SCM 587– Project Management

W. P. Carey MBA Program

PROJECT MANAGEMENT TEAM ASSIGNMENT

This is a team assignment, organized into two parts/deliverables. Please see Canvas schedule for specific due dates.
The purpose of this assignment is to practice using the material you have learned in weeks 1-5 of the course.
Project plans and other content will be assessed according to how well you have demonstrated mastery of the tools
and concepts learned in the previous weeks, and how realistic the plan and estimates are.

The goal of the project is to develop a detailed project plan for building a shed.

Guidelines:
1. Your starting point is information contained in the HBS case “Building a Shed” (HBS 9-606-146). Ignore the
final paragraph on page 3 (“Boat Building Assignment”).
2. If you find you need any additional information to complete the work requested, do appropriate
background research to create an estimate or make a necessary assumption.
3. Your “labor” is as described in the case – Steve, Maggie, and Jason. Your estimates of labor time should be
realistic.
4. You’re provided a list of the parts needed, and a narrative and some figures showing how the parts fit
together into components (e.g., door, floor), but it will be up to you to determine the sequence of activities,
who needs to be assigned to each task, and estimate how long it will take. It’s especially important to think
of how some activities can be done in parallel, since you have three people working.
5. Don’t worry if your plan estimates it will take them more time than the case suggests they need.
6. While not required, you may consider creating a project plan for the team assignments themselves, since
you’ll need to determine what you need to do to complete the assignment and allocate work accordingly.

You are to deliver a document containing the following components.

Team Assignment Part #1
1. Project Scope statement – Use format as depicted in Exhibit 7.4 in Kloppenborg “Contemporary Project
Management”.
2. Work Breakdown Structure – Provide a process WBS as shown in Exhibit 7.5 (Indented Outline form) in
Kloppenborg.
3. Project Activity Network – Use format as depicted in Exhibit 8.6 in Kloppenborg.

Team Assignment Part #2
1. Project Schedule and Critical Path Analysis – Use methods and format as described in sections 8.7 and 8.8
of Kloppenborg. Provide justification for your activity time estimates. Explicitly identify the critical path.
2. Assign the three individuals to the tasks as appropriate and show on a Gantt chart (Exhibit 9.5b).
3. Suggests actions you could take to reduce activity times on the critical path.
4. Estimate project cost.
5. Assume now that three professional builders are contracted to do the construction instead. Estimate the
change in duration times and costs and perform steps 1, 2, and 3 again.


For further definition of each step above, see the course textbook. Use text to describe anything you need to for the

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reader to understand what you’re communicating.

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