reate a project schedule and budget for your project.
Introduction
Note: Developing a project requires specific steps that must be carried out in a certain order. Therefore, you must complete the assessments in this course in the order in which they are presented.
In this assessment you will continue the planning process by completing a project schedule and budget.
Read Assessment 3 Context [PDF] for important information on project scheduling and budgeting.
Preparation
As you prepare to complete this assessment, you may want to think about other related issues to deepen your understanding or broaden your viewpoint. You are encouraged to consider the questions below and discuss them with a fellow learner, a work associate, an interested friend, or a member of your professional community. Note that these questions are for your own development and exploration and do not need to be completed or submitted as part of your assessment.
Scheduling:
Would you use resource leveling on your project? Why or why not?
What is your chief concern regarding possible changes to the critical path as a project develops?
Why is it so important to your project that interdependencies not be missed when establishing your baseline timing?
Would you share your critical path with your client?
Microsoft Software
Visit Capella’s Microsoft Azure for Education (Formerly Microsoft Imagine) page for instructions on obtaining free Microsoft software.
Identify the version of MS Project that is compatible with your operating system.
Download and install.
Overview
Scheduling and resourcing are tightly intertwined aspects of the planning phase. Consideration of the following questions will help you as you prepare your schedule and resource plans (it is not necessary to turn in your answers):
Do you have the same resources doing overlapping tasks?
Do you have a realistic time period in which to accomplish each task, given the resources assigned?
Familiarity with Microsoft Project will ease your schedule and budget preparation. If you need an introduction or refresher, make sure you review the video tutorials in this assessment’s studies.
Budget
A proper budget should reflect costs incurred by a project, including human and capital resources and materials, which are often referred to as “time and materials.” Make sure to make real-world cost approximations for each of the identified resources to create a realistic budget. Communicating budget changes is critical to the project manager. Often times many stakeholders need to be notified and communicated to in different ways. You should consider all implications of such a critical communication, including tone, content, and intended audience.
Directions
Part 1 – Schedule
Use Microsoft Project to develop a detailed milestone and deliverables schedule that identifies required human and capital resources. Do the following:
Include a minimum of twenty steps (tasks).
Link related tasks that must follow in order; and create sub-groups with activities where applicable.
Enter the duration and start and finish times for each task.
Activity duration can be estimated in hours, days, weeks, or months, depending on the time scale of your project.
Project start and finish times can be entered as specific calendar dates if you wish.
Assign named resources to each task in the timeline of your project.
Part 2: Budget
For this assessment, develop your projected project budget by allocating costs to each of your required resources (include human, capital, and materials). Use Microsoft Project or an Excel spreadsheet.
Complete the following items:
Create the initial budget estimate.
Imagine that the client has requested that the project be done in a 20 percent shorter timeframe. Add two more columns to your budget. One should reflect the new costs and the other should depict the variance between the original and amended budgets.
Submission Instructions
Note: You need to save your mpp file to your virtual desktop before downloading it to your local machine. Then submit the project file, along with your budget file, through the normal courseroom assessment submission process. Be sure to attach BOTH of the documents with your assessment submission. This is important to avoid unnecessary use of one of your re-submission attempts to submit a missing part of your assessment.
