Contemporary Project Management: Activity and Duration Analysis

The assignment focuses on activity development and duration estimation within a CRM software development project. Part 1 requires analyzing how the project aligns with the five parts of an activity definition, including clear start and end points, tangible outputs, and scope development. Part 2 involves describing an activity from a past project and discussing remedies for duration estimation problems, referencing Exhibit 8.9 from CPM 4e. The student discusses using expert knowledge, adding buffers, and considering risks to improve estimations. The discussion post response acknowledges the use of activity classification and the importance of considering impediments and risks, including buffer time, to mitigate potential delays and ensure realistic project scheduling. The references include key project management resources such as Kloppenborg, Anantatmula, & Wells (2019), and the PMI PMBOK guide.

Activity Development and Problems with Estimating Activity Duration
Part 1: Think of at one thing you must do this week. For each part of the five parts of
the definition of an activity described in Section 8.1, CPM4e, describe how it does or
does not meet the definition.
I have to work on a CRM software development project in which RAD has to be used and the
application has to be developed within 2 months duration. The development would involve
development of modules for sales and communication with dashboard showing the summary
of the CRM data (Ahonen, 2017).
Clear start and end points: To have specific start and end points, meetings were conducted
with stakeholders to gather the requirements on modules to be developed and then another
meeting was followed between the project team members to discuss the dates.
Tangible and verifiable output: For the software dashboards would be created that would
show new leads, lost leads, received orders, emails sent , emails received, products sold,
activities started, activities completed, and sales performance. The summary of all these data
sets would be presented on the dashboard of the software (Kim, 2004).
Scope Development: Requirements would be gathered from the stakeholders and would be
used to create tasks for the project to be developed. The activities would be assigned the
duration to be completed in and resources required would be allocated. It would be ensured
that only the tasks listed in the scope are only executed on the project (Kloppenborg,
Anantatmula, & Wells, 2019).
Part 2: Describe at least one activity needed to complete a work package in a project
you’ve participated in the past. Using Exhibit 8.9, CPM 4e, discuss how you or your
organization uses various remedies to address problems in estimating activity duration.
In order to complete one of the work package which is development of the requirements
document listing the module requirements for the project. For estimating the activity duration
for these requirements, I need to understand duration that would be needed for development
of each listed requirement. This would need expert and experiential knowledge which I
would not have which makes it difficult to estimate exact duration. For this, I will connect
with the people having experience of development and according to the feedback would set

the duration. Based on the feedback, duration would be decided with some buffer added to it
to be on the safer side and ensure estimations are sufficient (BIS, 2010).
Reply to Discussion post
You have mentioned that you estimated duration as per the classification of the activities and
discussed impediments that could affect each activity. Discussion of impediments can help in
arriving at a more realistic schedule as it would be made considering the risks and would also
involve steps for remedies so that schedule estimated is not impacted because of the risks
involved as mitigation plans are set in advance. You also mentioned about possible delays
that cannot be avoided on the project for which you need buffer. Even on my project, I would
be using this idea of buffer time which I will add to the whole project. In fact for major
activities, I will have buffer time added. I can use your idea of estimating possible risks that
could cause delays. In activities that could be affected in this way can be given an additional
time as a buffer so that in case the risks are not avoided, they are mitigated without affecting
the whole project delivery schedule (PMI, 2013).
References
Kloppenborg, T. J., Anantatmula, V., & Wells, K. N. (2019). Contemporary Project
Management. Cengage Learning.
Ahonen, S. (2017). CRM Process Development : Change Management in Operational Sales .
LAMK.
Kim, H.-W. (2004). A Process Model for Successful CRM System Development. National
University of Singapore.
PMI. (2013). A Guide to Project Management Body of Knowledge. PMI.
BIS. (2010). GUIDELINES FOR MANAGING PROJECTS: How to organise, plan and
control projects. BIS.