Vern Toney managed the small IT group of a growing business. Vern's boss, the CFO, was on Vern's back to cut costs in the IT group. The CFO felt Vern could cut a staff member or two and maintain their current service level. Vern was also receiving a steady flow of complaints about the response time to calls to the help desk. He had two people answering the help desk phones and three desktop support staff responding to the problems.
Vern had to do something. He thought that he might save money by outsourcing the group's help desk function. He called a few vendors, all of whom claimed they could save him money.
Vern was not sure if this would shorten the group's response time to help desk calls. He felt that he needed to do some research before he made a decision. He decided to construct a project plan for the research.
After closing the office door, he sat down at his computer using Microsoft Project software and started to identify all of the steps he needed to take before he phoned vendors for bids on taking over the help desk. The investigation would have to be a secret or his staff would worry about their job security.
First, Vern decided that he needed to identify the department's current level of service. This required knowing the current volume of calls, the length of time until the call ticket is assigned to a desktop support person, and the time it took to close the ticket. He thought that he could accomplish all of this in one week by doing all three steps simultaneously.
After he determined the current service level, Vern thought that he should informally poll all company managers to see what improvements in IT group service they would like. He figures out 2 days to make all the phone calls. He could then call the finance department to get up-to-date payroll information on his staff's salary and overtime expenses. Vern thought that if he called right away, he would surely hear back in 1 day.
Vern also decided to call other IT managers in the city to try to establish a benchmark service level. He thought that step would take a week and he could start after finding the current service levels. Last, after every other step was completed, Vern could prepare a request for proposals to send to IT outsourcing vendors. He thought that the preparation of an RFP would take a week. He decided to start this planning project right away.
Question: Prepare a WBS using MSP with the steps that must be completed before Vern Toney can contact outsourcing vendors. If Vern starts on August 1, 2016, how long will it take to get ready to contact outsourcing vendors?