During the morning of Wednesday, June 23, 2004, Lori Anne McNulty,

senior manager of the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada, received a

panicked call from Sarah Mann, the supervisor of fundraising events.
A major fundraising event, the MS bicycle tour between London and
Grand Bend, Ontario, was scheduled for July 24 and 25. Mann was
completing a final drive of the route, four weeks before the event,
when she realized that the road construction would not be completed
in time for the event. With the route planning activities usually
requiring 59 days to complete, McNulty wondered whether they would
be able to find a safe, paved route and complete the planning
activities before the scheduled event.

Prepare a network diagram for the bicycle route planning, using MS

Project. Please submit your MS Project file using Canvas.

Please also prepare and submit a Word document that addresses the
following questions:

1. What is the critical path for the route planning, in the most likely
scenario? What can you conclude from your analysis?

Based on Network diagram in the MS project, The critical path would

be : -
a. ABDEFGHILNOQRS

b. ABDEFGHKLNOQRS

c. ABDEFGHILMPQRS

d. ABDEFGHKMPQRS

Analysis:

The overall duration for the project (under most likely condition) is
52.6 days.
Based on the Network diagram, (attached above), there are few tasks
which are in parallel to other tasks and taking equal time. This results
in multiple critical paths. To reduce the overall project times, it would
become necessary to reduce the duration for both tasks which are in
parallel. Otherwise, reducing the duration of one, won’t have any effect
on the project timelines.

2. When is the earliest completion time in the optimistic and

pessimistic scenarios? What conclusions can be drawn from this
analysis?

Under optimistic scenario; critical path becomes:

A(B,C)DEFGHILNOQRS - with overall duration of 32.6 days

Under Pessimistic scenario; critical path becomes:

ABDEFGHIL(NO/MP)QRS – with overall duration of 85.1days.

As stated above, completion of route planning tasks will take a total of

53 days at an average, which is lesser than 59 days mentioned in the
case. Also, optimistic time of 32.6 days is calculated by taking the
earliest finish period for each of the tasks required in the route
planning activity. It is still more than 23 days, which is the number of
days required in the start of bicycle tour. Thus, it is not possible to
finish the tasks before the start of the tour. We therefore wither need
to change the cycling route or alter the manpower involved in the
planning activities.

3. As Lori Anne McNulty, how would you manage the uncertainty in the
task duration times?

Establishing contingency plans can help managing the uncertainties in

task-duration time. Management of idle-time is a critical factor in
managing uncertainties. Control mechanism and monitoring leads can
manage slack. We can also manage uncertainties by managing
deliverables instead of directly managing the task.

4. What strategies would you use to complete the bicycle route

planning by July 24? Please be creative as you think about this
question.

At this point, we should minimize the time of activities that are less
prior so that it may become able to finish the route planning before 24
July. Activities B and C can be done simultaneously as these activities
take minimum expected time of 9 days. So these activities can be
crashed from route planning. Doing so will reduce the time of the
completion of task and team can focus on the critical path activities of
the route planning activities.

Another option we can consider is to add more resources which will

add more cost to the project but can further reduce the durations of
tasks and help meeting the deadline.