Case: Cell Phone Design Project

You work for Motorola in its global cell phone group. You have been made project manager for the design of a new cell phone model. Your supervisors have already scoped the project so you have a list showing the work breakdown structure and this includes major project activities. You must plan the project schedule and calculate project duration and project costs. Your boss wants the schedule and costs on is desk tomorrow morning! You have been given the information in Exhibit 10.14. It includes all the activates required in the project and the duration of each activity. Also, dependencies between the activities have been identified. Remember that the proceeding must be fully completed before work on the following activity can be started.

Your project is divided into five major tasks. Task P involves developing specifications for the new cell phone. Here decisions related to such things as battery life, size of the phone, and features need to be determined. 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 that will actually make the new cell phone in Task S, supplier specification. These involve engineering details for how the product will perform. The individual components that make up the product are the focus of Task D. Task I brings all the components together and a working prototype is built and tested. Finally in Test V, vendors are selected and contracts are negotiated.


1). – Draw a project network that includes all the activities




2). – Calculate the minimum number of weeks for completing the project. Find the critical set of activities for the project.




3). – Identify slack in the activities not on the project critical path.




4). – Your boss would like you to suggest changes that could be made to the project that would significantly shorten it. What would you suggest?