HMS

PINAFOR
E CASE
STUDY
ANALYSIS
Project
Management
Submitted to :
Sir Ali Kamal
Khan
Submitted by:
Zunair Ali Syed

National College of Business

Administration & Economics

HMS PINAFORE CASE STUDY ANALYSIS

Contents
MS Project Work.......................................................................................................... 2
Table........................................................................................................................ 2
Gantt chart.............................................................................................................. 2
Network Diagram.................................................................................................... 2
Executive Summary.................................................................................................... 2
Issue Identification..................................................................................................... 2
Short Timeline......................................................................................................... 2
Volunteers and Students......................................................................................... 2
Strict Budget........................................................................................................... 3
New Producer Every Year......................................................................................... 3
Environmental and Root Cause Analysis.....................................................................3
Alternatives and/or Options........................................................................................ 4
Options Pros Cons................................................................................................. 6
Recommendation....................................................................................................... 7
Implementation.......................................................................................................... 7
Monitor and Control.................................................................................................... 8

MS Project Work
Table
Gantt chart
Network Diagram

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HMS PINAFORE CASE STUDY ANALYSIS

Executive Summary
The G&S Society is planning their 1993/1994 season which also happens to be the 40th year of
putting on a production of an operetta. The Societys mandate is to provide the students, faculty,
alumni and community an opportunity to participate in and enjoy a high quality theatre.
The performance is put on with a very tight budget and tight timelines. With the performance
manly run through volunteer time there is a lot of pressure put on these volunteers to put in a lot
of time to ensure of a high quality production in the short timelines provided. As well with the
Final Exam period and shutdown at Christmas break puts more pressure on the team.
For the 40th season additional money will be spent on recruitment ads to speed up the hiring
process and finding experience people for the production crew. As will the cast will be asked to
increase their performances from 3 a week to on average 3.6 over a 10 week period. The main
goal of the team is to have a sell-out high quality performance.

Issue Identification
Short Timeline
Based on the Budget for the operetta only being approved at the start of September the producer
only has around 100 days to take nothing to an amazing high quality 1st night performance. With
the larger percentage of the hours required to complete all the tasks coming from volunteers do
not allow a push on peoples time to be able to complete tasks or put more hours in. No plan in
place for an effective process from start to opening night of play.

Volunteers and Students

Run mostly by volunteers who need to balance school life and work life with putting in time to
the Play. Cant push too much to try and speed tasks up as they may resist and not become happy
with what they are doing. As well most of December is not available for rehearsal or set
production due to exam schedules of the students and the university closes down for a week over
Christmas.

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HMS PINAFORE CASE STUDY ANALYSIS

Strict Budget
The USC provides a strict budget for the committee to run off and of it is set to go against
fixed costs. There is very little room for the committee to spend extra money on helping to speed
up tasks.

New Producer Every Year

Every year a new producer is chosen to run the production of the operetta. The producer is a fulltime student who also doesnt have an overabundance of time to dedicate to the project. With
replacing the producer every year, the person has to start off with little experience or insight as to
what needs to be planned or done in order to make sure opening night goes off without a hitch.
No Clear Direction where to start planning for the production every year.

Environmental and Root Cause Analysis

The G&S Society mandate is to give students, faculty and alumni an opportunity to participate in
and enjoy high quality theatre productions at affordable prices. This 1993/1994 season marked
the Societys 40th year to put on a famous operetta. Which means the production needs to look
even more professional while keeping to the budget set by the Students Association.
Every year a new producer is selected to produce the show and keep all the different functions on
task and meeting the targeted deadlines. Each year the producer must develop their own work
schedule will all tasks included that are required to meet the deadline of opening night. Due to
the lack of formal organization chart that outlines authority, control and report creates challenges
as well open communication among all functions is critical to ensure deadlines are being met.
Given the timeframe as to when budget is approved and the producer can proceed with tasks
everything needs to run smoothly and on-time. There isnt much room to delay the start of tasks
especially along the critical paths to meet the opening night. Opening night is critical for the
operetta as how it is performed will lead to positive feedback in newspapers and talk around
campus. Based on how it goes will lead to more ticket sales for the following performances.
With a majority of the tasks being completed by volunteers, who have other obligations, results
in little ability to push them for extra time to catch up on tasks which are delayed. As well cant
jeopardize the quality of the performance or sets due to pushing the volunteers or putting the
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HMS PINAFORE CASE STUDY ANALYSIS

wrong people into roles they cant do. Poor quality does not fit with what the operetta wants to
showcase and could lead to poorer ticket sales.
The USC sets the budget each year for the production of the operetta and costs need to be
controlled to meet the budget. Over expenditure isnt an option. With of the budget going to
fixed costs, the producer has to be careful in managing the variable operating costs. There are a
lot of opportunities to spend money on increasing the turnaround time or speeding up a
completion of a task however the costs need to be justified. Some options may not lead to
decreasing the time spent on task along the critical path of the project which would be a wasted
money spent on something that didnt need to be hurried up.
The new producer has to rely on verbal information from key people who have experience from
previous years to compile a list of tasks needing to be completed prior to opening night. The
information provided was from three people on their perception as to what were the priorities
and length of time required for each one. With this large amount of verbal information it is
extremely hard to lay out what is important to work and as well to make sure that nothing is
forgotten.

Alternatives and/or Options

The following are some options available to help speed up the time needed to complete the entire
listing of tasks to meet the opening night:

Hire an Additional Builder

Expedite the Delivery of the costumes
Expedite the Printing of the programs
Decrease the number of rehearsals
Add additional Rehearsal/Week
Spend additional Money on Advertising to speed up recruitment process

If we were to hire an additional builder it would cost an extra $80 per day and would reduce the
time required to build the set by one week. This would reduce the time along this critical path
from 112 days to 105 days. Based on the amount of available days by hiring an additional builder
does bring us closer however without reducing the time required for rehearsal practice this would
be spending money without seeing a total reduction of time along the critical path.
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HMS PINAFORE CASE STUDY ANALYSIS

Another option is to spend an additional $100 to have the costumes delivered two days earlier
than planned. The stream the costumes run along is part of the critical path however the costume
parade must wait for the set to be complete before this task can be completed. This option does
provide the flexibility of having the costumes sooner so alternations can be completed earlier.
However due to the budget constraints this would be an unwise decision to spend money on
expediting.
The printing vendor has the option as well to spend an additional $750 on expediting the printing
of the programs. They would be able to have the programs complete in two days instead of five.
Decreasing the total time required for this activity from 60 to 57 days. If people are pulled into
other priorities and dont have the time to devote to completing the photos and bios of the cast as
quickly as needed this option would allow to delay the start of the task. However considering
there is 52 days of slack time along this stream; money can be better spent in other places to
speed up tasks along the critical path.
A decrease in the number of rehearsals required is another viable option to help reduce the time
along a critical path. The current plan is to hold 3 rehearsals per week for 12 weeks. By
eliminating a week or two weeks would reduce the time from 112 days to 105 or 98 days. This
would bring the total time required down to what is currently available due to the final exam
period and shutdown over Christmas. However reducing the amount of rehearsals may not create
the professional look that is needed and the overall performance may be affected. On opening
night the need is there to create a very professional feel around the operetta so the buzz can be
created around campus and more tickets will be sold.
Another option surrounding rehearsals is to increase the number from 3 a week to 4 a week
which will reduce the time required for this task from 84 days to 63 days. By increasing the
number per week still provides the cast to get in the same amount of rehearsals to provide the
professional feel to the operetta. However with the large percentage of volunteers involved
pushing those to commit to an additional day may lead to some of them quitting. And if this
happens during crucial times would be hard to make up lost time of training another person to fill
in a spot.

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HMS PINAFORE CASE STUDY ANALYSIS

By creating quality recruitment advertisements may reduce the time required to recruit
experience qualified people down by two weeks. Currently there is four weeks allocated to
recruiting the crew required for production/set building. By reducing this down to two weeks
reduces the critical path time from 112 days to 98 days. Doing this on its own does reduce the
total time however the amount of time required for rehearsals is still longer and may be taking
money from the budget that could be better spent elsewhere.

Options Pros Cons

Options
Hire Additional Builder

Pros
Reduce time by one week

Cons
Doesnt reduce the total time

Expedite Delivery of

Reduce time by 5 days

along critical path line

Doesnt reduce the total time

Costumes
Expedite Printing of Programs

Reduce time by 3 days

along critical path line

Doesnt reduce the total time

Reduce time by 3 weeks,

along critical path line

Increased Risk of loss of

Decrease total time along

professionalism of production,

Critical path

affect overall quality of

Decrease # of Rehearsals

performance which will

Reduce time by 3 weeks,

reduce ticket sales

Dealing with Volunteers and

Increase # of Rehearsals per

decrease total time along

dont want to push the amount

week

Critical Path

of time they need to spend

with the operetta for fear they

Increase spend on Recruitment Reduce recruitment time and

will quit
Possibly not enough money in

Ads

budget

hire more qualified

experienced people

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HMS PINAFORE CASE STUDY ANALYSIS

Recommendation
The recommendation for the Producer is to increase the amount of money to be spent on the
recruitment ads. This will allow the start of the set designing and building to be brought forward
in the schedule by two weeks. As well the Cast/Rehearsal Director will need to work with their
team to increase their rehearsals from 3 a week to average 3.6 a week so they are able to have the
same amount of rehearsals required to put on a high quality performance but be able to do this in
10 weeks. By implementing both options will reduce the total critical path time 97/99 days.
Based on only having 100 days from now until opening night implementing both of these options
will allow for a high quality, highly professional operetta to be performed on for the first night of
production.

Implementation
What
Hire a Publicity and Set

Who
Francis

When
ASAP

Designer
Assign each Function (Set,

Francis

ASAP

Francis

Weekly

Cast, Costume, Orchestra,

Publicity) a Director
Hold weekly meetings with
Directors to review Project
Plan
Arrange for Audition Place

Casting Director

and Time
Directors to continue working

Producers & Directors

Ongoing

on their tasks assigned on the

task list
Run Recruitment Ads

Publicity Director

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HMS PINAFORE CASE STUDY ANALYSIS

Monitor and Control
The Producer will assign a function to a Director who will report up to the Producer. This will
help with the organizational issues and will allow for communication to flow up through the
proper channels. Once this team has been established a meeting will be held to review the Project
Plan and the crucial deliverable dates that need to be met. The team will continue to meet on a
weekly basis to review where their functions are at and if they need assistance with anything.
This will keep everyone in the loop and aware of how things are coming along. If extra help is
needed to help progress the team will know about it quicker and can add help. The goal of the
management team will to host an operetta of the upmost quality and come in on budget.
A week after the final show the team will meet again to formalize recommendations, areas for
improvement, compare final expenses against budget and put together a report for the Student
Council. Items to incorporate into the report will be an earlier budge approval date, earlier start
to the project to eliminate the need of extra money and time to meet the end goal and utilize
human resources from year to year. This will ensure that the team next year will be starting off
on the right foot and wont need to incur additional expenses due to the shortened timeline as
well having people with experience can help guide the team through what needs to be done.

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