Saranya Guruvayurappan

SMU ID: 46455413

Project Management: Individual Homework

Question 1:
1. The project takes 6 weeks to complete
2. Given that with the change in times for activity A, while there is no
uncertainty in activity B, 75% of the time the project can be completed in
6 weeks, while 25% of the time when A takes 6 weeks to complete, project
completion time will increase to 8 weeks.
3. This gives a final probability of 75% on average for the project to be
completed within 7 weeks
4. When both activities become uncertain, it is essential to draw out a path
by path network to identify which paths get affected by what probability in
altering the project completion. In order to do that I generated the
following probability table.
Prob(A)

Prob (B)

A and B

Project

0.5
0.5
0.5

0.25
0.5
0.25

0.125
0.25
0.125

Completion
6
6
7

0.25
0.25
0.25

0.25
0.5
0.25

0.0625
0.125
0.0625

5
6
7

0.25
0.25
0.25

0.25
0.5
0.25

0.0625
0.125
0.0625

8
8
8

5. Thus, the probability that the project will be completed within the 7 week
period is 44%

Saranya Guruvayurappan
SMU ID: 46455413
Question 2:
1. Network Diagram:

2. Activities A, C, E, F, G and H are critical paths for the project. The calculation
of the appropriate activity times have been elaborated in the accompanying
excel sheet.
3. After completing the PERT analysis as shown in my excel sheet, the
probability of completing the project with the given 130 weeks is 66%
Question 3:
1. Upon conducting a Monte Carlo simulation, and using average project
completion time and the critical path probabilities generated by the
simulation gives us a project completion probability. There is a 58%
probability that Dull computers will be able to launch the product ahead of
Comebaq
2. If there was a target probability of 90%, Dull computers can complete the
launch within 135 days. (The work is shown in the excel tab Q2)
Question 4:
1. There is a 63% probability that the project can be completed within 26 weeks
2. Upon conducting the Monte Carlo simulation as shown in the excel file, it is
evident that the project completion times follow a normal distribution with a
project variability of 2.38
3.
a) As seen in the excel, when activity B is crashed, and reduced by 1 week,
with an addition of $10,000 in cost, it decreases the project completion
time considerably
b) This increases the cost by 12,000 but gives a more flexible option of
better managing the risks associated with project completion. So, this

Saranya Guruvayurappan
SMU ID: 46455413
option is better suited for reducing risk, while the initial option is better in
terms of cost efficiency
Question 5:
1. The earliest that the project can be completed is 27 days
2. Here, I ran the solver to minimize the costs, while applying the following
constraints:
- Project completion time < 22 days
- Crash days < crash potential
- Actual time between starts > minimum time between starts
I generated the lowest cost option by altering the start times and crash days
using the solver to obtain a Total Project Completion Cost of $7,950