

3

2.00

0.1111

B

Target audience analysis

1

2

3

2.00

0.1111

C

Gain server access

1

2

3

2.00

0.1111

D

Gain required resources

2

3

4

3.00

0.1111

E

Produce requirements specification

3

4

6

4.17

0.2500

F

Gain approval from client to proceed

1

2

3

2.00

0.1111

G

Create prototype

2

3

6

3.33

0.4444

H

Approval of prototype by the client

1

2

3

2.00

0.1111

I

Test prototype

2

3

4

3.00

0.1111

J

Amend prototype

1

2

3

2.00

0.1111

K

Gain approval from client to proceed

1

2

3

2.00

0.1111

L

Create coding templates

3

4

7

4.33

0.4444

M

Create HTML and CSS documents

6

8

9

7.83

0.2500

N

Develop and test interactive components

1

3

4

2.83

0.2500

O

Add content

3

4

5

4.00

0.1111

P

Verify site links

1

2

3

2.00

0.1111

Q

Verify functionality

1

2

3

2.00

0.1111

R

Gain approval from client to proceed

1

2

3

2.00

0.1111

S

Cross browser testing

2

3

4

3.00

0.1111

T

Error testing

1

2

3

2.00

0.1111

U

User group testing

3

4

6

4.17

0.2500

V

Amendments arising from testing

3

4

8

4.50

0.6944

W

Gain approval from client to proceed

1

2

3

2.00

0.1111

X

Provide client with training on using website back end

2

3

4

3.00

0.1111

Y

Connect website to database

1

2

3

2.00

0.1111

Z

Launch website

1

2

3

2.00

0.1111

ZA

Project Review and Close

1

2

3

2.00

0.1111

Network Diagram

Critical Path Analysis

Critical path allows an organization in reorganizing the project and monitoring how the project progresses (Kastor and Sirakoulis, 2009). The major role of CPA is kept the project on track and ensure that all deliverables are all completed on time. CPA has been used in delivering complex projects and urgent tasks when there is a lot of activities involved. CPA issued in detecting the non-critical tasks and planning for the amount of float required for scheduled delays or the process bottlenecks (Bart, 1993). The critical path analysis may define the steps which are important and ma compromise the work plan and have Zero slack for the project. During the critical path analysis for the project, the main tasks involved in the project. The following methods were used in the critical path analysis (Zhou, Love, Wang, Teo and Irani, 2013).

Backward Passing

Using the late start and late finish critical analysis, the following Network diagram was found. The project would take a total of 51 days when the tasks on the critical path are analyzed (Knoepfel, 1989).

Forward Passing

Using Ealy start and early finish, the following diagram gives the network diagram with forward-pass, the project would take a minimum of 33 days. Therefore the project can be completed in time when all the dependencies are put in place (Kohnen, 2007).

Monitoring and Control

During monitoring and control, there are activities which need to be done, some of them include the schedule management, project crashing, risk control, performance reporting and quality control. In this project, one monitoring activity which was done is cost and time crashing (Faregh, Ketabi and Ghandehari, 2014).Crashing

The manager has a duty to finish the project in time to save money and time as well. One of the methods used in project duration is using more resources like labor to a project and then by assigning more resources over time (Steyn, 2002). In this project, the time reduction effort was made through the increase of the nAmber of programmers assigned the work (White, 2006). In this project, in order to demonstrate project crushing, CPM/PERT is used. The time frames are probabilistic estimates (Churchill, 1988). The project was it cost $8000, but when the activities were crushed, the cost would go up to $12000. Therefore the crush-cost would be $4000 (D Anderson, 1992).

Continuous Improvement to Reduce Schedule Problems

Continuous investment is identifying the opportunities for streamlining work and reducing project risks in the next phase of the project by avoiding the previous problems encountered during the execution of the project. Working constantly to improve service delivery is one of the means in which a project manager can reduce expenses by learning from mistakes (Turner, 1994). The process is sometimes called a lean process and is used to make workflow smooth as the project manager handles many flows in previous projects. For example, it is important to know how much time it takes to complete a task and other types of jobs done. Project managers can use their knowledge in project management to forecast and find the likely constraints to increase overall deliverable of a company (Tonnquist and Hørlück, 2009).

While many companies use continuous improvement to gain flexibility during the project, many companies improve flexibility in theory, while this is not the case, there is the need for more formal approach, and there is also need for the more innovative approach to make the project managers seek innovative ways to minimize the project risks (Dvir, Raz, and Shenhar, 2003). Continuous improvement can be justified by doing things cheaper and faster while cutting costs; the companies, therefore, turn to learn ways for continuous improvement. By observing continuous improvement best practices, the companies can carry out projects as usual while making notes and leaning as the project go through.

Reflection on the Lesson Learned

There are various lessons to be learnt from that project, fast-tracking and project crashing are the best techniques for managing time in a project management. There are many reasons to shorten the saturation of a project, one may be reducing the project costs, another may be the project is going overboard and needs to be crashed. There are many reasons such as unrealistic schedule, unavailable resources and unforeseen incidents like losing a key employee. One of the best methods is fast-tracking, during fast-tracking, tasks which are on the critical path and activities with floats are studied (Burke, 1999). Once these activities are determined, they can be fast-tracked, there is no cause for having activities which are not on the critical path to be considered. One advantage of fast-tracking is that there are no extra costs involved in reducing the schedule. Fast-tracking, however, has schedule risks because there will be more work to be done which might lead to confusion (White and Fortune, 2002). The result could be future delays and rework to be required which may lead to more delays.

Another method which can be useful in shortening the schedule is crashing (Masters and Frazier, 2007). In Crashing, extra resources are required to compress the schedule and motivating team members with monetary rewards.

References

Bart, C., 1993. Controlling new product Rand D projects. R and D Management, 23(3), 187-197. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9310.1993.tb00822.x

Burke, R., 1999). Project management - Planning and Control Techniques (3rd ed.). Chichester, England: J. Wiley,pp 34.

Churchill, G., 1988. Quality assurance — an effective project management technique. International Journal of Project Management, 6(4), pp.241-244.

D Anderson, S., 1992. Project quality and project managers. International Journal of Project Management, 10(3), pp.138-144.

Dvir, D., Raz, T., and Shenhar, A., 2003. An empirical analysis of the relationship between project planning and project success. International Journal Of Project Management, 21(2), pp 89-95. doi: 10.1016/s0263-7863(02)00012-1.

Faregh, N., Ketabi, S. and Ghandehari, M., 2014. Project scheduling by FGP to Time-Cost-Quality trade off: construction case study. Journal of Construction Engineering and Project Management, 4(3), pp.53-59.

Kastor, A. and Sirakoulis, K., 2009. The effectiveness of resource levelling tools for Resource Constraint Project Scheduling Problem. International Journal of Project Management, 27(5), pp.493-500.

Knoepfel, H., 1989. Cost and quality control in the project cycle. International Journal of Project Management, 7(4), pp.229-235.

Kohnen, J., 2007. Project sponsorship: achieving management commitment for project success. Quality Management Journal, 14(4), pp.64-64.

Masters, B. and Frazier, G., 2007. Project quality activities and goal setting in project performance assessment. Quality Management Journal, 14(3), pp.25-35.

Steyn, H., 2002. Project management applications of the theory of constraints beyond critical chain scheduling. International Journal of Project Management, 20(1), pp.75-80.’

Tonnquist, B., and Hørlück, J., 2009. Project management - a complete guide. Aarhus: Academica, pp 67.

Turner, J., 1994. Project management: Effective scheduling. International Journal of Project Management, 12(4), pp.269-270.

White, A., 2006. External disturbance control for software project management. International Journal of Project Management, 24(2), pp.127-135.

White, D., and Fortune, J., 2002. Current practice in project management — an empirical study. International Journal Of Project Management, 20(1), 1-11. doi: 10.1016/s0263-7863(00)00029-6

Zhou, J., Love, P., Wang, X., Teo, K., and Irani, Z., 2013. A review of methods and algorithms for optimizing construction schedule. Journal Of The Operational Research Society, 64(8), 1091-1105. doi: 10.1057/jors.2012.174