Exhibit $4\mathrm{.}13$: Work Breakdown Structure and Activities for the Cell Phone Design Project

MAJOR SUBPROJECTS$/$ACTIVITIES ACTIVITY IDENTIFICATION DEPENDENCY DURATION $($WEEKS$)$

Product Specifications $($P$)$

Market research P$12$

Overall product specifications P$2$ P$11$

Hardware P$3$ P$23$

Software P$4$ P$34$

Supplier specifications $($S$)$

Hardware S$1$ P$44$

Software S$2$ P$46$

Product design $($D$)$

Battery D$1$ S$11$

Display D$2$ S$12$

Camera D$3$ S$11$

Outer cover D$4$ D$1,$ D$2,$ D$33$

Product integration $($I$)$

Hardware I$1$ D$45$

User interface I$2$ D$23$

Software coding I$3$ I$23$

Prototype testing I$4$ I$1,$ I$33$

Subcontracting $($V$)$

Suppliers selection V$1$ S$1,$S$29$

Contract negotiation V$2$ I$4,$ V$11$

Determine the minimum number of weeks for completing the project.

You have been asked to study the impact of making two changes to how the project is organized. The first change involves using dedicated teams that would work strictly in parallel on the activities in each subproject. For example, in subproject P $($product specifications$)$ the team would work on P$1,$ P$2,$ P$3,$ and P$4$ all in parallel. In other words, there would be no precedence relationships within a subproject$$all tasks within a subproject would be worked on at the same time and each would take the same amount of time as originally specified. With this new design, all the subprojects would be done sequentially with P done first, then S$,$ D$,$ I, and finally V$.$

The second change your boss would like you to select the suppliers during subproject P and have them work directly with the dedicated teams. This would involve adding an additional activity to subproject P called supplier selection and contract negotiation $($P$5)$ with a duration of $10$ weeks. This new activity would be done in parallel with P$1,$ P$2,$ P$3,$ and P$4.$ Subprojects S and V would be eliminated from the project.

What would be the expected impact on how long it would take to complete the project if these changes were made? Note: The original precedence relations from part a no longer apply here and now all subprojects are strictly sequential.