Scenario

Your organization has just completed the Initiation Process for implementing an Email System Upgrade. It was identified in a recent meeting with management leaders from the Sales, Consulting and IT departments that the current email system is causing significant amount of business interruptions and must be updated immediately. You have been assigned the role of project manager to develop the project schedule and budget. As project manager, you are responsible for implementing and enforcing the project schedule and its estimates, expected costs, and the techniques and methods that will be chosen to execute and control the project. The project is being initiated with the following initial project scope in mind:

• There are five email systems currently being used across twelve departments and offices. These will be replaced and consolidated into one email system.
• New Email Standards and Protocols will be established and training provided to all departments.
• All 2000 current email users will be converted to the new system, and 500 new users that did not have email before will be added.
• Users will have both LAN and remote access to email.
• Help desk and support infrastructure will be set-up to accommodate the new system.
• Equipment will be salvaged.

User PCs will be upgraded to accommodate the new email system.

Your first presentation was excellent, and the project work is moving forward. No project can be managed without a WBS. The CIO now has decided that it is time for you to create the work breakdown structure (WBS) for the project.

• Determine the following:
  • The scope of the project
  • How is the WBS created? Do you use the PMBOK^® Guide project life cycle phases (initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and control, and close out) as the noun or do you use the deliverable or project name as the noun? The noun in a WBS is the deliverable.
  • The work breakdown structure (WBS) that is representative of the project scope, which should include the following:
    • Deliverables/Outputs
    • Activities
    • Tasks
    • Products or services
• All major tasks should be organized into work packages. A work-package is the lowest level of the WBS.
• Do not decide on estimates for the activities or work-packages at this time.
• This determining WBS essentials should be between 150-200 words.

• Part 2
• Now that you have had the opportunity to discuss your project and somewhat build your WBS in the group discussion area and offline, use MS project software to complete the following:
• Creating your WBS in MS Project. Using MS Project, enter all the WBS deliverables/outputs, activities, and tasks into a new MS Project file and save it with your group name and course #.
• Sequence your activities. Now that you have defined your activities, ensure that they are listed in the order that they should be completed. If one activity is dependent on another, be sure to list that dependency in the "Predecessor" column.
• Activity estimation. Assign an initial work effort to each of the activities from the WBS.
• Provide an estimation framework for the WBS. This should be approximate. You're allowed to make assumptions as long you're being realistic.
• The framework should be estimated in days.
• Duration estimation. Now that you have defined the WBS activities, sequenced them in a logical order and defined the dependency relationships between them, and estimated resources, add the activity duration for all activities then add a start date to each task. The finish date should automatically populate. If you have a conflict, review your predecessor relationships. Remember, you do not need to add anything to the summary tasks (the deliverable/output). The summary tasks will update automatically as soon as you link the activities to them. They summarize the duration and start/finish date for that entire deliverable. The screen shot below should provide you with an example of how your work will look before submitting this assignment. Many more examples are available in the Project Management Homepage in the Learning Center.
• Assign resources. In the resource name column in your MS Project file, add a resource name to each task. You may use hypothetical names or your group's names.
  • There is no length to how many tasks your WBS should be made up of, but it should be long enough to convince your CIO at a glance that this is all the work that needs to be completed for this project. Ideally, you shouldn't have less than 50 tasks. You can organize your tasks however you choose to use the noun. It is recommended that you use the PMBOK® Guide project management phases to organize your WBS.

Part 3

• Based on your deliverable (Part 1)
  • Apply the standard PERT estimating formula and calculate the expected estimate (Te) for each activity.
    • Use the table attached to complete the estimates.
• Explain the purpose behind the PERT calculations.
  • PERT estimate calculations and your explanation of them should be between 550-700 words.