Fluent Essays

Sarahs project had now become more complex than she had anticipated. Sarahs company had aphilosophy that the project manager would be assigned during proposal preparation, assist in thepreparation of the proposal, and take on the role of the project manager after contract award,assuming the company would be awarded the contract. Usually, contract go-ahead would takeplace within a week or two after contract award. That made project staffing relatively easy formost of the project managers. It also allowed the company to include in the proposal a detailedschedule based upon resources that would be assigned upon contract award and go-ahead. Duringproposal preparation, the functional managers would anticipate who would be available forassignment to this project over the next few weeks. The functional managers could then estimatewith reasonable accuracy the duration and effort required based upon the grade level of theresources to be assigned. Since the go-ahead date was usually within two weeks of contract awardand the contract award was usually within a week or so after proposal submittal, the schedule thatappeared in the proposal was usually the same schedule for the actual project with very fewchanges. This entire process was based upon the actual availability of resources rather than thefunctional managers assuming unlimited resources and using various estimating techniques.While this approach worked well on most projects, Sarahs new project had a go-ahead date ofthree months after contract award. For the functional managers, this created a problem estimatingthe effort and duration. Estimating now had to be made based upon the assumption of unlimitedavailability rather than the availability of limited resources. Functional managers were unsure asto who would be available three or four months from now, yet some type of schedule had to appearin the proposal.Sarah knew the risks. When the proposal was being prepared for Sarahs proposal, the functionalmanagers assumed that the average worker in the department would be available and assigned tothe project after go-ahead. The effort and duration estimates were then made based upon theaverage employee. If, after go-ahead, above-average employees would be assigned to her project,she could possibly see the schedule accelerated but had to make sure that cost overruns did nothappen because the fully loaded salary of the workers may be higher that what was estimated inthe proposal. If below-average workers are assigned , a schedule slippage might occur and Sarahwould have to look at possible schedule compression techniques, hopefully without incurringadded costs.Award of ContractSarahs company was awarded the contract. Sarah had silently hoped that the company would notget the contract, but it did. As expected, the go-ahead date was three months from now. Thiscreated a problem for Sarah because she was unsure as to when to begin the preparation of thedetailed schedule. The functional managers told her that they could not commit to an effort andduration based upon actual limited resource availability until somewhere around two to threeweeks prior to actual go-ahead date. The resources were already spread thin across several projectsand many of the projects were having trouble. Sarah was afraid that the worse case scenario wouldcome true and that the actual completion date would be longer than was in the proposal. Sarah wascertainly not happy about explaining this to the client should it be necessary to do so. Approaching Go-Ahead DateAs the go-ahead date neared , Sarah negotiated with the functional managers for resources.Unfortunately, her worst fears came true when, for the most part, she was provided with onlyaverage or above-average resources. The best resources were in demand elsewhere and it wasobvious that they would not be available for her project.Using the efforts and durations provided by the functional managers, Sarah prepared the newschedule. Much to her chagrin, she would be at least two weeks late on the four-month project.The client would have to be told about this. But before telling the client, Sarah decided to look atways to compress the schedule. Working overtime was a possibility, but Sarah knew that overtimecould lead to burned-out workers and the possibility of mistakes being made would increase. Also,Sarah knew that the workers really did not want to work overtime. Crashing the project by addingmore resources was impossible because there were no other resources available. Outsourcing someof the work was not possible as well because of the statement of work identified proprietaryinformation provided by the client and that the contract would not allow any outsourcing of thework to third party. Because of the nature of the work, doing some of the work in parallel ratherseries was not possible. There was always a chance that the assigned resources could get the jobdone ahead of schedule but Sarah believed that a schedule delay was inevitableTime for a decisionSarah had to make a decision about when and how to inform the client of the impending scheduledelay. If she told the truth to the client right now, the client might understand but might also believethat her company lied in the proposal. That would be an embarrassment for her company. If shedelayed informing the client, there might a chance that the original schedule in the proposal wouldbe adhered to, however slim. If the client is informed at the last minute about the delay, it couldbe costly for the client and equally embarrassing for her companyQuestions1. Is this common situation for most companies or an exception to the rule? 2. Is it possible to convince a client that the schedule is just a rough guess duringcompetitive bidding and finalization of the schedule can be made only after go-ahead? 3. What were improvement that could be suggested in Sarahs company to avoid scheduledelay?