KKEK 4165

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

HOMEWORK 5
GROUP MEMBERS
NAME MATRIC
NO
ATHENA HOLLISTINI ANAK STANLEY HOLLIS KEK130008
SANTHINI A/P RAVICHANDRAN KEK130050
WAN MUHAMMAD FARHAN BIN W MOHD KEK130061
FAUZI
WONG YONG JIE KEK130062

Date of Submission: 11th April 2017

Lecturer in Charge: Dr. Badrul Hisham Bin Mohamad Jan
Chapter 5: Case Study (Sharp Printing, AG)

1. At this point what would you do if you were the project manager?
Looking at the case for the Sharp Printing, there are two things that pulling the progress of the
project, which are the time constraint and also the project cost. It can be seen that the laser
printer is a prominent however the key factor underlying in this project will be how to build the
income for the company. Thus, time to market will be very imperative.

If I were the project manager in the company, first and foremost I would be performing the
priority matrix to help the top administration to understand and to develop the clear priorities.
The priority table is shown as below.

Figure 1: Priority Matrix

Referring to the priority matrix shown, it can be seen that time is a crucial factor that cannot be
ignored. The reason is due to the colour printer is a high-end technological product, a delay
might cause the competitors coming up with a similar low cost product which will eventually
causing the whole project to become worthless. Hence, the time to market must be focused on.

Next looking at the performance criteria, which is also an important factor in developing the
product with a good quality. If the quality of the product is not as expected by the consumer and
the value is much lower than it is worth, the product will be unsuccessful in the long run. Thus, it
is significant to offer the value of the item for the amount that is paid.

On the other hand, looking at the cost of the production. Due to the wrong estimation performed
by the top administrations, the production cost increased by $1.25 million dollars. Even though
some suggestions such as cutting down the cost for the design, production and marketing
administrators, the impact is small. Thus, as mentioned above that both the time and performance
of the product are important, the only option will be increasing the production cost.

After performing the priority matrix, I would be meeting with the senior administration to
present the idea and seeking for their permission to increase the production cost. If there are any
advice given from them due to the consequences that I overlooked, I would be implementing it in
the priority report and change the scope of the project where necessary. After that, I would be
doing a comparison between the most effective budget cutting by comparing the outsourcing the
technology to other companies and also the do internal production. A huge amount can be saved
as this is the core part where the money goes.

After that, I will be performing a detailed estimate for the WBS work packages with the aid of
managers. Since this has significant uncertainty associated with the time, a three times
estimations by three estimators method is used which will be helped in assessing the risk
associated with the project time and cost. I would also perform a breakeven and ROI analysis
with different estimated cost to crosscheck can the company attain the profit as expected.

Last but not least, I would schedule a meeting with the project team, explaining to them the latest
updates made by the top management with the revised budget estimation as well as the revised
WBS. If the team is satisfied and agreed with the revised plan, I would continue the project.

2. Was top management acting correctly in developing an estimate?

Referring to the case shown, it can be seen that the senior administration has made the wrong
judgment by relying on the inaccurate information during the estimation. There were insufficient
thoughts included when building up the estimation such as the cost appraisal were set exclusively
in light of their related knowledge. There were miscommunication or no communication being
made when both sides neglected to achieve on agreement on their evaluations. Additionally, they
only included the adequate macro estimation to organize the ventures however no including the
precise amount required for the task gauge. It can be seen that the top management were blind
folded with the guaranteed award and eventually leading to the inaccurate or over promising
figure to be allocated for this project.

3. What estimating techniques should be used for a mission critical project such as this?
It is always better to carry out the estimation all the way down to the work package level,
however the time required is too long and it is very difficult to do such a precise estimation.
Nevertheless, the estimation for mission critical projects should have carefully controlled both
the time and production cost.

Thus, in order to perform a good estimation, both bottom-up and top-down approach should be
implemented. A top-down approach is a method that is utilizing the consensus methodology, by
availing the past experience of senior management in order to give a rough estimation about the
time and cost which the project might entail. Additionally, a bottom-up approach is the function
points method where it will give an enhanced in-depth look at the single deliverables as well as
the difficulty included in accomplishing them. Thus, both this methods should be working hand
in hand to give a better estimation for the cost.

In this kind of mission critical projects, both apportionment and ratio methods must not be used
as these methods have a high tendency on the information of the previous projects. Mission
critical projects involved in exploiting something that never been done before, thus the
information from previous projects would give a flawed estimation.