A&D High Tech Executive Summary: Chris Johnson, an experienced technology project manager for A&D High Tech, was asked to meet with the senior managers to discuss taking over the company’s new web site project. The purpose of the project was to establish an online store to increase sales through the internet. Immediately after his transition meeting with senior management, CIO Matt Webb informed Chris that the CEO needed to know if he could complete the project by Christmas, which was only 6 months away. Although the plan had work scheduled from May 2003 to June 2005, Chris needed to determine if it was feasible to reduce the schedule by 15 months in order to meet his CEO’s needs.
Statement of the Problem: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the likelihood that A&D HighTech will be able to implement an online store, comparable to that of its competitors, in time for the 2003 holiday shopping season.
Key Problems: * Competitors are gaining market share with their continually improving online capabilities * Company sells on friendly customer service which can be difficult to translate to the internet * A&N needs to have internet sales to stay competitive through reduced SG&A expenses
Key Issues: * * * * * *
Steep learning curve for the project manager Subject matter expert is no longer involved as the project manager Was build the right option? The company has a foundation as a regional player Project time and scope are crucial Were all the proper risks and costs evaluated when making the build vs.
buy decision * Why wasn’t a blend buy/build option considered
Background: The team agreed to meet and share information virtually utilizing a wiki page. Using a Google site allowed the team to accommodate the time constraints of team members. Next the team put in place a timeline for project completion. In order to do this the paper was broken up into component and the responsibility to complete the various sections was assigned to members. There was some MS Project nomenclature that was unfamiliar to the group so we each took time to refresh our knowledge on how to enter Start-to-Start / Finish-to-Finish projects and how to determine resource over allocation. Finally, having read the case Chris and John did some limited online research into the nuances of integrating an ERP package into an organization and what are some of the positives and negatives of building versus buying a pre-existing package. We did not find any new information that was not already discussed in the case.
Methodology: In order to examine the case, we first needed to create a MS Project Gantt chart of all the activities detailed in Johnson’s work breakdown structure (case exhibit 9). We entered the resource information (name, pay rate, etc) followed by all the tasks and their specific duration estimates. Next we allocated resources to each task as outlined in case exhibit 9. The next step was to enter task predecessors and then enter the leveling delays. Finally we verified the accuracy of our data entry. Once the Gantt chart was completed we were able to determine our critical path, project duration, look for resource over allocations and calculate the total labor cost for the project. Finally we discussed the bottlenecks in the project and brainstormed possible solutions or project modifications that could bring the online store to the public more rapidly. Results: According to the team’s analysis of the project, there is no possibility of deploying the online store by December 2003. The total duration of the project is 531 days. Subtracting the 80 days for project wrap up, the website will go live on February 2nd 2005, too late even for the holiday season of 2004. The lion’s share of time is sunk into development, testing and
implementation. It is clear that due to the decision to build an in-house solution, testing phase of this process is very critical and cannot be conducted in parallel with other tasks. The critical path of the project (which charts the series of events that if delayed will delay the completion of the total project) is 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, 23, 24, 26, 27, 29, 32, 33, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59. This chain of events is illustrated in table 1. The total labor cost of the project is $3,644,535 – the bulk of which comes from the testing and deployment tasks. The capital cost of the project is $98,500 which comes from the cost of the workstations and servers. When examining the team’s workload, Ryan Neff, Stacy Lyle and Developer 2 were all scheduled to work longer than 8 hour days on several occasions. Stacy, the most over-allocated member of the team had 8 occasions on which she was scheduled to work in excess of 8 hours, usually 16 or 24 hours. On one of those occasions, Ryan was not working on anything, nor were other members of the team. In order to prevent leveling delays it would make sense to identify these over allocations and assign shared responsibility for task completion with another team member that has the requisite skill set. Conclusions: The answer to CEO Ted Walter’s question “Can we get this done by Christmas?” is yes, but not without A&D assuming significant risk to quality, decreasing the scope, and increasing the cost of the project. According to the concept of the Triple Constraint, when one of the three constraints (time, cost, and scope) is altered it is necessary to adjust the other two constraints to achieve a project’s objectives. In order to launch the web site by the 2003 holiday season (NLT December 1, 2003), A&D must increase cost and reduce scope to meet senior managements’ goals. Assuming the CEO’s top priority is launching the site by the 2003 holiday season while maintaining all business requirements (Jeffery, 2006), Chris Johnson could recommend increasing the project’s personnel requirement and reducing the necessity of some tasks. Increasing the number of workers would increase costs, but it would also reduce the time to complete tasks and will result in more tasks completed concurrently. Reducing the necessity of certain tasks would reduce the scope of the project and would cut down on the time to deploy the website. An example of this would be to reduce the necessity or the scope of A&D’s testing requirements. Currently, there are 13 subtasks devoted to testing which comprise of 476 workdayunits. Although reducing an emphasis on testing would shorten the schedule, A&D would need to be willing to accept a significant level of risk if
they choose this course of action. A&D must be willing to risk that the web site may not perform as planned when launched. Rather than increasing sales during the holiday season, A&D could potentially lose sales if customers cannot navigate the site or if there are problems with the ERP system receiving their orders. Recommendations: Due to the significant costs of hiring additional staff and the high risk of failure without adequate testing, condensing this project by 15-months is not a feasible course of action. Our recommendation is for Chris Johnson to advise his senior managers that an incremental approach to launching the website is the best alternative. Also known as spiral development (table 5), business requirements are prioritized so that the website is launched by phase or when the project team satisfies the first or top rated requirement. (The Defense Acquisition University) The website is updated as subsequent business requirement tasks are completed until the website is fully functional. For example, if A&D’s priorities were: 1: Launch the site by the 2003 holiday season 2: Show configuration and pricing 3: Integrate the ERP system for manufacturing and order management 4: Real-time payment processing 5: Delivery date based on standard lead times 6: Collection if prospect data about customers - Phase I: When the site launches on December 1, 2003, customers have access to the company’s catalog with configuration and pricing information. Customers are also provided A&D customer service telephone numbers to place orders. - Phase II: the site is upgraded to accept orders when the project team completes the tasks associated with integrate the ERP system for manufacturing and order management and real-time order processing. - Phase III: the website is fully functional when upgraded to provide customers with delivery dates based on standard lead times and it is able to capture customer data. The underlying goal of this project is for A&D to capture a share of the online market. The longer it takes for A&D to enter into the internet arena, the risk of losing potential online customers grows. Using an incremental approach may not provide A&D with a website that meets all of their business
requirements any sooner, but it does allow them to get their foot in the door much faster.
