Case 4 – Monitoring Tasks

Think-Design-Test-Create

 

• Description

You have been the manager of a complex software production project for five months. Development has been maintaining the schedule and the project appears to be right on time. 

You have been reporting weekly to your boss, Steve, that the project is on schedule. The day after such a report you go to talk to the quality assurance manager. She tells you that the piece of software that they are currently testing and which your projects software will be tested after, has hit a major defect. It appears that the date of the starting of testing for your software will have to be delayed for around one month. 

As you talk with her some more it becomes apparent that this slip will cause the final testing for your project will fall in the calendar in such a way that the testers, students at a local university, will be in class again and only able to work 20 hours a week. This will double the number of calendar days it will take to complete the final testing for your project. Between the one month slip of the start date for your project and the doubling of the testing time it appears that you project’s shipping date could slip three months. 

While this will cause only a minor change in the cost of the project it will cause problems with the your company’s largest customer. They have been eagerly awaiting the result of this project.

• Deliverables
  1. A paper describing at least two options for project recovery and at least one way this supprise could have been avoided. A executive summary is also required.
• Resources
  1. Text: Chapter 7