Chapter 12 – Exercise 3

Chapter 12 – Exercise 3 Suppose your company is trying to decide whether it should buy special equipment to prepare some of its high-quality publications itself or lease the equipment from another company. Suppose leasing the equipment costs $240 per day. If you decide to purchase the equipment, the initial investment is $6,800, and operations will cost $70 per day. After how many days will the lease cost be the same as the purchase cost for the equipment? Assume your company would only use this equipment for 30 days. Should your company buy the equipment or lease (Schwalbe, p. 492)?





$240d = $6800 + $70d
Subtracting $70 from both sides:
$240d - $70d = $6800 + $70d - $70d
$170d = $6800
Dividing both sides by $70:
2.428d = 97.142
d = 97.142 / 2.428
d = 40



It means that after 40 days the lease will cost the same as the purchase, therefore, it is not recommended to buy the equipment, since the company needs that equipment for only 30 days. The purchase of that equipment would be worth in case the company needed them for more than 40 days.


References


Schwalbe, K., (2006) – Information Technology Project Management – Fourth Edition – Cambridge, MA: Course Technology/Thompson Learning

Chapter 10 – Exercise 2

Chapter 10 – Exercise 2
Review the following scenarios, and then write a paragraph for each one describing what media you think would be most appropriate to use and why. See table 10-2 for suggestion (Schwalbe, page 419).

a. Many of technical staff on the project come in from 9:30 to 10:00 a.m. while the business users always come in before 9:00 a.m. The business users have been making comments. The project manager wants to have the technical people come in by 9:00, although many of them leave late.
b. Your company is bidding on a project for the entertainment industry. You know that you need new ideas on how to put together the proposal and communicate your approach in a way that will impress the customer.
c. Your business has been growing successfully, but you are becoming inundated with phone calls and e-mails asking similar types of questions.
d. You need to make a general announcement to a large group of people and want to make sure they get the information.

a. I think that effective communication is the most important requirement for a project to succeed, however the project manager has to understand the needs of the team members to build a good workplace and receive from them what is expected to. In this case the project manager is trying to make the team committed to the project and at the same time deliver a general agreement to the group, so according to the table 10-2 (Schwalbe, p. 394) the items assessing commitment and building consensus would be suitable to transmit the idea of starting and ending working hours. In either way, scheduling a meeting would be the most appropriate type of media and a phone call would be adequate. A meeting is usually better, even though not the most convenient way because finding a time that is suitable for everybody sometimes is a problem, a phone call is not enough to show how important what the person wants to express is. The project manager is also trying to mediate a conflict between business users and technical staff to establish the most suitable time to everybody without leaving anything misunderstood. The other types of media would be inappropriate just because they would not show strong communication for this matter.

b. In this case, there are two different tasks to be executed; the first one is to put the ideas together to develop the proposal and the second one is to demonstrate to the client the followed approaches and present them in a way to impress him. For the first task, confidentiality is important since a person needs to be careful when handling information that involves the future of a project, so a meeting, hard copy and phone call would be appropriate means of communication for this phase. In the a meeting a person could collect the information needed to create the proposal, the phone call would be the way to clarify doubts and some extra needs that may occur but it would eventually need some formal paper documenting the proposal, therefore a hard copy would be also necessary. For the second task when the person tries to persuade the client with his offer, it is important to have the interaction face to face because it is a way to create empathy and win the situation, sometimes a person gets more that he thought he would, it is also a way to accelerate the transference of information (Levin, 2005). If the client has some doubts, a meeting would be the simplest, easiest and quickest way to raise and clarify the doubts. A phone call, website or hard copy would not be appropriate since the person would be dealing with complex instructions although a report would be a good way to keep the client informed about how things are going.

c. When a business starts growing, some of the activities performed in a daily basis become redundant to the company, so it is important that some changes occur to keep the company processes updated and easy to be handled, perhaps it is necessary additional employees or a system that performs and organizes most of the activities to avoid phone calls and emails with similar enquiries that make some employee allocate their time whilst they could be performing more important tasks for the company. This is a matter of building consensus for what should be done in the company among all the departments not to overload anyone with unnecessary work. Since the main objective is to change some routines, a good type of media would be a meeting where everybody involved could exchange information, give new ideas and share knowledge, therefore essential information would be reached by the right people at the right time. Phone calls and emails are also good but just after the meeting to add up some things that were left out.

d. When a person needs to address some information to a large number of people and ensure they all get the message, the best way is to public on a website or send emails, internet postings are effective ways to transfer information among people, however, it is important to know how to use this means because poor writing often leads to misunderstandings and confusion (Schwalbe, p.407). The advantages of using a website as means of communication are that the information can be updated at any time, the information is available at any time the staff wants to access and the website can be linked to other subjects to create new opportunities and transmit different ideas at the same time. The other types of media such as phone calls, meetings and voice mails would be inappropriate when the purpose is to transmit the idea to a large number of people. Imagine how long a person would take if he had to make 10 or 100 calls (depending on the number of people that need to receive the same information) to transmit the same idea).

References

Schwalbe, K., (2006) – Information Technology Project Management – Fourth Edition – Cambridge, MA: Course Technology/Thompson Learning

Levin, G., (2005) – Requirements for effective project communications – From allPM Website Retrieved October 24, 2007 from http://www.allpm.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1357&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Chapter 9 – Exercise 3

Chapter 9 – Exercise 3

Read Douglas Ross’s article: “Applying Covey’s seven habits to a project management career” or another article that describes the seven habits. Summarize three of Covey’s habits in your own words and give examples of how these habits would apply to a project management (Schwalbe, p. 380).

The three habits that are going to be explained below are: Habit One – Be Proactive, Habit 3 – Put first things first and Habit 5 – Seek first to understand, then to be understood (Ross, 1996).

Habit One: Be Proactive
People need to be proactive to be successful in what they do, being proactive is the process of doing something before the event occurs converting a problem into positive opportunities that might be good to get some experience in the future.
It is about one step further that a person has to take; it is the action of taking the charge position and thinking: “what could go wrong if this or that happened?” The difference between proactive and reactive people is that proactive people focus their energy on productive actions that add values to what they do whilst reactive people are those who focus their attention on weakness of the others, problems of the environment and circumstances over which they have no control.
A good example of applying habit one in a real world is that a project manager among many things has to be a decisive person, good problem solver, team builder and above of all he must be proactive to add values to the project successfully.

Habit 3 – Put first things first
Habit 3 is about the development of a time management plan that helps people prioritize their time, in other words, it is the vision of beginning a project with the end in mind. It involves analysis, breakdown and sequencing of tasks and actions to be performed; it shows the importance of prioritizing tasks and it also explains that team members should spend more time doing things that are important but not urgent, such as, reading, planning and exercising, while project managers should spend more time working on building relationships, developing team member skills and project plans since these tasks contribute to the success and completion of the project.
This habit addresses mainly the importance of time management and since it is considered one of the most limited resources, once it is expended it can never be recovered. The project manager should have a clear understanding of the difference between important and urgent issues and it can be demonstrated into four quadrants:
- Quadrant 1: Important, Urgent
- Quadrant 2: Important, Not Urgent
- Quadrant 3: Not Important, Urgent
- Quadrant 4: Not Important, Not Urgent
Habit 3 also describes that a project manager should spend time on Quadrants 1 and 2 only because the time dedicated to Quadrant 2 decreases the number of high pressure, high-stress events that require project manager attention in Quadrant 1.

Habit 5 – Seek first to understand, then to be understood.
This habit describes the importance of active listening and emphatic listening, in other words, it is when a person listens to someone with the intention to interact effectively and understand what the speaker has to say; the relevant habits include listening carefully to organize and process the information to fully understand what the speaker says, but to understand other people, the listener has to learn how to focus on other people’s ideas first. It is very important that the speaker feels the response that he is being understood and that his ideas are being valued and considered. Active listening helps identify and determine the real requirements, needs and expectations of a client or team members.
When the step understanding is achieved, a person needs to seek to be understood by presenting and exposing his ideas clearly in a way that he increases the credibility of his ideas. This step is as important as seeking to understand.
For example, in a project, the project manager has to understand exactly what the client needs are (no matter who the client is, it could be an internal customer such as someone from some department or an outside customer, such as a supplier), make sure that he understood the requirements and analyse the project not to result in lost of revenue due to the failure of active listening.

References

Schwalbe, K., (2006) – Information Technology Project Management – Fourth Edition – Cambridge, MA: Course Technology/Thompson Learning

Ross, D., (1996) – Applying Covey's Seven Habits to a Project Management Career – Retrieved October 25, 2007 from http://www.welchco.com/02/14/01/60/96/04/0105.HTM

Chapter 8 – Exercise 2

Chapter 8 – Exercise 2

Create a Pareto diagram based on the information in the table below. First, create a spreadsheet in Excel, using the data in the table below. List the most frequent customer problems first. Add a column called “%” of Total and another called “Cumulative %”. Then enter formulas to calculate those items. Next, use the excel chart wizard to create a Pareto diagram based on this data. Use the line – column on 2 Axis custom type chart so your resulting chart looks similar to the one in Figure 8-1 (Schwalbe, p. 330).

Reference

Schwalbe, K., (2006) – Information Technology Project Management – Fourth Edition – Cambridge, MA: Course Technology/Thompson Learning

Chapter 8 – Exercise 1

Chapter 8 – Exercise 1

Assume your organization wants to hire new instructors for your project management course. Develop a list of quality standards that you could use in making this hiring decision (Schwalbe, p. 330).

The instructor is the most important aspect of a course. The instructor commands the pace, approach, and tone of the class and these all affect how much the audience will enjoy the course and how much they will learn.

Some quality standards should be followed as below:

1. Interview: Interviewing is one of the most effective ways to identify and attract employees who will be successful enough to stay. It is an opportunity the company has to know the candidate better;



2. 
   
   The candidate should impart confidence: the instructor needs a wide knowledge and experience to show the audience that what he is speaking is true and grab people’s attention;



3. 
   
   Provide inspiration and motivation: the candidate needs personal motivation, once it is achieved he has to make the class a good environment, asking the audience to participate, give opinions, suggestions and criticisms;



4. 
   
   Be productive: the instructor needs a preparation program and to dedicate some time to think about what he is going to deliver providing a good content in which the audience can take some gain from;



5. 
   
   Explaining the course material: define tasks and activities to meet the course objective;



6. 
   
   Clear communication: a good instructor has to be a good communicator to deliver what is expected to. A good communicator needs to be decisive, interested in other people, realistic in his goals, and keep his sense of humor (Lock, n.d.);



7. 
   
   Professionalism: it is important that the instructor has a good behavior, posture, responsibility, accountability, respect and be ethical;



8. 
   
   Contract: the company has to identify all the needs from both parts (the employee and employer) and make a contract including the basic requirements, agreement, terms and conditions.
   

References

Schwalbe, K., (2006) – Information Technology Project Management – Fourth Edition – Cambridge, MA: Course Technology/Thompson Learning

Abeyta, B., (n.d.) – A Rigorous Selection Process Helps Ensure Quality Project Managers – Retrieved October 28, 2007 from http://www.chiefprojectofficer.com/article.php?main=108

Lock, C., (n.d.) – How to be a Good Communicator in Business and in Life – Retrieved October 28, 2007 from http://www.eslteachersboard.com/cgi-bin/motivation/index.pl?noframes;read=470

Chapter 5, Exercise 5 page 195

7- Read one of the suggested readings or find an article related to project scope management. Write a one-page summary of the article, its key conclusions and your opinion.

Suggested Reading: Home Improvement (Levinson, 2004)

Home Depot was born in the late 70s to become one of the most known retailer in America, in less than 10 years with 60 stores they have reached incredible results in sales that yielded almost doubled revenues every two years and today they are the second largest American retailer and they keep growing and opening new stores.

Home Depot had a success and fast growth triggered by a decentralized business model with the ability to develop their own applications that made them skip the need of investing and risking on endless software implementations but the golden days were affected in the late 90s as the initial strategies became out-of-date and their systems costly to maintain, the company was not with the same shine and they were now fading and becoming just a normal retailer struggling to survive as competitors such as Wal-Mart and Lowe’s added more stores.

The company was shaken by changes in their marketing and merchandising in 2000 as a try to revert the bad scenario and constrain the growth of their closest competitors but the falling kept sharp till 2002 when they decided to invest heavily on technology. Their IT infrastructure was announced to have an investment of one billion and that was only part of a massive investment not only on IT but it also comprised modernization in their stores in general. The modernization included shortening staff members and it reflected directly on their costs and by the end of 2003 they had a growth on their figures but that was only when compared to 2002 when they were through a bad falling.

According to George Whalin (Levinson, 2004) the president of Retail Management Home Depot was using technology to cut off staff members and therefore reduce labor cost and increase profit margins but that move would not add anything to their customer service, “strategies to inspire investor confidence does not always make customers happy” (Levinson, 2004).

Home depot installed self-checkout stations to shorten the lines but it did not seem to work well and in their busiest seasons the stores seemed to be short of staff. In 2002 they launched a terabyte IBM DB2 data warehouse, the same that Lowe installed in 2000, basically Home depot was two years at a competitive disadvantage regarding their data warehouse. They also replaced their old POS screens for color, touch-screen and web-based POS, they installed technologies such as online UPC that is an electronic catalog for products without bar codes, online receipt lookup that is able to search for receipts 90 days back from the date, wireless scan guns, Web-based kiosks with computers, touch screen monitors in the paint department, E-learning to train technical staff members.

Customer service did not seem to be high priority at Home Depot, a company that for years focused on the interaction between employees and customers now focuses on self-service stations and signs that seem to be their best interaction. Lowe’s tried not to follow suit as far as the customer service concerns and even though they also invested on technology with the installation of self-checkout in 2003, they pointed the customer service deficiency from Home Depot to promote themselves with signs that referenced to customer services.

The best way for Home Depot to get over the falling is to have a faster turn over through their stores with less staff members but a store planning must be well designed for better layouts and clear signs, Home Depot must strive to efficiency while improving their customer service.

In my opinion, the growth of a retail company depends on a series of factors that include store planning, business strategies and technology but when it comes to retailing, customer service cannot be left behind at any part of the business strategy. Home Depot invested heavily on technology, self stations and considered reducing labor costs to increase their profit margins but somehow they have affected customers who were used to interacting with knowledgeable staff members and it has made a significant change on their figures as the sales dropped down. A look at close competitors has to be considered because any wrong move may mean competitive disadvantage, loss of money and time to return to the track. Investment on IT structure is vital for a company but a business strategy has always to point out and consider not only the needs but also the feasibility and the profitability margins that it will return in a short and long-term.

Reference

Levinson, M., (2004) – Home Improvement – Retrieved September 14, 2007 from http://www.cio.com/article/128650/Home_Improvement

Chapter 4 Exercise 4 page 160

6- Create a weighted scoring model to determine grades for a course. Final grades are based on three exams worth 15%, 20% and 25%, respectively; homework is worth 20%; and a group project is worth 20%. Enter scores for three students. Assume student 1 earns 100% (or 100) on every item. Assume student 2 earns 80% on each of the exams, 90% on the homework, and 95% on the group project. Assume student 3 earns 90% on exam 1, 75% on Exam 2, 80% on exam 3 90% on the homework, and 70% on the group project. You can use the weighted scoring model template, create your own spreadsheet, or make the matrix by hand (Schwalbe, 2006).

References

Schwalbe, K., (2006) – Information Technology Project Management – Fourth Edition – Cambridge, MA: Course Technology/Thompson Learning