You have been asked to determine a rough schedule for a nine-month Billing System Conversion project as part of your job as a consultant to a Fortune 500 firm. The firm’s old system was written in COBOL on a mainframe computer, and the maintenance costs are prohibitive. The new system will run on an off-the-shelf application. You have identified several high-level activities needed to initiate, plan, execute, control, and close the project.

Table 6-4 shows your analysis of the project’s tasks and schedule so far.

a. Using the information in Table 6-4, draw horizontal bars to illustrate when you think each task would logically start and end. Then use Project 2010 to create a Gantt chart and network diagram based on this information.

b. Identify at least two milestones that could be included under each of the process groups in Table 6-4. Then write a detailed description of each of these milestones that meets the SMART criteria.

TABLE 6-4 COBOL conversion project schedule Tasks Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Initiating Develop project charter Meet with stakeholders Planning Create detailed WBS and schedule Estimate project costs Create project team Create communication plan Organize a comprehensive project plan Executing Award and manage contract for software conversion Install new software on servers Install new hardware and software on clients’ machines Test new billing system Train users on new system Controlling Closing © Cengage Learning 2014 LO.1