Dilemma

BACKGROUND

Sarah's project had now become more complex than she had anticipated. Sarah's

company had a philosophy that the project manager would be assigned during

proposal preparation, assist in the preparation of the proposal, and take on the

role of the project manager after contract award, assuming the company would be

awarded the contract.

Usually, contract go$-$ahead would take place within a week or two after con$-$

tract award. That made project staffing relatively easy for most of the project man$-$

agers. It also allowed the company to include in the proposal a detailed schedule

based on resources that would be assigned upon contract award and go$-$ahead.

During proposal preparation, the functional managers would anticipate who

would be available for assignment to this project over the next few weeks. The

functional managers could then estimate with reasonable accuracy the duration

and effort required based on the grade level of the resources to be assigned. Since

the go$-$ahead date was usually within two weeks of contract award and the con$-$

tract award was usually within a week or so after proposal submittal, the schedule

that appeared in the proposal was usually the same schedule for the actual project

with very few changes. This entire process was based on the actual availability of

resources rather than the functional managers assuming unlimited resources and

using various estimating techniques.

Although this approach worked well on most projects, Sarah's new project

had a go$-$ahead date of three months after contract award. For the functional man$-$

agers, this created a problem estimating the effort and duration. Estimating now

had to be made based on the assumption of unlimited availability rather than the

availability of limited resources. Functional managers were unsure as to who

would be available three or four months from now, yet some type of schedule had

to appear in the proposal.

Sarah knew the risks. When the estimates were being prepared for her pro$-$

posal, the functional managers assumed that the average worker in the department

would be available and assigned to the project after go$-$ahead. The effort and dura$-$

tion estimates were then made based on the average employee. If$,$ after go$-$ahead,

above$-$average employees would be assigned to Sarah's project, she could pos$-$

sibly see the schedule accelerated but had to make sure that cost overruns did not

happen because the fully loaded salary of the workers might be higher that what

was estimated in the proposal. If below$-$average workers are assigned, a schedule

slippage might occur, and Sarah would have to look at possible schedule compres$-$

sion techniques, hopefully without incurring added costs.

AWARD OF CONTRACT

Sarah's company was awarded the contract. Sarah had silently hoped that the

company would not get the contract, but it did. As expected, the go$-$ahead date

was three months from now. This created a problem for Sarah because she was

unsure as to when to begin the preparation of the detailed schedule. The functional

managers told her that they could not commit to an effort and duration based on

actual limited resource availability until somewhere around two to three weeks

prior to the actual go$-$ahead date. The resources were already spread thin across

several projects, and many of the projects were having trouble. Sarah was afraid

that the worst$-$case scenario would come true and that the actual completion date

would be longer than what was in the proposal. Sarah was certainly not happy

about explaining this to the client should it be necessary to do so$.$