Lindstrom 1

To: From: Date: Re:

Professor Roger Aucoin Nate Lindstrom 05/22/2011 Managing the Unexpected

Dear Professor, In the written assignment you state that the impact to my project must be one calendar month or larger. However, the entire project for which this memo is written spans less than two months. The scenario I invented below significantly impacts the project, but not for an entire month. If this is unacceptable, please let me know and I will invent a further unexpected change that will serve to put the project at even more risk, pushing the delays to the one month mark. Thank you! The project to replace the legacy ticketing and wiki documentation systems with Atlassian JIRA and Confluence is on-track as of milestone 33, New Services Deployed, scheduled for May 30th. However, I was just informed that Alan Factor had his employment with the company terminated for nonperformance on Friday, May 20th. This means that the following tasks to which Alan was assigned as the sole resource will need to be assigned other resources: Task Freeze existing data within legacy system Backup existing data from legacy system Verify backup of existing data Verify that wiki-to-ticket links were preserved Verify that ticket-to-wiki links were preserved Duration 0.92 hrs 6.42 hrs 4.5 hrs 1.27 days 1.21 days Total 5.44 days

Furthermore, tasks which Alan shared with other resources will now take slightly longer, but will still fall within the expected task duration despite Alan s departure. However, to address the significant challenge of now having 5.44 days of work without any assigned resources, I propose the following options:

Lindstrom 2 1. Retain a systems consultant for a two week period, assign him or her as the resource to the above tasks, and double those tasks duration. The reason for his last change is that the consultant will necessarily lack much of the project-specific knowledge that Alan possessed, and so will take longer both to come up to speed and to accomplish the assigned work. The net effect of this option is that the Migration Phase will take 13 days instead of 7 days, putting subsequent phases at risk. (See below for risk mitigation options.) 2. Reassign other existing resources to the tasks that were vacated by Alan s departure. The net effect of this option is that the Migration Phase will take 21 days instead of 7 days, putting subsequent phases at risk. The reason for the significant increase in time is that resource constraints will need to be renegotiated with department heads, and it is highly unlikely that contiguous time can be added to the resource time windows already allocated. 3. Cancel the tasks which no longer have a resource. The net effect of this action will be the cancellation of the entire project, as those tasks are on the critical path and are integral to the project s overall success. I highly recommend option number one, as while it incurs additional cost (a systems consultant at approximately $175 per hour for eighty hours) it stands the greatest chance of success for keeping the project on-time. To accomplish returning the project to on-time status and mitigating the at-risk status for all subsequent tasks following those affected by the transition from Alan to a consultant, the project must be crashed in the following manner: y Scale back the validation phase, and instead use the end users as a sort of quality check for some aspects of the system. If the data import work went well, then this should be fine. On the other hand, if there were severe problems during the data import, then those problems should be caught by the limited checking the IT group will perform. However, if problems escape the notice of the IT group due to their limited checking, and are noticed by end users, it will hurt the credibility of the project and everyone involved. Thus, while scaling back the validation phase will save an estimated four days, it is by no means without risk. Start the user training early, overlapping preceding tasks. While the plan is to use the new systems in the user training sessions, Atlassian provides online demo systems which could be used instead. This could potentially shave five days off the schedule, and contains little risk.

The two above actions, when combined with option one (using a systems consultant) will allow Alan Factor s absence to be successfully absorbed without impacting the overall completion time of the project. I welcome your feedback and suggestions, and also hereby request approval to proceed with option number one. If approved, the next step will be to submit a consultant requisition with Human Resources so that they can notify our outsourcing vendor of the immediate need for a systems consultant.

Lindstrom 3 Respectfully, Nate Lindstrom

Lindstrom 4

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Atlassian Pty Ltd. (n.d.). Atlassian Collaborative Software. Retrieved 02 06, 2011, from http://www.atlassian.com/ Cisco Corporation. (n.d.). Enterprise Networking Products & Services. Retrieved 02 06, 2011, from http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/index.html Dell Corporation. (n.d.). Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking. Retrieved 02 06, 2011, from http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/enterprise-products Meredith, J., & Mantel, S. (2009). Project Management: A Managerial Approach. NJ: Wiley & Sons. Project Management Institute. (2008). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge. PA: Project Management Institute.