Trick or Treat: Hershey's Biggest Dud Has Turned Out to Be Its New Technology - At the Worst Possible Time, It Can't Fill Its Orders, Even as Inventory Grows - Kisses in the Air for Kmart By Emily Nelson and Evan Ramstad.

Question 11 & 12

NOTE: DO NOT USE MINDMAP FOLLOW THE EXCEL EXAMPLE POSTED UNDER THE MODULE

11. Your family (you, your spouse, and five-year-old child) are planning a trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. Representatives from upper management (your spouse and child) have specified that the trip will entail travel to Orlando, a four-night stay, and three days spent in Disney World itself. You and your spouse have allocated about $5,000 from your annual budget for this project.

a. Develop a WBS for this project and submit your work in mind map and outline form. You should have at least 30 work packages as the lowest level. Student answers will vary but should include 5-6 deliverables and at least 30 work packages as per the following example: THE FURTHER DOWN YOU GO IN WBS THE BETTER!

b. Select three of the deliverables included in your WBS and, for each, list three key performance indicators.

12. For two of the major deliverables or project elements you identified for the Disney World project, develop a detailed cost estimate in a spreadsheet format similar to the one shown in Exhibit 5.20. Your goal is to make the cost estimate as accurate as possible. Explain the approach you adopted in developing the estimate and the strategies you used to increase the accuracy of the estimate. Also list any assumptions on which your estimates are based. How confident are you in the accuracy of these cost estimates? Why?

Favorable/Unfavorable Risks Project Planning Process

2 )Why is it useful to consider both unfavorable risks and favorable uncertainties as part of the project planning process? Describe an example from your own work or personal life in which an unfavorable risk interfered with your ability to execute a project as you had initially envisioned it. Describe another example, also from your own work or personal life, in which an unexpected positive uncertainty caused a project to turn out better than you had envisioned it.

3) Read the article, E. Nelson and E. Ramstad, "Trick or Treat: Hershey's Biggest Dud Has Turned Out to Be Its New Technology," The Wall Street Journal, October 29, 1999, p. A1. This article describes a disastrous ERP (enterprise resource planning) system implementation at Hershey. Based on your reading of the article, as well as your own creative ideas, describe a negative outcome risk for each of the risk sources presented in Exhibit 6.1. For each of these risks, describe actions you could take to prevent it or prepare for it, and describe how you would monitor the situation so you were assured of being aware of the risk if it did occur.