SerDoc
is a company that manufactures customised medical equipment for
hospitals and is about to initiate a project for building a new machine
for a recent order from a hospital. The project involves the following
six phases: initiating, requirements gathering, design, development and
testing, documentation, deployment and testing. The project is scheduled
to start on 15 October.

The duration and precedence relationships (or sequencing) between the tasks of the project are provided in the table below:

*This task can begin 5 days after starting Task 7.

Part 1

On
the basis of the above information, use Microsoft速 Project to create a
project plan that lists project tasks, establishes precedence
relationships between tasks, sets precedence relationships, calculates
the project duration, and identifies the critical path. While preparing
the project plan, categorise the project tasks in the different phases
of initiating, requirements gathering, design, development and testing,
documentation, and deployment and testing.

What is the end date of the project?

Submit a screen shot of the Microsoft Project plan in the same document as your answer.

Part 2

After
looking at the schedule that you have created, the client has objected
to the project completion date. The client wants the project to be
completed at least 30 days before the current completion date. According
to the client, there should be no reduction in the duration of some
activities, such as the installation of the machine at the hospital,
conducting trials and checking all functionality at the hospital after
installation, and getting client signoff, as the current estimate for
these tasks itself is very aggressive.

Activities that can be considered for reducing the duration by adding resources are the following:

• Manufacturing of the shell of the machine:A maximum of 4 resources can be added at an additional cost of $500 per day per resource.
• Assembling of the electronic components of the machine:A maximum of 1 resource can be added at an additional cost of $700 per day.
• Testing of the circuit for accuracy of responses: A maximum of 3 resources can be added at an additional cost of $300 per day per resource.
• Testing of the manufactured machine and calibration to standards: A maximum of 1 resource can be added at an additional cost of $200 per day.

Given
the above data, what would be the maximum reduction in the duration of
each task that can be achieved by using all the additional resources?
What would be the additional cost for the same?