Learning Objectives:

• Discuss project implementation strategies.
• Develop a project plan for a technology-based project, integrating project management concepts and using industry standard tools, templates and software.

In this exercise, you will analyze actual cost, baseline cost and variance at completion for your SimProject results. You must use MS Project to complete this assignment. This is an opportunity for each student to further explore Microsoft Project using SimProjects project data.

Analyzing your variances at the task level will help you understand the reasons why you are doing well or, not so well, in the simulation. It will also be helpful for your final paper.

Submit a short paper and attach the MS Project file with the following information included.

1. From Sim4Project, export your teams project information. From the Results Summary page, choose the View Project Plan button. Save the .mpp file. Open the file in MS Project.
2. Insert the following additional columns in MS Project. (If you need help adding columns, make sure you've watched the video posted in the Required Reading / Videos post.)
   1. Actual Cost
   2. Baseline Cost
   3. VAC (Variance At Completion)
   4. Project Summary - To see your overall project totals, insert a new task as row 1. Then highlight rows 2 through the last task, and click the green right arrow in the tool bar to indent these rows. You will see summary totals appear in row 1. Just rename the task.
   5. Variances - To better explain variances, add 2 additional columns: "Baseline Work" and "Actual Work", which enable you to see if hours worked were a factor i
3. Identify the top 5 activities that resulted in the highest overrun.
   • Do not identify summary lines, only actual activities.
   • You can identify these 5 activities by highlighting the line or identify the line numbers in the Word document.
   • Note: Do not include more than 1 instance of "Project Management" and 1 instance of "Milestone"
4. Create a Word document in APA format, including a cover sheet with your name. Explain in one or two sentences why each of these activities were overrun. That means one or two sentences per activity.
5. Lessons Learned - with this EV knowledge, what would you recommend be done differently?

Submit both the MS Project file and the Word file.