Project Management Planning and Risk

Natural Soup Project

PROJECT STATUS REPORT

Currently the Natural Soap Project is roughly halfway through its planning phase. Thus far it has already experienced some losses of technical resources which has caused delays as well as anxieties. This analysis will provide a project status update.

MILESTONE CHART

Work

Duration

Start

Finish

% Work Complete

Project Planning

112 hrs

Wed 10/7/15

Mon 10/26/15

Technical Team

112 hrs

Wed 10/7/15

Mon 10/26/15

Requirements

hrs

Wed 11/11/15

Manufacture Soap

hrs

Thu 11/12/15

Mon 12/14/15

Testing

hrs

Deployment

hrs

Wed 12/16/15

Wed 12/16/15

SUMMARY OF PERFORMANCE

SUMMARY OF RISKS AND ISSUES

Highlights of Risks

Anxiety among members of the technical team

Competition could potentially launch 3 months earlier

Placed other projects at risk due to borrowed assets

Highlights of Issues

Loss of two key technical resources

day delay

DISCUSSION

Risk is defined as an event that has a probability of occurring, and could have either a positive or negative impact to a project should that risk occur. Project risk is one of the hardest project components to plan for and the project contains significant risks as well as already being behind schedule. One option would be to attempt to develop a crash schedule. In this case, the fundamental consideration to be made is whether the costs from crashing the project in such a significant manner exceed the benefits to be gained by having the project completion scheduled and if there are enough resources available to achieve the desired outcome. However, given that the project is already behind schedule and one of the risks includes the fact that a competitor might bring their product to market first, a crash schedule might be a viable option. Furthermore, since the project's projected end date is during the holiday season, it is likely that sales could increase if the product was brought to market earlier.

There also exists a trade-off consideration between quality and schedule that may pose problems to the viability of the finished product. For example, a crashed schedule could produce an inferior product. Another conceivable risk is that the project will increase its budget and resources significantly, while also failing to meet the deadline. Thus the company might have to accept both the costs of the project's crash schedule while in turn losing the revenue that would have been produced by the soap being on the market during the holiday season.