Rock'n Bands'

A Project Management Decision$-$Making Game

"Around the world or around the block, Everywhere I go$,$ the kids wanna rock",

Your company, Planners $\text{'}$R Us$,$ specializes in effectively managing projects. Previous experience has involved conference management systems, commercial construction, and software development projects.

A new, intriguing project offers another opportunity to apply your project management expertise. The university you just graduated from wishes to put together a music festival, "Rock'n Bands". This will feature a number of top music groups, and should attract interest from students, local residents, and music fans throughout the region.

Your company has met with University officials to develop a list of activities required to make Rock'n Bands a reality. The list on Page $2$ includes twelve activities as well as their durations and immediate predecessors. The project plan is also described visually on page $2$ with a network diagram. The subscripts on each activity denote the number of weeks of work that activity is expected to require. Arrows denote the order of activities. For instance, activity E cannot be started until activity $A$ is completed, and activity $H$ cannot be started until both $C$ and $D$ are complete. The start and end nodes are dummy nodes and do not need to be worked on$.$ Note that at the beginning of the project, activities A$,$ C and D are available to start working on$,$ as they have no predecessor activities. Be sure to understand the diagram before reading further.

Your job is to allocate workers to tasks each week during the project. Planners $\text{'}R$ Us has agreed to complete the project in $10$ weeks $($finishing two weeks before the Festival$),$ and wants to minimize the costs associated with the project. All tasks A$-$K must be completed in $10$ weeks. You have four $(4)$ workers, although you do not need to use all of them every week $-$ there are other tasks they can do in your company.

For bookkeeping purposes, your company will charge $$200$ per week for each worker that you use. If you happen to need an additional worker, there is one $(1)$ available, but that person would then not get their other work done; thus, you will be charged $$300$ per week for the additional worker. In addition, if the project is "late", there will be complications during the last two weeks before the Festival, costing Planners $\text{'}$R Us $$2000$ per week due to a serious loss of goodwill and plenty of negative publicity.

The final cost to consider involves expediting tasks. You can assign an extra worker to a task in any given week in order to finish it in less time. For instance, if a task requires $2$ weeks but you assign two workers, it will be completed in one week. However, putting two workers on a task is not quite as efficient as having one worker complete it from start to finish. Doing this requires additional coordination $($by you$)$ and may require some overtime by the workers. These costs total an additional $$100$ per week. The most workers that can be assigned to any task in a week is two $($since having $3$ or more requires so much additional coordination that no reduction in time is

${?}^1$ The events, activity durations and overall scenario represented in this game are purely fictional. No relationship to an upcoming music concert, real or implied, is suggested.

${?}^2$ Bryan Adams, "Kids Wanna Rock" from the album $"$So Far So Good" $(1993,$ A & M Records$)$