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Final Graded Case Study: Comprehensive Project Analysis, Part IV

Project Monitoring & Control

With the challenges identified above threatening the success of his project, McKenzie organized a videoconference meeting with representatives of IT, Sales, Learning & Development, Content Specialists, Taurus Design and DiBello. His goal was to get the project back on track for the global sales summit that was only eight weeks away.

McKenzie asked DiBello to give a high level project update, including performance measurement for schedule and cost.

DiBello prepared a brief presentation showing his initial cost performance baseline, for the purposes of evaluating project performance to date. He pointed to the red line on the chart, showing that the project's cost so far was under the estimated budget (blue line).

He acknowledged, however, that there was schedule variance with some work activities behind schedule. Because of this, the team needed to calculate an estimate at completion (EAC) to determine the amount of work (and corresponding cost) needed to complete the project's remaining activities. DiBello showed the team his proposed calculation for EAC and asked for their feedback.

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EAC = Actual Cost so far (AC) + Estimate to Complete (ETC).

With AC as of June 1 at just over $1.5 million, DiBello calculated the CPI as 0.973 (EV/AC) and the SPI as 0.857 (EV/PV). The critical ratio was 0.833.

Knowing that the mid-August project completion date is a fixed constraint, DiBello calculated a budget that would increase the amount of resources and allow the work to be finished on time.

EAC = AC + [(BAC - EV) / (CPI x SPI)] = $2,010,204

McKenzie agrees with DiBello's calculation for EAC, but he explains that it will be nearly impossible to increase the Budget at Completion (BAC), especially with the pressure from Allard and others who see HighLEARN as unnecessarily expensive to begin with. He asks DiBello to calculate the TCPI to show the cost performance that would be necessary to complete the project within the original budget.

DiBello calculates the TCPI: (BAC - EV) / (EAC - AC) = 0.833. The team then discusses whether or not this is realistic, considering the nature of the remaining work and available resources.

The meeting was supposed to be a short one, but after more than two hours of discussion pertaining to the revised budget and whether or not they should be using EAC or BAC to calculate the TCPI, McKenzie loses his patience. "I have dinner with a client in less than an hour; we have to stop going around in circles." Part of the problem was that Contin kept asking DiBello to explain what all these acronyms '''SPI, ETC, EV'" even mean. "Can't we just acknowledge we're behind schedule and over budget?"

After resolving the plan to accelerate the remaining activities, McKenzie brought up a list of project risks for the team to discuss. For example, there was growing concern that the sales associates would not take the time to access the portal, especially if it involved any technical steps outside their comfort zone. He wondered if the team had thought about how to respond to this risk and if DiBello's Risk Register had been updated to include any sort of response.

DiBello replied that although the Register had not been updated since its creation, he had submitted a change request to add a portal training plan immediately after the global sales summit. Since the change control board was very IT-focused, they had been getting bogged down creating in-depth responses to ALL risks instead of just the important ones. As a result, the board had not yet approved DiBello's change request. While DiBello saw no option other than to wait for the change control board to respond and hope that the sales associates will be motivated to explore the portal when it is available, McKenzie got agitated and made it clear that they needed to be more proactive with a formal intranet adoption process involving mandatory workshops. He also wanted to add new applications, including an extensive help directory and live support, to accelerate this transition. DiBello responded that these functions could be added, but they would create a new critical path to the network diagram.

Before you move on to the next section of the case study, identify the problems and/or issues that you'll need to include in your analysis. Document this information, and consider how you will

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integrate it into your evaluation of the project.

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Final Graded Case Study: Comprehensive Project Analysis, Part IV

Project Monitoring & Control