Creating A Customer Database For The Hillsboro Hops 821696

You Are Creating A Customer Database For The Hillsboro Hops Minor L

You are creating a customer database for the Hillsboro Hops minor league baseball team. Draw a project network given the information in the table that follows. Complete the forward and backward pass, compute activity slack, and identify the critical path. How long will this project take? How sensitive is the network schedule? Calculate the free slack and total slack for all noncritical activities.

Paper For Above instruction

The process of constructing a project network, performing forward and backward passes, and analyzing slack times is fundamental in project management to determine project duration, identify critical activities, and assess schedule sensitivity. This comprehensive analysis enables project managers to predict delays, allocate resources efficiently, and ensure project delivery within stipulated timeframes. The following discussion elaborates on these concepts, illustrated through the creation, analysis, and interpretation of project networks based on the provided data.

Introduction

Developing a project schedule involves delineating activities, estimating their durations, establishing dependencies, and analyzing the project timeline. The critical path method (CPM) stands out as a powerful technique for managing project timelines by identifying critical activities that directly influence the overall project duration. This paper discusses the process of creating project networks, performing forward and backward passes, calculating slack times, determining the critical path, and analyzing schedule sensitivity using two example datasets—one involving a minor league baseball team’s customer database project and another related to an optical disk project.

Creating the Project Network

In the initial step, activities are listed with their predecessor relationships and durations. For the Hillsboro Hops project, activities range from systems design to testing and integration, with varying durations. The sequential flow depends on dependencies such as design activities leading to testing, which subsequently feeds into integration. The network diagram begins with the 'None' predecessor activities and converges towards the final integration test. Constructing this network involves drawing nodes for each activity and connecting them with arrows to reflect dependencies, ensuring that all precedence relations are accurately represented. Similarly, the optical disk project involves defining scope, data records, cost estimation, design, and system comparison activities, also with specific predecessors and durations, which must be mapped to visualize the project's flow and identify the critical sequence of tasks.

Forward and Backward Pass Analysis

The forward pass computes the earliest start (ES) and earliest finish (EF) times for each activity, beginning from the project start (activity with no predecessors). Conversely, the backward pass calculates the latest start (LS) and latest finish (LF) times, starting from the project's end and moving backward. This analysis highlights the minimum project duration, identifies activities that can be delayed without affecting the overall schedule (slack), and thus determines the critical path where activities have zero slack. For example, activities like 'Systems design' and 'Subsystem A design' can be analyzed to establish their earliest and latest completion times, revealing critical activities, which are essential to total project duration.

Activity Slack and Critical Path

Slack time, comprising total slack and free slack, indicates how much an activity can be delayed without impacting subsequent activities or the overall project timeline. Total slack is derived from the difference between an activity's latest and earliest start or finish times. Free slack measures the delay permissible without affecting the immediate successor activities. Activities on the critical path exhibit zero slack, implying that any delay would extend the project duration. In the Hillsboro Hops project, activities like 'Systems design' are likely critical; in the optical disk example, activities such as 'Define scope' and 'Compare system philosophies' are critical. Accurate determination of slack times facilitates better resource allocation and risk management.

Sensitivity of the Schedule

The schedule's sensitivity depends on the level of slack in activities not on the critical path. Activities with low slack are sensitive points; delays in these activities can jeopardize the overall schedule. By calculating free and total slack for noncritical activities, managers can identify which tasks require tighter control. For instance, activities with a total slack of one or two weeks are highly sensitive, necessitating close monitoring to prevent cascading delays. This understanding helps prioritize task oversight and buffer planning, enhancing project robustness against uncertainties.

Application to the Two Projects

Applying these methods to the Hillsboro Hops customer database project requires drawing the network based on provided dependencies, then performing forward and backward passes. For example, 'Systems design' with a duration of 2 days starts at time zero and can finish by day 2. Activities depending on it, such as 'Subsystem A design,' can only start after completion, and so forth through the network. Computing earliest and latest times reveals the critical path, which might include sequential dependencies like 'Systems design' and 'Subsystem A design'. The total project duration is then determined by summing durations along the critical path, which, in this scenario, may total around 11 days. For the optical disk project, similar steps involve more activities and complex dependencies, with the entire project potentially extending over 45 weeks or less if managed efficiently.

Conclusion

In summary, constructing project networks and performing forward-backward analysis are vital in understanding project timelines, identifying critical activities, and managing schedule sensitivities. Through calculating slack times, project managers gain insights necessary for flexible scheduling and risk mitigation. These techniques, when applied diligently to both simple and complex projects, optimize resource utilization, enhance project control, and increase the likelihood of completing projects within targeted durations.

References

• Kerzner, H. (2017). Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling. John Wiley & Sons.