Project Management Case Study A manufacturing company intends to develop an application software for automating its design process. The task details associated to the project are shown in Table 1 below. The duration of each task follows a Beta distribution. Project crashing up to a maximum of 2 days per task is allowed, with the exception of tasks B and J, subject to the crash costs being met Task Task Details Crash Preceding Task Cost per Time (days) Optimistic Most Pessimistic likely 2. 5 7 day ($) 700 Nil A B 1 1 2 A 1500 1500 6 10 12 B D 6 10 13 A 1500 E 6 10 12 D 1000 800 F 5 10 15 D G High-level analysis. Selection of hardware platform. Installation and commissioning of hardware. Detailed analysis of core modules. Detailed analysis of supporting modules. Programming of core modules. Programming of supporting modules. Quality assurance of core modules. Quality assurance (QA) of supporting modules. Core module training. Development and QA of accounting reporting. Development and QA of management reporting. Development of Management Information System Detailed training, 10 15 20 E 800 H 2 5 7 F 1000 I 2 1 5 1 8 2 G CH 1500 1500 J K 5 7 E 1000 L 3 5 8 E 1000 M 500 3 3 5 5 8 8 N L I, J, K, M 1200 (a) What is the probability of the project to complete in 52 days? What strategy can be used to improve the probability of completion? [16+4 marks] (b) Assuming that the manufacturing company wishes the project to be completed 5 days earlier than the minimum duration, what will be the additional cost involved? [10 marks]