...Case Overview Barbara is assigned as the project manager for a competitive bidding job at her company. Typically RFP’s (requests for proposals) at her company are handled by a group of senior managers who will review the RFP and make a decision on whether to proceed. Once the senior managers approve, the proposal department will take over to begin estimating all work along with the help of functional managers, if there is no previous history regarding the deliverables. Generally the project manager will come into the picture after a contract is awarded and not during the bidding process, however Barbara was placed into the project during the bidding phase. Barbara was more skeptical about the estimates than a project manager normally is and decided to review the estimates prior to submitting. After Barbara’s review, it was determined that the estimators arrived at 12 weeks using one grade 7 employee full time on one of the most critical tasks for the project. Because Barbara had experience performing this task on previous projects, she was certain that the task would take one full time employee 14 weeks to complete unless the project was smaller and less complex, so she questioned the estimators. Barbara discovered that the estimators had used a three-point estimate that did not take into account the complexity of this project and perhaps a triangular estimate would have been a better method to use to arrive at 13 weeks. This estimate still left about a week difference...
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...According to the literature review a lot is said about project cost estimates, budgeting and value management applied by different organizations, but not everything stated can be reviewed in this paper. Thus in the following section we will identify and review the following. • Approaches to cost estimation • Importance of cost estimation • And problems of cost estimation 3.1 Approaches to cost estimation Venkataraman et al (2008), states the organizations use a number of approaches to estimate project costs, which normally ranges from a highly technical and quantitative to more qualitative approaches. And according to Tolman et al (1987) virtually all project cost estimations are performed according to one or some combination of the following...
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...Agile development methods (there's more than enough of that out there already), but rather to identify the characteristics of a company that is properly implementing and seeing positive results from Agile Project Management. When an SaaS project is initiated, those who are responsible for building the invention are among the most important people to the business during that time. They must be treated with the kind of dignity and respect that demonstrate the impact they have on the success of an SaaS initiative. Traditional Project Management Analyzing the problem-solving characteristics of a company's Executive Officers will tell you a lot. More specifically, what you are looking for is the level by which they do or do not value and honor traditional means of solving problems. The second major characteristic to look for is the existence of a process or strategy that religiously used as an approach for resolving every problem that comes up. Chances are, with this kind of leadership at the very top, you will usually find what - at first glance - appears to be an orderly, hierarchical structure to the way that tasks are delegated. You will usually also notice a disconnect between the lower-level management such as having a clear understanding for design requirements, for example. In other words, a developer might get a different answer depending on which manager they pose the question to. It is also common to find a lot of finger-pointing and missed deadlines in this type of environment...
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...Guide GRADED- Five Problem and Question Quiz - To be completed by the end of week 3. This Quiz covers TCOs A, B, C, and E, Integrated Cost and Schedule Control in Project Management Chapters 1–5, and A Guide to the Project Management Book of Knowledge, fifth edition, Chapters 6 and 7. Covers Weeks 1, 2, and 3 • This quiz is worth 100 total points and includes five essay questions worth 20 points each. • You have 2 hours to finish the quiz. • Remember to save frequently, because when the time limit is reached you will be exited from the exam. • If you have any technical problems, please contact the Help Desk at 800-594-2402. Answer questions with short, direct responses. For questions which require calculations, please show your calculations. Note: Detailed solutions are required to support your response and receive credit. Partial credit may be given for student responses where work is shown. Solutions from previous sessions will not be correct. You will not be given part credit for pasting solutions from previous session quizzes. The questions and/or the numbers have changed. Topics covered: The five questions cover the following material. They will test your understanding not that you can paste a paragraph from the textbook. Explanations should be in your own words. The budgeting process. Week 2 lecture notes How do we create project budgets? Is there more than one primary process? Compare and evaluate the processes. The estimating process and methods...
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... Group No. 4 Submitted to- Group Members- Prof. Sarath Babu Himakshi Mallik Vitash Sharma Rahul Rishav Avinash M Kopparapu Prudhvi Nadh Cost of Capital- Coffee Industry We have taken into consideration two firms- New World Coffee and New York Yankees. ESTIMATING COST OF EQUITY FOR A PRIVATE FIRM • Basic Problem: Most models of risk and return (including the CAPM) use past prices of an asset to estimate its risk parameters (beta(s)). Private firms and divisions of firms are not traded, and thus do not have past prices. • • Solution 1: Estimate the beta, based upon comparable firms, and after adjusting for risk. o Step 1: Collect a group of publicly traded comparable firms, preferably in the same line of business, but more generally, affected by the same economic forces that affect the firm being valued. A Simple Test: To see if the group of comparable firms is truly comparable, estimate a correlation between the revenues or operating income of the comparable firms and the firm being valued. If it is high...
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...CMC should have recognize its prestressed concrete business activity in two separate functional costing group .Marketing & Sells CMCs prestressed concrete business service & utilizing the companies experience ,technical expertise ,judgment ,and job estimating ability should satisfy the responsibility of one of those group ,to perform the actual prestressed concrete engineering and implementation. With the given responsibility and function the company determine its competitiveness in the business. Projects management activities are best performed when complex task are of limited life. But it is not a case for a company like CMC staying or continuing the business in the industry rather its effort or activity helps to stay in the business .sometimes a business lead to use functional group .however it has its own advantage in satisfying a task requirement when the size of tasks is large and complex. The engineering and implementation phase of the business should continue to be performed through the project management –matrix structure because of limited life of such task and the need for concentrated attention to time, cost and performance constraint inherit in these activates. . 1.2 Statement of the Problem The purpose of this analysis case...
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...Analogous Estimating: An estimating technique that uses the cost along with measures of scale such as size, weight or complexity from a previous project to estimate cost for a similar future project. (Aka Top Down, -40% to +100%) Parametric Estimating: An estimating technique that uses a statistical relationship between historical data and other variables to calculate project costs. (More accurate, -30% to +50%) Bottom-Up Estimating: Estimating project decomposed of detail, time consumption, most accurate form of estimation, ensures every item is included. (High Accuracy, -10% to 15%) Value Engineering: Creative approach used to optimize project costs, save time, increase profits, improve quality, expand market share, solve problems and/ use resources more effectively. PERT+ CPM = used for project Life Cycle Costing: Includes total costs of creating and using the project during its useful life. Consider disposition costs of the product after its useful life is complete. Contingency reserve is calculated during risk analysis. Management reserve is determined by how much uncertainty management feels exists in project Project Risk Management: Systematic process of identifying, analyzing and responding to project risks. The purpose of this is to reduce overall project risk level. (Benefits: Proactive rather than reactive, reduces surprises/ negative consequences, provides better control over the future, improves chances of reaching project performance.) EMV = Likelihood...
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...Risk Analysis Estimating Methods - Scheduling Risks As Applied to the Panama Canal Case Study 11/8/2010 Kendrick argues that establishing project planning is a necessary key requirement of managing project schedule risk (2009, p.334). Regardless of how thoroughly a project manager works to ensure that a project’s schedule is accurate, he or she cannot fully control the inevitable and random influences that may negatively impact their project schedule. Equipment failures, nature, and sick employees are just a few of the uncontrollable factors that may jointly cause a project manager to miss their project’s target date. In preparation for these risks, a project manager needs discipline to devise an appropriate, risk-controlled project schedule. These Kendrick states that scheduling risks fall into three categories (2009, p.71): * Delays - Usually caused by material delivery and availability issues. * Estimates - Minimize this risk by using better estimation procedures. * Dependencies - When one project depends on other projects or systems, a failure or delay in any area can cause a domino effect. Risk Identification is the process of documenting risks that threaten a project and determining which of those risk have the potential to cause the most impact it. The act approximating the degree of impact a risk may have on a project schedule is referred to as estimating. This paper discuses two tools or techniques of estimating scheduling risks used to predict...
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...Pareto In general terms, Pareto coined the 80/20 rule whereby 20% of the issues cause 80% of your problems. So the idea is to identify and focus your resources on the issues which are causing most of your problems. The Pareto bar chart will visually display from left to right a rank-order of which factors are most critical to be addressed. (Heldman, 2013, p.502) More specifically, a Pareto diagram displays “the magnitude of the change on the vertical axis and the root causes along the horizontal axis” (Kendrick, 2009, p.26). In our text, examples are provided in which a Pareto chart represents magnitude in terms of “weeks impacted” along the vertical axis, and its relationship to scope, resource, and schedule. Another Pareto diagram is narrowed to display how each specific subcategory relates to the magnitude of change. (Kendrick, 2009, p.35-36) A “probability and impact matrix” combines the likelihood of occurrence with the impact that the event would have in order to determine the need for, and at what level of detail, a risk response plan is required. A numbering system such as 1-5 could be used or something more simple such as low-medium-high. How a “probability and impact matrix” is defined will vary by organization and should be developed during the planning stage. (Heldman, 2013, p.254) As is evident, tables and charts can be used to rank risk by schedule, scope, and budget. These visual representations can be used to quickly identify areas of concern. One of...
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...What are the problems facing CMC? 3. Did CMC utilize the matrix effectively? 4. Where should project estimating be located? 5. Does the shifting of the estimating function violate the ground rules of the matrix? 6. What are the alternatives for CMC? 7. Will they be successful as a job shop? 8. Should companies like CMC utilize a matrix? 9. How does the company plan to recover R&D and bid and proposal costs? 10. Has CMC correctly evaluated the marketplace? 11. Do they respond to changes in the marketplace? 12. With what speed is monitoring done? (Exhibit II). How many projects must be estimated, bid, and sold before actuals catch up to and become historical data? 1. Did CMC have adequate long range planning? CMC was clearly lacking long term strategy and planning . This is clearly brought out in there failure to be competitive in the prestressed concrete business in the current market conditions. CMCs top management had failed to plan on addressing competition in the prestressed concrete business, which CMC had pioneered, once competitors have come over the learning curve. Also CMC leadership should have devised ways and means to retain there leadership in this segment by continuing to innovate as well as reduce overall costs through steps like improving efficiency and reducing overheads, by capitalizing on their extended experience and proven technical expertise. 2. What are the problems facing CMC? Following are problems facing CMC: The key problem is that of CMCs...
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...Sa m pl e on ly NEIL PEARSON E W LARSON C F GRAY A Complete Course for BSB41513 and BSB51413 Sa m pl e on ly IN PRACTICE Copyright © 2013 McGraw-Hill Education (Australia) Pty Ltd Additional owners of copyright are acknowledged on the acknowledgments page. Every e ort has been made to trace and acknowledge copyrighted material. infringement have occurred. e authors and publishers tender their apologies should any Reproduction and communication for other purposes Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Act, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the written permission of McGraw-Hill Education (Australia) Pty Ltd including, but not limited to, any network or other electronic storage. Enquiries should be made to the publisher via www.mcgraw-hill.com.au or marked for the attention of the permissions editor at the address below. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Author: Title: Published in Australia by McGraw-Hill Education (Australia) Pty Ltd Level 2, 82 Waterloo Road, North Ryde, NSW 2113 Publisher: Norma Angeloni-Tomaras Development editor: Alex Payne Senior production editor: Claire Linsdell Permissions editor: Haidi Bernhardt Copy editor: Julie Wicks Proofreader: Angela Damis Indexer: Mary Coe Design coordinator: Dominic Giustarini...
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...Function Point Analysis How to use this document...................................................................................... 1 1 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 2 2 Measures Derived from FPA ............................................................................... 2 3 Different FPA Methods ....................................................................................... 2 4 The advantages of using FPA............................................................................. 3 5 The disadvantages of, or problems using, FPA .................................................. 3 6 Developed v Delivered FPs................................................................................. 4 7 The use of FPs in estimating effort and cost ...................................................... 5 8 Function Point counting procedure ..................................................................... 6 8.1 IFPUG Method ............................................................................................. 6 8.1.1 Complexity Matrices............................................................................... 7 8.1.2 Complexity/UFP Contribution................................................................. 7 8.1.3 Overall FP Count ................................................................................... 8 8.1.4 IFPUG FPA Process Summary..........................
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...the value of the liabilities and equity. The number of items within these two categories is usually smaller than the amount of assets. For the liabilities the main item is bonds and for equity it is ordinary (common stock) shares. In this topic we will look at valuing debt, equity and then look at some of the different ways The Corporate Bonds and risk of default Reading Brealey et al. 2011, 3-6 Corporate Bonds and risk of default, pp.65-8 The risk of default is real for corporate bonds. That risk attaches an interest rate premium. The amount of the risk premium originates from the rating assigned to the bond by a variety of firms. This section of the chapter focuses on the concepts related to risk and bond ratings. Problem 2.5 Complete Problem Set question 29 page 72 of Brealey et al. 2011 The value of Common stock Reading Brealey et al. 2011, 4-1 How common stocks are traded, 4-2 How common stocks are valued , pp.75-81 Very briefly introduces the concepts of primary and secondary markets, organized exchanges, and the over-the-counter market. It also provides a sample of The Wall Street Journal Quotation for GE. This section begins by showing that the start-of-period (present) value of a common stock equals the present value of dividends expected during the period plus the present value of the expected end-of-period price for a single period investment. The current price is the present value of the stream of...
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...BRE345 Measurement, Documentation & Estimating —TOPIC7 BRE345 Measurement, Documentation & Estimating —TOPIC7 2 Content 1. QUESTION（a） .................................................................................................... 3 1.1Provisional Quantities .......................................................................................... 3 1.2Preambles ............................................................................................................. 3 1.3Specification.......................................................................................................... 4 2. QUESTION（b） .................................................................................................... 6 2.1 Reason for Prequalification ................................................................................. 6 2.2Prequalification Criteria ...................................................................................... 6 3. QUESTION（c） .................................................................................................. 10 3.1What is Prime Cost Sum? ................................................................................... 10 3.2 When we use the PC sum? ................................................................................. 10 3.3 Main items in Prime Cost Sum......................................
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...Project Management Concepts Worksheet The purpose of this assignment is to begin the process of Problem Based Learning. In this step, you will be looking at one or more realistic situations and using them, in the context of this course, to identify the key concepts involved that you will need to understand in order to solve whatever problems you might encounter in those situations. Complete the table below by identifying at least five concepts that you will study from the mind map on the rEsource page in order to resolve the situations presented; list and briefly describe them in column A. You have on the rEsource page a scenario that provides an examples of realistic situation in which these concepts apply. Examine this scenario and in Column B identify specific examples from it which illustrate an application of the concept. The example could be an issue in the scenario which illustrates a concept. Cite in Column C where in the reading you found the concept that the example illustrated. Cite in Column D a personal experience of the same concept in Column A to a situation that has occurred in your own organization. Table for Assignment One |A: Concept |B: Application of Concept in Scenario |C: Citation of Concept in Reading | |Example from Global Communications |Example from Global Communications Scenario|Example from Global Communications Scenario in | |Scenario in MBA/500: |in MBA/500: ...
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