Part 1: Management of Small Projects

• Develop your small acquisition project schedule using MS Project (tasks, predecessors, duration, and resources assigned).
• Copy a screen print of the schedule and Gantt chart into this shell.
• Copy a screen print of the critical path network diagram, or of the Gantt screen of the Tracking Gantt view showing the critical path into this shell.

Part 2: Acquisition Project Guidelines

• Update the project plan and Gantt Chart with acquisition project activities with MS Project, and copy it into this section.
• Develop a request for proposal (RFP) template for the acquisition project with the elements discussed in the Discussion Board for this week.
• Develop a table with the vendor evaluation criteria.
• Diagram and describe the vendor status update process.

PART 3: Costing Methods and Tools

• Select 2 of the costing methods, and discuss why they will support developing a realistic budget.
• Provide an example of computations for a few of the activities for the 2 selected methods.
• Fill in a table similar to the example table so that your 2 different total project budgets are based on the 2 selected methods.
• Discuss what type of contingency budget you will put in place based on the 2 budgets to mitigate an underestimation.

You will be responsible for using your plan that you developed in Weeks 2 and 3 to estimate your budget for your key assignment project. You should apply 2 of the above methods to determine a worst-case scenario budget. Please put your calculations in a spreadsheet similar to the following:

Part 4: Earned Value Management System

Discuss how an earned value analysis will be utilized for this project or Key Assignment, including the formulas to compute earned value analysis (EVA).

Cover the following 4 scenarios and what you should do:

• Behind schedule and over budget: Include a sample calculation that would trigger this interpretation, along with a graph.
• Ahead of schedule and on budget: Include a sample calculation that would trigger this interpretation, along with a sample graph.
• Behind schedule and on budget: Include a sample calculation that would trigger this interpretation, along with a sample graph.
• Ahead of schedule and under budget: Include a sample calculation that would trigger this interpretation, along with a sample graph.
• Discuss for each of the above situations how you compute the final cost and end date if nothing changes with its present state.

Overall Cost and Schedule Performance

• Discuss how you will monitor progress.
• Discuss what metrics, reports, and graphs you will use to monitor progress.
• Discuss how they would determine the cause of the variation.
• Discuss how you will respond to deviations; (specifically around schedule compression and a contingency budget).