RUNNING HEAD: PROJECT SIMULATION 1

Analysis of Project Simulation Exercise

Name

Class
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Project Overview and Objectives

Alliance Prototype project is the prototype of Alliance project that is a strategic effort of

Uniworld to enhance their sales and marketing capabilities using an e-commerce web site. The

company has decided to first launch a prototype of the website to selected customers of the

company. The objectives of the Alliance Prototype project are:

 To test the feasibility of an e-commerce web site for Uniworld

 To augment the sales and marketing efforts of Uniworld

 To increase the availability of Uniworld to its customers across the globe

The budget of Alliance Prototype project is $50,000 and the duration is 11 months. The

required performance of the project is completion of customer acceptance test with maximum 12

known defects. Other defects that pose the risk of dysfunctional website and system failure are

unacceptable and the customer would reject the project, if in the case that such quality defects

are present in the final deliverable. Moreover, the web site has to be capable of handling peak

load of 2,000 hits per hour. The web site should handle the load without any major degradation

in response of system.

The deliverables of the Alliance Prototype project are:

 Software and hardware to establish e-commerce web site

 Fully functional e-commerce demonstration web site

 Site documentation

 Recommended product architecture.

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Research Process

The research process for the project initiated with acquiring a thorough understanding of

the project objectives, deliverables and required performance parameters. Sim project’s

orientation to the overall project documents and other functionalities marked the start of the

research process. Primarily, the research process was segregated in four stages; understanding

the project requirements, reviewing and selecting the resources for project, researching &

deciding risk/reserves, recognition plan and training for team members, and finally, project

budgeting. To understand the project, reference documents such as project charter, Gantt chart,

network diagram, task descriptions and work breakdown structure.

After gathering relevant information on the project, the information on five major areas

of the project; resources, risk/reserves, recognition plan, stakeholder plan and training was sorted

and applied. Budget was a necessary consideration while researching the information on the

project tasks. In order to research the resources for project, the profiles of individual resources

available to the project were researched in reference documents. Based on the individual task and

skill level required, resources were shortlisted for the project. A similar process was deployed to

gather information on the stakeholders of the project, the level of recognition that would be

necessary to keep team members motivated and risk/reserves that would be required for project.

Despite utmost care of referring to referencing documents, some oversight was made in

researching that reflected in planning stage. The major oversight was related to missing out on

network plan on the uPhone that was later searched and found. Overall, the research process was

performed with relative efficiency that led to easier transition to the planning process.
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Planning Process

With the help of orientation, help videos and research process, the planning process

appeared to be a hassle-free task. However, it required deeper thinking and consideration of the

various aspects such as selecting best-suitable resource from the pool of shortlisted resources,

deciding on probable risks, associated and mitigation plans and aligning the available training

program with the training requirements of the hired resources. The detailed planning process for

resources, risk/reserve, stakeholders, recognition and training strategies are discussed in detail in

subsequent section. The planning process terminated in the execution process.

Resource Planning

Under resource planning, the following resources were selected:

Resource Title Tasks

David Lewis IT Specialist 1,2,3

Adam Herrez Documentation Specialist 4,7

Chandra Lake Test Engineer 6

Sally Nicolas Network Specialist 2,5

Tea Dominique Software Engineer 3,5

The above resources were selected based on their achievements and skills enlisted in their

resumes. David Lewis was already assigned to the task and as there was only one IT specialist

available in resource pool, he was the obvious choice. Adam Herrez was chosen over Jim

Thomas because Adam was reported to be excellent in quick documentation writing. However,
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selection of Adam Herrez turned out to be a bad decision because he delayed both task 4 and 7.

He was absent for some days and complained of overtime despite of delaying the project because

of his absenteeism and low productivity.

Chandra Lake was chosen over Omar Mosa for the project because of her ability to

deliver assignments on time. She proved to be a good choice as she performed her job and

completed the assigned task within specified timeframe. Sally Nicolas, the network specialist

was selected for the project because her resume stated her to be dedicated and capable worker.

However, her counterpart Lisa Derring was the better option because Sally’s productivity never

increased beyond 80%, despite of warnings, praises and recognition. She also complained of

overtime and didn’t complete assigned tasks on the specified timeframe. Tea Donique was a

good decision for the project as she was on time and had good productivity.

After the completion of the project, I realized that I should have chosen Jim Thomas and

Lisa Derring over Adam Herrez and Sally Nicolas respectively.

Other Plans

Other plans comprised of stakeholder plan, recognition plan, risk/reserves and training

plan. The stakeholder plan for the project comprised of meeting to customer and status reports to

all the stakeholders every month. This kept the stakeholders informed of the project progress.

Recognition plan budgeted $500 for employee recognition and was ample for the project

duration. The risk/reserves was decided to be $3,600 from budgeted $4,000 and proved to be

sufficient for the project. The training plan for employee comprised of Project Management

training for Adam Herriz. The stakeholder plan, recognition plan and risk/reserves worked fairly
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well throughout the duration of the project, however, the training program could have been

scheduled better. With the quality being an important performance parameter, training should

have been conducted to train employees on quality aspects. Lack of quality training was evident

on the performance of team members.

Budget Approval

Budgeting process, especially task-wise resource budgets required careful deliberation

and task assignment. Due to the efficient research process, budget was drafted and approved the

first time it was submitted. Budgeting is one of the most significant and time-consuming tasks in

project management. It is essential to accept variance in some tasks depending on the risk

associated with the tasks and reserve requirement.

Execution Process

Executing phase starts with the approval of budget and involves weekly staffing and

calendar decisions. With the help of Buki, the assistant I was on top of all the project activities

until week 3. However, with the absenteeism of David, task 2 delayed and it was difficult to

manage the tasks and staff for a period of 3-4 weeks. I realized the ripple effect of delay in one

task on the dependent tasks. The oversight during research process regarding network diagram

caused staffing problems. I did not gauge the dependent status of all the system-related tasks and

2-3 employees remained ideal for 4 weeks, depleting the project reserves. This is the most

important aspect of staffing that I learned from simulation. With the changes in tasks deadline,

the project manager has to alter the staffing plan. Staff has to be released and re-hired, based on

altering project situations.

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With the weeks running, there were several unplanned risks that came forward. The

management wanted to shut down the project because of financial crisis in the company. The

recommendation of staff to have more trainings and increased overtime was rejected by

management with instructions to terminate all planned trainings and increase staff overtime. This

led to staff complaining about overtime and burn-out, eventually with one staff resigning from

the project. Moreover, the delay of project and quality issues caused immense pressure on the

team that led to low employee morale and increased absenteeism. Handling these real-time issues

with team management proved to be crucial for project success.

The most important learning occurred during the completion of task 1. For the website

design show-off meeting, marketing head was not available and we went ahead with his

representative. Later, marketing head mandated some changes in design because of its

incompatibility to legacy systems that increased project duration by 1 week and project budget

by approximately $2,000. It is essential to wait for the right people to attend the meeting as this

could save a lot of time and money. Moreover, one should always be prepared for unforeseen

risks as they always occur in the project. They can always be handled well by taking team

recommendations and asking for alternative solutions.

There were several communications shared by executive management to enhance the

quality and project handling skills. All the communications made a positive difference to the

project. Communication during project is key to project success as it provides the opportunity to

be prepared for unforeseen risks and also to appropriately manage the project. The graphs and

reports were most informative during the project and I frequently used quality report, Gantt

chart, network diagram, and earned value report. Studying these reports assisted in making
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informed decisions regarding the project, these reports could be used to keep project on schedule

and under budget.

Closing/Ending

Several delays and staffing issues caused the project scheduled to finish in 11 weeks to

actually complete in 20 weeks. The project was over budget by $49,962 and delayed by 9 weeks.

I learned greatly from this simulation and decided to complete the simulation a second time.

During the second time around, I was more careful with the planning process and executing

process. The mistakes that were made in first execution in relation to staffing, staff absenteeism

and low morale were addressed in the second run and this made a huge difference to the overall

project performance. The project stayed right on schedule and under budget.

Learning is an important component of the simulation exercise and I learned how easy it

is to make an oversight and bear its consequences on project schedule and cost. Once the project

slips out of hand, it becomes almost impossible to bring it back on track, and soon the project

drives the project manager rather than manager driving the project. It’s also important to address

the staff issues early in the project. During first simulation, I didn’t pay much attention to Lewis

absenteeism and it led to huge delay in task 2. However, in second simulation, I raised concern

early and got him to work from home. This led to minimal delay in task 1.

Overall, the simulation exercise is a great learning experience that really made a

difference from the static project planning.