Project Scheduling Tools Journal 4-

• Continue in the same Word file from last week and under Journal 4 heading enter the date and write how you are felling right now.
• Read Chapter 6.1.3.
• Do you consider yourself to be primarily a people-oriented, action-oriented, or content-oriented listener? Describe a time when you found yourself listening with an orientation other than your primary one. What caused you to use that orientation? What was the result? You answer should be at least three sentences or bullet points.
• Imagine that you’re in a group that is assessing its members’ performance and that you expect to be criticized because of a mistake you’ve made. What will you do to avoid defensive listening, sparring, or other bad kinds of listening?
• You will lead a training session for new employees at Brightstar Industries. You must develop a specific schedule for the following tasks (the estimated duration is shown in parentheses):
  • First, you need to contact the participants and explain their roles (1 day).
  • Then you must obtain approval from their department managers (3 days).
  • After you obtain the approval, two tasks can begin at the same time: you can arrange the meeting room (1 day) and prepare an agenda for the initial session (8 days).
  • When the agenda is ready, you can start two more concurrent tasks: prepare the information packets (3 days) and create visual aids (6 days).
  • When the meeting room is arranged and the information packets are ready, you can send out an e-mail to participants (1 day).
  • Finally, after the e-mail is sent to participants and the visual aids are ready, you can conduct the training sessions (7 days).
• Create a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) identifying the Tasks ID, Tasks Description, Tasks Duration (Days), and Predecessor Tasks of the tasks above. Word and Excel tables work well. Give each task a unique number.
• Create a PERT/CPM chart, using the WBS above
• Determine which tasks IDs are on the critical path. List the task number of the critical path and/or indicate it on your PERT chart.
• Identify a particular task(s) where you could lengthen the duration without it affecting the critical path.   Please clearly note the task ID #, and the new Duration.
• Use critical path analysis to adjust the PERT chart in response to following update.
  • You have just been informed that by your client that the schedule will need to change due to a budgetary issue.  Revise the above CPM/PERT chart based upon the following information: Bullet #5 – When the meeting room and information packets are ready, conduct a rehearsal for the training sessions that will now take 4 days instead of 7 days.

Answer Preview-Project Scheduling Tools Journal 4-INT 2840