Analytics Exercise: Product Design Project You work for Nokia in its global cell phone group. You have 3. Identify slack in the activities not on the project been made project manager for the design of a new cell critical path. phone. Your supervisors have already scoped the project, 4. Your boss would like you to study the impact of so you have a list showing the work breakdown structure, making two changes to how the project is orga- and this includes major project activities. You must plan nized. The first change involves using dedicated the project schedule and calculate project duration. Your teams that would work strictly in parallel on the boss wants the schedule on his desk tomorrow morning! activities in each subproject. For example, in sub- You have been given the information in Exhibit 4.13. project P (product specifications) the team would It includes all the activities required in the project and the work on P1, P2, P3, and P4 all in parallel. In other duration of each activity. Also, dependencies between the words, there would be no precedence relationships activities have been identified. Remember that the pre- within a subprojectall tasks within a subproject ceding activity must be fully completed before work on would be worked on at the same time and each the following activity can be started. would take the same amount of time as originally Your project is divided into five major subprojects. specified. With this new design, all the subprojects Subproject P involves developing specifications for the would be done sequentially with P done first, then new cell phone. Here, decisions related to such things as S, D, I, and finally V. What would be the expected battery life, size of the phone, and features need to be impact on how long it would take to complete the made. These details are based on how a customer uses project if this change were made? the cell phone. These user specifications are redefined in 5. The second change your boss would like you to terms that have meaning to the subcontractors that will consider would be to select the suppliers during actually make the new cell phone in subproject S sup- subproject P and have them work directly with the plier specifications. These involve engineering details for dedicated teams as described in step 4. This would how the product will perform. involve adding an additional activity to subproject The individual components that make up the product P called supplier selection and contract negotiation are the focus of subproject D. Subproject I brings all (P5) with a duration of 12 weeks. This new activ- the components together, and a working prototype is built ity would be done in parallel with P1, P2, P3, and and tested. P4. Subprojects S and V would be eliminated from Finally, in subproject "V," suppliers are selected and the project. What would be the expected impact on contracts are negotiated. how long it would take to complete the project if 1. Draw a project network that includes all the this additional change were made? activities. 6. Evaluate the impact of making these changes using 2. Calculate the start and finish times for each activ- criteria other than just the time to complete the ity and determine the minimum number of weeks project. Do you think it would be in Nokia's best for completing the project. Find the activities that interest to try to make these changes in how it runs are on the critical path for completing the project this and future cell phone design projects? in the shortest time. exhibit 4.13 Work Breakdown Structure and Activities for the Cell Phone Design Project Activity Identification Dependency Duration (weeks) P1 2 Major Subprojects/Activities Product specifications (P) Market research Overall product specifications Hardware Software I P1 4 P2 P3 P2 P3 5 5 P4 Supplier specifications (S) Hardware Software S1 P4 5 S2 P4 6 Product design (D) D1 S1 1 Battery Display Camera D2 S1 2 D3 D4 S1 D1, D2, D3 1 4 Outer cover 11 D4 3 12 D2 4 13 4 Product integration (1) Hardware User interface Software coding Prototype testing Subcontracting (V) Suppliers selection Contract negotiation 12 11, 13 14 4 V1 10 S1, S2 14, V1 V2 N 2