In: Finance
Read the Scenario below and answer the questions that follow.
You are working on a project to implement an online benefits management portal to enable employees to have a “one stop” location to view their health and dental benefits, get answers to benefits-related questions, and enable for changes to be made to health benefit coverage. Requirements were gathered over a two-week time period at the start of the project and all stakeholders participated in requirements gathering sessions. The project is near completion – the portal has been developed by the IT/Application Development group. It has been tested, works well and will be rolled out early next week. You are approached by a member of the senior leadership team who suggests that it would be of value to add in a component so that employees can also manage their 401Ks. In fact, he wants this to happen in time for this roll out.
Question 1[ 20 marks]
Keeping the project triple constraints in mind, elaborate on the effects of adding extra components to the portal by your Senior Leaders.
Keeping in mind the 3 critical elements of Triple constant can
help in managing a project by adapting to the changing conditions
and still not missing on delivering timely project within a
specified budget and scope. These 3 elements are also referred to
as Iron triangle or the Project Management Triangle. These triple
constraints provide a relationship within a Project’s cost, time
and scope.
In this scenario, wherein an extra component has been asked to be
added in the project, the project will be affected in following
ways:
1) Scope: Scope of the project can be defined as the
extent of spread or the spectrum of effort that need to be made on
a project. Since this additional effort asked to be implemented by
senior leaders was not the original requirements therefore the
project scope will definitely be affected. Additional workforce
would now be needed to add in the project of the management wants
it to be delivered within the original time frame.
2) Time: Since the senior leaders have already decided
that this additional feature needs to be deployed within the
previous timeline itself, therefore there is no chance to miss the
deadline. However, the workforce deployed in this project would now
have to put in additional time on the project to complete it within
the deadline.
3) Cost: This would be the most affected constraint for
the project. Additional workforce and man-hours would definitely
increase the cost of the project. New projected cost would be
substantially higher in comparison to what was previously estimated
by the project managers.