Assignment: Controlling Your Project Essay.

We had you mess with your project plan by forcing a 40% completion with 60% schedule progress, and several other common issues (schedule slippage, cost overruns etc.). You have done your EVA forecast last week and now it's time to take steps based on what you found to bring the project back to baseline or as close to it as you can get. You may not simply back out the changes we had you put in. For the purposes of our educational goals, we are going to say those things happened and the current date is that 60% calculated date. MAKE SURE your STATUS DATE in the PROJECT INFORMATION Window is the 60% calculated date NOT BLANK or all your EVA numbers will be bogus!

In theory, we always need to balance project scope, with project budget, and the project schedule. In practice, that seldom happens. Usually, something has to give. My normal prescription is freeze one, (for example scope), manage another (for example budget) and float the third - which in this example, that would be schedule.

So, in this example, we would guarantee to deliver to the original scope PERIOD! We will try to stay as close to the original budget as possible - but the schedule may move out a bit (or a bunch).

You may not be facing such dire consequences - or you might be. At a conceptual level facing such issues, I don't know what your stakeholders would want to do in terms of the triple constraints. That is, which to freeze, to manage, or to float. You have to figure that out.

We've talked about the fundamental things you can do in such circumstances (Resource leveling, get schedule/scope/budget relief, swap to more productive resources, FastTrack, Crashing, etc.). Now it's up to you to analyze where you are and come up with a plan to fix the problems. You will be implementing your plan by modifying a version of your .MPP file and seeing what happens to your numbers. You will also be submitting that modified project plan for review.

• You will write an essay on bringing your project back in-line with your baseline
• Explain in detail what your forecast numbers reveal as to your cost and schedule issues before corrective actions are taken.
• Explain in detail the changes you plan to make to task durations, resources, budget values, project scope, etc. to bring your project back in line
• You will be using a template named "add your name here- Final Project Essays" for your Essay (you will be using the same template for all essays).
• AT LEAST 3 pages or longer in length. Double-space, one-inch margins, and 12-point font size.