Materials for Lecture 19

1
Materials for Lecture 19

• Readings Chapter 14
• Lecture 19 Short Project Management.XLS
• Lecture 19 Project Management.XLS
• Lecture 19 Event Management.XLS

2
Project Management

• Project management involves estimating the length
  of time to complete a project
• Once a project has been undertaken then a project
  manager is responsible for carrying out the
  project on the assigned time table
• How do the managers establish a time schedule
• Generally based on average length of time for
  each component
• Average length of time based on past experience
• Length of time to complete each step is a random
  variable

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Project Management

• Who does project management?
• Engineers, managers, accountants
• They calculate number of days to completion
• They do not incorporate risk most times
• Benefits of incorporating risk into project
  management analysis
• Assign a probability to number of days until
  project completion
• Assign a probability to getting a project done in
  a fixed timeframe

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Project Management

• The KOV for a project management problem is
  How long will it take?
• There is no final answer until it is completed
• Answer is an unknown PDF of days, weeks, or
  months
• Simulation provides a methodology for estimating
  unknown PDFs
• Formulate the problem as a Monte Carlo simulation
  problem

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Project Management

• Model formulation
• KOV is Number of Days to completion
• Identify each task (step) for project
• Specify order of each task for the project
• Identify bottlenecks where tasks will wait on
  precious stages
• Determine the PDFs for number of days (or weeks,
  months, etc.) to complete each task
• Use past performance to estimate parameters for
  PDF of days for each task
• Depend on experts for time to complete each task
• PDF may be dependent on resources available

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Project Management

• Critical to identify the order of the tasks and
  their linkages (dependencies)
• For example
• Task 10 starts after Tasks 5 and 8 are completed
• Task 11 starts after Task 10 is completed
• Thus, Task 5 or 8 could hold up the whole project
• If analysis shows 5 is the bottleneck is it worth
  investing more resources in Task 5 to get the
  project completed earlier?

7
Project Management

• Create a Project Network Diagram to summarize the
  order of tasks
• Can be drawn in Excel with simple arrows and
  boxes
• Network diagram shows potential bottlenecks

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Project Management

• Tasks 1-6, 2 and 3 wait on 1, 4 waits on 2, 5
  waits on 3 and 4, last task waits on 5
• Assumes new task starts the next day
• Days in column C are GRKS() stochastic

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Project Management
10
Spreadsheet of a Project Management Analysis
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Event Planner

• Event planner KOVs
• Number of days ahead to start planning an event
• Cost of the event
• Research application KOVs
• Time to complete a research project
• Cost of project
• Wedding planner
• Probability of being ready on time
• Cost of the event
• Banquet planner

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Event Planner