Project Management Techniques Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Project Management Techniques - Essay Example This case is a project aimed at upgrading the staff computers from Windows XP to Windows 7. It should be accomplished during the winter and spring 2011/2012, and shall be carried out by the six member in-house technical support unit of the organization. By the project’s end, all 400 computers located in the company’s 30 locations situated around England should be running on Windows 7. The computers presently are of varied types and specifications, and by project’s end should be running on Windows 7 without compromising or unduly interrupting the regular workload. The purpose of this report is to examine the project management tools that may be used to provide a systematic means of addressing the project’s planning and implementation. The project shall provide the context for discussion, but a full blown analysis is not attempted at this point. Prescribed Project Management Tools This section provides a cursory examination of the traditional project managem ent tools and comment on their applicable use in the context of this project. The traditional tools that will be discussed are the Gantt chart, the PERT method, the Logic Network, the Product Breakdown Structure, and the Work Breakdown Structure. ... In contemporary use, the importance of the Gantt chart as an industry standard is that the time and functional interdependencies of the various tasks are rendered immediately visible (Haughey, 2011). In the figure following, a Gantt chart is presented that may well serve as the initial conceptualization of the project plan. Here it is assumed that the group of six technicians will work in two teams, each team having one member that is familiar with end user requirements. Each of the teams will address half or the 30 locations, and each location can be addressed in two days (including travelling time). The initial schedule is thus laid out in the Gantt chart for one team. Author created The above chart is tentative and not executable for lack of additional data. If the tasks for each location could be broken down further (e.g. hardware modification, software installation, troubleshooting, etc.) and scheduled, e a more detailed and reliable chart results. Even in its tentative state, t hough, it already presents a useful rendition of the work intended and points out what other information are necessary to obtain. Logic Network The Logic Network depicts the series of activities that a project undergoes. The logical and sequential relationships of tasks are emphasized, and may provide information such as the critical path and the important milestones of the project. As with the Gantt chart, the dependencies are established between the timescale, the project elements, and the workflow ((Haughey, 2011). Author created For this case, the Logic Network shown above pertains to the activity of each team for each trip it takes to one of the 15 locations scheduled for it. In the team, a group of three