Woody Case

Project Appraisal Questionnaire

The purpose of project management is to achieve a successful project and all that this implies. So, if you were Win Easley, the project management consultant, what would you report? Specific issues for your consideration follow. You will not find all the answers written into the case study. Most of the answers are matters of opinion and you will need to search my site for ways to approach many of them.

1. Project Concept and Strategy

a. Was the Woody 2000 project well conceived? Give reasons for your opinion.

b. What were Woody's real objectives that could and should have been articulated?

c. What strategies were there for achieving these objectives? What would you recommend?

d. Did they consider other solutions? Give Examples.

e. How would you gauge the project's success? Could success be measured? If so, when?

2. Project Scope

a. Why do you suppose renovation of the President and Executive Vice President's offices were included in the project and was that a good idea?

b. Write a simple project scope statement.

c. Develop a work breakdown structure.

3. Project Planning

a. What should be included in a Woody 2000 project plan? What use would it be?

b. Evaluate Woody's plans for managing the project, including their approach to contracting for professional services and construction work. What would you have done and would that change for successive phases of the project?

c. Did the project plan explain how the project and any changes would be controlled? Should this be part of the plan? Give reasons.

4. Quality

a. How should quality be approached, and what does it mean?

b. Why did Leadbetter not invoke the specifications to ensure quality? What was the result?

c. What is the importance of Quality to a project like this?

5. Planning and Scheduling

a. Identify and describe a set of project schedule milestones from project concept to project completion show these on a PERT chart using appropriate software.

b. Illustrate your milestones on a simple bar chart scaled to the information provided in the Case Study.

c. Would a good baseline plan have helped to show that the project would not meet its schedule? If so, how?

d. How should float on the critical path have been managed? Would this have helped to complete on time?

6. Cost Estimating

a. Develop a high-level estimate by "guesstimation".