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Course Project This Course Project gives you the opportunity to practice by planning a project, from the onset with a project charter to an established project schedule and related artifacts. This Course Project will make the course content come alive through application of the principles from the textbook, course materials, and discussions. Each week, you will have Course Project assignments that will be related to the TCO(s) aligned to that particular week. For this project you may choose one that is of interest to you, or you may choose to begin planning for your project. When selecting a project, avoid picking one that is either too big or too small. For example, do not decide to build a new stadium for your local sports team (too big) or to plant your summer garden (too small). Select a project that you can relate to and have some experience with. Projects may vary from a few hundred thousand dollars to a few million dollars. Projects should last somewhere between six months and two years. To ensure you are on the right track, be sure to get your instructor’s permission before writing a project charter. Course Project: Week 3 Congratulations! You have just completed the project charter, scope statement, and WBS. Now that you know what needs to be done, as the Project Manager, you are now ready to begin planning your project. This week, you will have two deliverables to complete for the project. Please provide these two deliverables (MS Project file and MS Word document) to the Week 3 Dropbox. Please refer to the course Syllabus for your due date. To help guide you through these deliverables, please follow the three step process below. The following steps should be followed when setting up your Course Project with To see the network diagram, click on View, then select Network Diagram. Activities on the Critical Path are outlined in red, while non-critical path activities are outlined in blue. You will need this information to answer the essay question in Step 3. Once you have the WBS created in MS Projects, you need to assign resources to each activity. Remember only assign resources to activities, not other items on the WBS. Before you can do this, you need to create a resources sheet in MS Projects. To create a Resource sheet, click on View, Resource Sheet. Enter the Resource name, whether it is a human resource, a cost, or a material. Once this is finished, one can tied these resources to individual activities. Don’t worry about costs, as that is next week’s work. To assign your resources to the aligned tasks in MS Project, follow the steps below: Assign and costs to the tasks that you have already entered. There are several methods to check for over-allocated resources: You will need this information to answer the essay question in Step 3. Now that your pro

ject schedule has been created and your resources have been allocated, please analyze your results and answer the following essay questions. In your analysis, be sure to identify the critical path and relate any time reduction opportunities to specific activities in the WBS. Essay Question #1: Now that you have created a WBS and resource loaded schedule in MS Projects, what is your critical path? Does this critical path make sense? Do your predecessors make sense? How accurate are your durations? What could be done to improve the accuracy of your durations? Essay Question #2: Are there any resources over-allocated? If yes, during which month(s) and what are some ways this might be addressed? Do not simply lower the percentage allocated to an over-allocated activity. Using your own words, I am looking for a two to three page essay report that addresses the essay questions above. Remember, the report must be to a level of clarity and depth that would be readily understood by the executive management; in other words do not repeat the questions, avoid a simple Yes or No answer. Do support your analysis with both in-text citation and references from the textbook, PMBOK® Guide or other juried sources. Include a cover sheet and a reference page. Use APA style format, double-space, one inch margins, Times New Roman, and 12 point font size. Course Project: Week 4 Now that your project schedule has been created and your resources have been loaded, let’s take a closer look at the cost of the project. Please provide these two deliverables (MS Project file and MS Word document) to the Week 4 Dropbox. Please refer to the course Syllabus for your due date. To help guide you through these deliverables, please follow the three-step process below. Most projects have fixed costs to account for. These are such things as mortgages and other costs that do not change with production. Fixed costs need to be accounted for in projects. If your project has fixed costs, follow the following steps. The following steps should be followed when setting up your project fixed costs with Microsoft Project: Most projects have variable costs. These are costs that change with the amount of work being done. These are commonly seen as dollar per hour costs. Most of your resources will be dollar per hour costs. Follow the steps below to enter this data. Using this information, go back into the Resource Sheet to update the hourly rate for each resource. Using this information, go back into the Resource Sheet to update the hourly rate for each resource. Now that your project schedule has been created, your resources have been loaded, and your resource costs have been allocated, please analyze your results and answer the following questions. After you enter all of your resources, answer the following questions.