DECISION MODELING WITH MICROSOFT EXCEL Chapter 14 Copyright 2001 Prentice Hall Publishers and Ardith E. Baker Part 3 andand PERT CPM

__________software, such as Microsoft Project 98, makes the task of project management easier. In particular, this software greatly _____________the processes of generating the links between tasks and giving us a __________view of the critical activities and the whole project. Microsoft Project 98Microsoft Project 98P ROJECT MANAGEMENT USING MICROSOFT PROJECT SOFTWARE Unfortunately, such software cannot do the ______________and it requires an additional add-in for Project) to do any sort of _________ of results on random completion times. In spite of these minor drawbacks, most projects are managed with the help of _________like MS Project.

The impending move of the credit card operation to Des Moines, Iowa, from the home office in Dallas is an important project for Global Oil. A PROJECT MANAGEMENT EXAMPLE: GLOBAL OIL CREDIT CARD OPERATION The board of directors of Global has set a firm deadline of 22 weeks for the move to be accomplished. First, ______ the project activities and their ____________ predecessors.

To enter these activities in MS Project, first go to View Gantt Chart from the ______menu and choose Gantt Chart. Then, simply enter the 10 __________ and their expected____________. Note: MS Project consistently refers to these activities as “_______.” Therefore, tasks and activities will be used interchangeably.

Also, the __________for tasks 1 and 2 will arbitrarily set to 9/4/00. The next step is to create the “______” between the activities (i.e., establish the ___________relationship between the activities). Earlier, it was established that activity F is an immediate predecessor of activity G. MS Project calls this a “___________” link, meaning activity F must finish _______activity G can start. Note: MS Project numbers the activities 1-10 rather than using ________designations.

To enter this in MS Project, first click on activity F, then holding down the Ctrl key, click on activity G to select it and then click on the Link icon of the main menu.

Note that the ________in which you choose the activities is very important! If we would have selected activity G first and then activity F, MS Project would have assumed the _________ relationship. In order to accomplish this __________with multiple predecessors, you must enter each relationship ___________. For example, activities A and C are immediate predecessors for activity D. First, holding down the _____key, click on A and D, then click on the _____ button. Next, click on___________, hold down the Ctrl key, click on activity D and then click on the Link icon.

This _________tells MS Project that both activities A and C must be _________before activity D can start. Here is the final result after entering all of the immediate predecessors. Once this information is entered, MS Project automatically does the __________and __________ passes.

To see a network diagram, simply click on View – PERT Chart. Notice that the critical path (B-C-D-E-J or ) is displayed in red.

To display the _______for each of the activities, click on View – More Views … – Detail Gantt – Apply. ___________activities are shown in red, noncritical activities in blue. Slack time is indicated __________with thin blue lines with the actual value written out at the end of the__________.

MS Project requires an additional for Project) to do any sort of simulation of results on _________completion times. all we can do is enter __________ times, most probable times, and ____________times for each activity. Then, MS Project will display an optimistic _______ chart, a ___________Gantt chart and a pessimistic Gantt chart. To enter the _______of times for each activity in MS Project, we select View – Toolbars>, PERT Analysis which adds a new toolbar to the menu.

From the new________, select the PERT Entry Sheet icon and enter the information as displayed in the chart shown below. Once this data is entered, you can choose to look at any of the three available ________(optimistic, most probable, pessimistic) by clicking on one of the three new icons for this purpose on the new toolbar.

Clicking on this icon displayed the pessimistic Gantt chart shown here. Note that the expected completion time for the whole project has grown from 100 days (20 weeks) to 175 days (35 weeks).

As far as time-cost trade-offs are concerned, MS Project cannot do ______programming optimization to determine what would be the best way to ______ the total project time. You can however, add additional “___________” to each activity to reduce the time it would take. For example, activity A had an expected completion time of 3 weeks and MS Project assumes _____effort (or 1 person). We can decide to ________200% effort on this task (or 2 people) thereby reducing the expected completion time to______________.

To do this in MS Project, first create a _________that corresponds with each __________and then link the resources with the activities as outlined below: 1. On the View menu, click Resource Sheet. 2. On the View menu, point to Table:> and then click Entry. 3. In the Resource Name field, type a resource name in a blank field (e.g., Select Site) 4. Repeat the above steps for all 11 tasks. The other option that MS Project offers for creating resources is to ______individual workers by name that are ___________to work on the tasks.

The next step is to make the ______________for the software between the 11 resources and the 11 activities as outlined below: 1. Select View – Gantt Chart. 2. In the Task Name column, select the task to which you want to assign a resource (e.g., Select Office Site). 3. Click on the Assign Resources icon to open the Assign Resources table. 4. In the Name column, select the resource you want to assign to the task (e.g., Select Site). 5. Click Assign (a check will appear to the left of the Name field indicating the assignment). 6. Repeat these 5 steps for all 11 tasks.

At the completion of these steps, you should have a list of tasks and resources similar to this: Select Office Site Select Site Create Organizational and Financial Plan Create Plan Determine Personnel Requirements Personnel Reqmts Design Facility Design Facility Construct Interior Construct Select Personnel to Move Select Personnel Hire New Employees Hire New Move Records, Key Personnel, etc. Move Records Make Financial Arrangements … Make Financial Train New Personnel Train Secure Training Facility Secure Training Task/Activity Corresponding Resource

Clicking on the Assign Resources icon from the main menu will bring up a small ______listing all the resources assigned to each task and the current _________being expended. Changing the “____” from 100% to 200% and clicking on Assign will cut the expected time for the activity in________.

A nice feature of MS Project is the ability to keep track of the ________on the project. To do this, first enter all available______________ by clicking on View – Resource Sheet. This brings up a _______table in which you can enter each of the resources and their _________ (weekly) costs.

Of even greater value is the ability to _______the charts with the ___________of completion for the different activities and see what costs should have ________according to the prorated budget. First, you must ___________the activity for which you want the enter some information (e.g., activity A, Select Office Site). Next, click on Tools – Tracking> - Update Tasks to open the following menu. Enter the % ____________in the edit field.

After doing this for all 11 activities, click on Project – Project Information 3 – Statistics 3 to display the cost information that MS Project has now calculated. So far it indicates that we should have spent $18,500 of the budgeted total of $90,500, with about 45% of the actual project duration (days) completed.

In order to calculate the ______and remaining costs, MS Project has assumed that each activity is coming in right on its ________(i.e., no cost variance at all). However, this is not a _______scenario. To update the actual cost figures, follow the steps outlined below: 1. Click on Tools – Options and go to the Calculations tab. 2. Clear the Actual costs are always calculated by Microsoft Project check box. 3. Click OK 4. Click View – Task Usage

5. Click View, point to Table: (default name)> and click on Tracking. 6. Go to the Format menu, point to Details> and click on Actual Cost. This will result in the following table. Simply enter the actual costs to date for each activity shown.

MS Project will now be able to calculate the updated cost information. To view it, click on Project – Project Information – Statistics. You can see that the actual total costs to date are $22,100 and that the total project budget is now projected to be $95,600 (a cost overrun of $3,600).