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3000 words + Spreadsheets
Managing Projects.
Assignment Brief:
The objective of this assignment is to test your project appraisal and planning skills.
The following case describes a project which involves the relocation of a telephone call centre from its existing location in the UK to a new base in India. The activities listed are simplified to make the case an appropriate size for this assignment. The case refers to activity durations in weeks and days – days should be considered as “working days” and weeks comprise five “working days”.
You are required to answer all five questions at the end of the case. Marks awarded for each part are as listed in the case.
Part of the skill of a Project Manager is the ability to produce clear and legible charts and diagrams; hence, these should all be produced in black and white on Microsoft Excel or another similar spreadsheet package. Hand drawn charts, or additions/notations to printed charts, will have marks deducted for a lack of professionalism. You should use accepted Project Management notation and avoid inventing your own through the use of colours and/or shading applied to diagrams.
You may use project management software to confirm the planning data in your answers but you should not use print-outs from this software as part of your submission.
Marks will be deducted for straying from these requirements.
As written in the assignment question that the activities are written in bold within the case study. To clarify, the bold writings in the case study are the following:
– Decision will be taken
– Appointments will be made
– Contract being signed
– Operating staff will start their employment
– Call centre service will be changed over to India
– Formal redundancy notices are issued
– The sale
Please also make sure that the work is divided in 2 parts :
-Part a Project Appraisal Word Document
-Part b – 4 Network Analysis – Spreadsheet
Marking Criteria:
Part A
? The maturity of the arguments provided in answering the question
? The completeness of the analysis of how the project might be appraised
? The quality of the written report
Word Count: 1,000
Part B
? Accuracy of the solutions and the correct application of the charts used to provide these solutions.
? Clarity of the charts and diagrams produced – (See paragraph 4 above)
This assignment addresses learning objectives 1, 2 and 3 as listed in the module handbook.
Project management.
Setting up an offshore call centre.
A Case Study in Project Planning and Control.
Case study:
This case describes the activities of a hypothetical roadside assistance organisation that is considering the relocation of its call centre from an existing base in the West Midlands of England to a location in Mumbai in western India. Tentative discussions have taken place with three possible vendors who are expected to bid for the contract to manage the service on the sub-continent.
The decision to go ahead has yet to be taken and will depend upon the relative merits of the potential move. The Operations Director and the HR Director have been tasked with the requirement to put together a business plan for the project. This is expected to take four working weeks from the date listed on the question page.
At the end of this period the two directors will make a presentation to the five other members of the board on the strengths and weaknesses of the project. This meeting is expected to be completed in one day and at the end of the meeting a decision will be taken on whether the project will go ahead.
If the decision to go ahead is taken, the project team will be expanded to include two other senior managers who will be selected from the existing staff at the organisation in the UK. Candidates will be given three weeks from the “go ahead” to submit applications for these posts. No resources are required during this period. A two day interview event involving all candidates as well as the two existing Directors and the Managing Director will take place immediately after the closing date for applications. At the end of this process two appointments will be made; one person to work alongside the Operations Director and one to work with the HR Director.
Once the team are in place it is envisaged that they will split into two sub-groups. One group, comprising the HR Director and one manager will take charge of the closure of the UK facility and the other sub-group will travel to India oversee activities there.
The overseas group will conduct detailed negotiations with the potential vendors in Mumbai. This is expected to take two weeks culminating in a contract being signed with the successful bidder. This activity will be preceded by a period of one week to enable the team to prepare for the trip.
Once the contract has been signed the overseas team will divide to oversee the two activity streams necessary to get the new facility up and running.
The manager will work with the newly appointed vendor to identify an appropriate building for the call centre and oversee the fit out of this facility. These tasks are expected to take 2 weeks and 5 weeks respectively.
The Operations Director is expected to return to the UK for a period before going back out to India to oversee the recruitment of the operating staff; a process which is expected to last 2 weeks. Operating staff will start their employment immediately after the recruitment process and fitting out of the building is complete. At this point on-the job training will commence. This training is scheduled to take 2 weeks and will be delivered by a group including both members of the overseas team. Immediately after training is complete the call centre service will be changed over to India. Following the changeover the UK team will return home.
The UK group will not be employed exclusively on the project but will be required to work together to identify opportunities for redeployment of the non-contract staff employed at the UK site and counsel anyone eligible and willing to take an early retirement package. This is likely to take two working weeks and must be complete before formal redundancy notices are issued. These notices will be issued by administrative staff at the latest possible date to comply with UK employment law (assuming the longest serving employee has worked for the business for 3 years and 2 months). Contract staff require only one week’s notice of termination. It is envisaged that all UK call centre staff will be released immediately after the changeover of services to the overseas operation.
After the changeover has occurred the HR Director’s involvement in the project will end and the manager will spend 10 weeks disposing of the UK site. The sale expected to happen at the end of this period.
Questions:
Part A (40% of Marks)
Produce a 1,000 word structured essay describing all of the considerations the organisation are likely take into account in deciding to go ahead with this project and any analysis which might take place as part of the decision.
Part B (15% of Marks)
Using MS Excel (or another spreadsheet of your choice), produce a network diagram showing the precedence’s of the activities and indicate on the chart:-
? The earliest start and finish times of all activities
? The “Critical” activities if the project is completed in the shortest possible time
? The number of working days required to complete the project
Note: Activities highlighted in the case study in bold should be considered as milestones and must be included on the network diagram with a time of zero.
Part C (15% of Marks)
Using MS Excel (or another spreadsheet of your choice), produce a “Gantt Chart” showing elapsed time assuming that the first activity (Compile Business Plan) starts on Monday 28th January 2013 and that Saturdays, Sundays are non-working days
Part D (15% of Marks)
Using the same timescale as part C above, produce resource histograms for the Operations Director, Human Resource Director and the two Managers (Man-UK & Man-O/S)
Part E (15% of Marks)
If the interest on the money raised from the sale of the building saved ?500/per day from the cost of the project, discuss how much could be saved by crashing and describe which activities would be affected given the following information:-
Activity 1 could be crashed by 5 days at a cost of ?150 per day
Activity 5 could be crashed by 1 day at a cost of ?100 per day
Activity 6 could be crashed by 3 days at a cost of ?600 per day
Activity 9 could be crashed by 10 days at a cost of ?400 per day
Activity 10 could be crashed by 20 days at a cost of ?300 per day
Activity 11 could be crashed by 2 days at a cost of ?100 per day
Activity 18 could be crashed by 5 days at a cost of ?50 per day
-must use harvard refferencing
-the bold writings in the case study are the following:
-decision will be taken
-appointments will be made
-contract being signed
-Operating staff will start their employment
-call centre service will be changed over to India
-formal redundancy notices are issued
-The sale .
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