You work for Nokia as a project manager in its global cell phone group. You were recently put in charge of a new project for the design of a new cell phone. Your supervisors have already scoped the project, so you have a list showing the work breakdown structure (WBS), and it includes major project activities. In the WBS, your project is divided into five major subprojects. Subproject P comprises activities revolving around developing specifications for the new cell phone. Here, decisions related to such things as battery life, the size of the phone, and features need to be made. These details are based on how a customer uses the cell phone. These user specifications are redefined in terms that have meaning to the subcontractors who will make the new cell phone in subproject S. These involve engineering details for how the product will perform. The individual components that make up the product are the focus of subproject D. Subproject I brings all the components together, and a working prototype is built and tested. Finally, in subproject V, suppliers are selected, and contracts are negotiated.

All the relevant information is summarized in Table 1 (available in the solution word file). The table breaks down all the activities within every sub-project and the duration of each activity. Also, precedence relationships between the activities have been provided. Remember that the preceding activity must be fully completed before work on the following activity can be started. Answer the questions that follow.

Table 1: WBS for the Cell Phone Design Project

Major Subprojects/Activities	Activity ID	Immediate Predecessor	Duration (Weeks)	ES	EF	LS	LF	Slack
Project Specifications (P)
Market research	P1	--	2	0	2	0	2	0
Overall product specification	P2	P1	4	2	6	2	6	0
Hardware	P3	P2	5	6	11	6	11	0
Software	P4	P3	5	11	16	11	16	0
Supplier specifications (S)
Hardware	S1	P4	5	16	21	16	21	0
Software	S2	P4	6	16	22	19	25	3
Product design (D)
Battery	D1	S1	1	21	22	23	24	2
Display	D2	S1	2	21	23	21	23	0
Camera	D3	S1	1	21	22	23	24	2
Outer cover	D4	D1, D2, D3	4	23	27	24	28	1
Product integration (I)
Hardware	I1	D4	3	27	30	28	31	1
User interface	I2	D2	4	23	27	23	27	0
Software coding	I3	I2	4	27	31	27	31	0
Prototype testing	I4	I1, I3	4	31	35	31	35	0
Subcontracting (V)
Supplier selection	V1	S1, S2	10	22	32	25	35	3
Contract negotiation	V2	I4, V1	2	35	37	35	37	0

Next, your boss would like you to study the impact of making two changes to how the project structure is organized. The first change involves the following.

a) 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 P1, P2, P3, and P4 all in parallel. In other words, there would be no precedence relationships within a subprojectall tasks within a subproject would be worked on at the same time and each would take the same amount of time as originally specified.

b) with this new design, all the subprojects would be done sequentially with P done first, then S, D, I, and finally V.

How long would it take to complete the project if this change were made? What would be the expected impact when this new completion time is compared with the original completion time? [Provide single-sentence answers to both questions.]

The second change your boss would like you to consider would be to select the suppliers during subproject P and have them work directly with the dedicated teams as described in step 5. This would involve adding an activity to subproject P called P5; Activity P5 will encompass supplier selection and contract negotiation and will have a duration of 12 weeks. This new activity would be done in parallel with P1, P2, P3, and P4. Because of this change, subprojects S and V would be eliminated from the project. How long would it take to complete the project now if this additional change were made? What would be the expected impact of this change on the project? [Provide single-sentence answers to both questions.] (4 points)

Draw the revised network diagram after making all the changes in Q5. [So, in total there will be no more than two network diagrams in your submitted report.] (6 points)