MGMT412 Project Management: Unit 5 Individual Project Analysis

This project management assignment analyzes a case study involving the installation of hardwood floors. The paper begins with an introduction to the project, outlining the activities, optimistic, most likely, and pessimistic time estimates for each task. It then delves into the calculations of expected completion time and variance for each activity, providing a detailed breakdown using the PERT method. The assignment further explores the critical path, early start, early finish, late start, and slack time for each activity, along with the probability of project completion within a specified timeframe. It also discusses the benefits of using project management techniques, such as stakeholder meetings, resource allocation, and change management, and the implications of inaccurate project predictions and poorly managed changes. Finally, it explores various project management techniques like Agile, Waterfall, and Critical Path Method and their applications in the context of the project, concluding with the importance of focusing on project schedule and budget for successful project planning.

Running head: Project Type: Unit 5 Individual Project 1
Type your Name Here
American Intercontinental University
MGMT412 – Project Management
Date of Submission

Running head: Project Type: Unit 5 Individual Project 2
Unit 5 Individual Project
In this paper, there is previewing of the project management theories in installation of the
hardwood floors for the company. There is discussion of time mandatory to end jobs, determine
and explanation of the key estimation of project duration and assistances of the project
management techniques in this project plan.
Time Required to Complete Jobs
Mike was hired as a project manager to install hardwood floors for the company
Awesome Floor and Tile. They will be installing new flooring into a local office building. Mike
comes up with the list of work and estimates the time. A list of activities and their optimistic
completion time, the most likely completion time, and the pessimistic completion time (all in
days) are estimated in the table.
Activities OT MT PT
Activity 1 2 3 4
Activity 2 3 6 9
Activity 3 4 8 12
Activity 4 6 8 10
Activity 5 8 10 12
Activity 6 10 14 18
Activity 7 4 6 8
Activity 2 starts immediately after Activity 1.
Activity 3, Activity 4, and Activity 5 start concurrently after Activity 2.
Activity 6 does not start until after Activity 3, Activity 4, and Activity 5 are completed.
The carpet installation project is complete after Activity 7 is completed.

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Determine and Explain Key Calculations
Determine and explain the expected completion time and the variance for each activity.
Expected time= (Optimistic time + 4*most likely time + pessimistic time) /6
Variance for each activity = [(Pessimistic time - Optimistic time) / 6] 2
Based on the above formula of expected time and variance, the calculations are provided
in below table:
Activities OT MT PT Expected
Completion
Time
Variance
Activity 1 2 3 4 3 0.111111111
Activity 2 3 6 9 6 1
Activity 3 4 8 12 8 1.777777778
Activity 4 6 8 10 8 0.444444444
Activity 5 8 10 12 10 0.444444444
Activity 6 10 14 18 14 1.777777778
Activity 7 4 6 8 6 0.444444444

Activity 1 Activity 2 Activity 4
Activity 3
Activity 5
Activity 6 Activity 7
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Total completion time and critical path of the project
Figure 1: Network Diagram
(Source: Created by author)
The critical path is defined as the longest time the project takes to complete. Therefore, in
this project, the critical path is 1-2-5-6-7 = 3+ 6 + 10+14+ 6 = 39 days, it is the total project
completion time.
Early start, early finish, late start, late start and slack for each activity
Early start as well as early finish calculation is done by determining the forward pass and
late start is solved by backward pass method by means of network diagram. The slack time for
each activity is calculated by subtracting early start from late start time (Mohamed et al., 2017).
The critical path activities have no slack time.

Running head: Project Type: Unit 5 Individual Project 5
Activities Early Start Early Finish Late Start Slack Time
Activity 1 0 3 0 0
Activity 2 3 9 3 0
Activity 3 9 17 11 2
Activity 4 9 17 11 2
Activity 5 9 19 9 0
Activity 6 19 33 19 0
Activity 7 33 39 33 0
Probability that the project finishes in 40 days or less
By estimation value of Z, the probability of project completion in 40 days or less is to be
found.
Z = (Specified project time – Expected completion time)/ Standard deviation
The critical path is: 1-2-5-6-7
Here, the path variance for critical path is (0.111+1+0.444+1.777+0.444) = 3.777
Standard deviation= √3.777=1.9434
Z = (40- 39) / 1.9434 = 0.5145
By means of Z table, it is seen that value of Z = 0.51 yields to 0.69497, therefore
probability of project to be accomplished in 40 days or less is 69.497%.
Benefits of Using Project Management Techniques
The project necessities are gathered by using methods like project meetings, review of
lesson learned documents in addition brainstorming session. In collecting the project
requirements, the project manager takes brainstorming session of project stakeholders (Conant,

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2018). The project manager asks the stakeholders to express their own expectations from project
planning.
The factor provides impact on the project schedule is resource availability. Lack of
project resources allocated to project plan lead to lengthier project schedule. Sudden change in
project scope also leads to have impact on project schedule as well as finishing time (Chin et al.,
2017). The activities on critical path are having no slack time, therefore it maintains a project
schedule. In order to manage change requests, the project manager should document request for
change and gather all required change information. There is required to consider factors which
can influence start of production of changes. The project manager makes an estimation of efforts
needed for implementation of change request (Simion et al., 2019). Before implementing the
changes in the project plan, the project manager should determine impacts of changes on project
schedule and budget.
Implications of project timetable is that there may be wrong predictions of the project.
Wrong project predictions means strategies used to plan and change in the project will be little
help, therefore it leads to wastage of both time as well as resources. Poorly managed project
changes can harm the project schedule such as there is missed deadlines, overrun of project
budget as well as failure of project work (Heagney, 2016). Addition of extra project work as well
as requirement for extra project budget provide impact on project target. In the project
management, the techniques which are used in terms of professional operational areas of firm as
well as requirements such as agile method, waterfall, critical path and PERT. PERT is involved
in complex as well as detailed project planning with visual tracking of the project results. Agile
technique is set of project principles based on value centered approaches. It divides the project
plan in short sprints and fosters towards self-organization. Waterfall technique takes simple

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approach to new level. It is focused on sequential performance of project tasks (Nicholas &
Steyn, 2017). Finally, the critical path method is based on scheduling as well as planning of
project tasks. It is involved to detect longest project path from starting to end of project.
Conclusion
It is concluded that for getting success in project planning, the project manager is
required to focus more on project schedule and budget. Proper project planning is required
including scope, schedule as well as budget estimation.

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References
Chin, M. K., Kek, S. L., Sim, S. Y., & Seow, T. W. (2017). Probabilistic Completion Time in
Project Scheduling. International Journal of Engineering Research & Science, 3(4), 44-
48.
Conant, D. D. (2018). Examining critical and near-critical paths: an Excel-based classroom
exercise. Journal of Education for Business, 93(6), 285-291.
Heagney, J. (2016). Fundamentals of project management. Amacom.
Mohamed, M., Abdel-Basset, M., Hussien, A. N., & Smarandache, F. (2017). Using
neutrosophic sets to obtain PERT three-times estimates in project management. Infinite
Study.
Nicholas, J. M., & Steyn, H. (2017). Project management for engineering, business and
technology. Routledge.
Simion, M., Vasile, G., Dinu, C., & Scutariu, R. E. (2019). CPM and PERT techniques for small-
scale R&D projects.