Managing a Stochastic Constrained Project.
In this lecture, we will develop a plan for the medium writer development project.
Reason why I use stochastic as activity duration is not known for
sure and the short probability is less than 100 percent for all types of resources.
The focus in this scenario is on planning and control,
the plan is based on the trade-off between cost schedule value and risk.
We will try to develop a project plan that maximizes
the value of the project while satisfying the unit constraint,
the cost constraint, and is protected against uncertainty and risk.
During project execution, we will see how monitoring and control is used not
only to adjust the level of resources as in the deterministic unconstrained project,
but also to identify deviations from the project plan to
analyze such deviations and to take corrective actions when needed.
We really all speak to be the project team builder to manage a project under uncertainty.
Go to Run It, select PTB Training Simulator,
and then click on the PTB Training Simulator.
When prompted for the username and password,
please enter the data and click okay.
Under Use Cases, select the Medium Radar Development Project.
In these project, we have five tasks and the first view is a Network View where we
can see the five tasks or activities and the president's relations among them.
The same information is available under tasks,
where we can see the five tasks and the predecessor of each task.
We can see some information about this scenario,
we have five tasks,
there is a due date of 15 periods.
We start with $100,000,
the target cost is 41,000.
There is a bonus per period of 10,000 and a penalty of 20,000.
Next thing we want to do,
is to look at the upper right corner,
where we can see a summary of this scenario information.
The due date is 15 periods,
the target cost is 41,
we start with $100,000 in cash.
So, let's see the plan that is created by plan default.
This plan takes 18 periods,
which is longer than the required time cost 80,000,
which is more than the required cost,
has a value of 76.67, which is rather low.
There is an important point to consider,
if you look at a current modes,
you can see that we are not certain about the duration of each activity.
For example, systems engineering in the current mode,
which is a small team can take between five and 10.
The current project duration of a team is based on the most likely duration of seven,
but there is a risk that the activity will take longer.
There is another source of risk,
which is the availability of resources.
For example, the engineers are showing up only 80 percent of the time,
which means that in every period there is
a 20 percent probability that an engineer will not show up.
This is another source of risk that we have to take into
account when planning and managing this project.
Let's look at the Gantt chart and focus on the critical activities.
We see that the current project duration is 18,
if we want to reduce the project duration,
we will change the first activity to large team,
and we'll use plan early.
And now, the project duration is 15 which is less than the required duration.
However, the benefit is still low and we will change
the activity antenna design into the new design mode.
Consequently, the project benefit will go up to 100,
and still the duration is 15 periods,
the cost is 26,000 much less than the required cost.
Now we have a plan, and the question is,
can we improve on this plan?
Let's look at the last activity integration and testing.
Integration and testing is currently done in-house.
We can use subcontractors,
but the most likely duration will not change and even worse,
the pessimistic duration will be six,
which increase the probability that the project will be late compared with
the pessimistic duration of five that we currently have.
So we will stick with the modes already selected and we will adjust the resources next.
Let's look at the resource chart for engineers.
We see that we have 20 engineers available,
however, we need only three.
If we will adjust the number of engineers to exactly three by releasing 17 engineers,
we take the chance of the risk that one or more of
the engineers will not show up and then we will not be able to continue with our plan.
Let's ignore the risk for a while, and therefore,
we'll be the same for the technicians and we'll change the number of
technicians from 20 to the minimum possible which is two.
So we want to release 18 of the technicians.