The AET sales department has been concerned about a new start-up company that is about to release an accounts payable system. Their investigation indicates that this new package will provide features that will seriously compete with AET’s current Accounts Payable system and some cases, exceed what AET offers.

Tom Wright, the senior applications developer at AET, has been given the responsibility of analyzing, designing, developing, and delivering a new accounts payable system (A/P) for AET customers.

Complicating the issue is the concern of the sales department about AET’s recent inability to meet promised delivery dates. They have convinced CEO (Larry Martain) that a significant marketing effort will have to be expended to convince the clients they should wait for the AET product rather than jump to a package provided by a new entry to the petroleum software business. Companion to this effort is the importance of the performance of the software development group. Consequently, Tom has decided to take the following action: tighten up the estimating effort by his developers; incorporate some new estimating procedures; and use some PERT techniques to generate probabilities associated with his delivery dates.

Tom’s planning team made a first-cut at the set of activities and associated durations:

Based on these estimates and the critical path, the project duration is estimated at 149 days. But, an AET salesperson in the Southeast Region has discovered that the competing A/P package (with significant improvements) is scheduled for delivery in approximately 145 days. The sales force is very anxious to beat that delivery time. The executive committee asks Tom for an estimated probability of reducing his expected project duration by two days.

 

Time in Workdays Optimistic Dur. Most Likely Dur. Pessimistic Dur. Immediate Predecessor Task Name Critical Path 1 ACCOUNTS PAYABLE SYSTEM Planning meeting Team assignments Program specification Customer requirements Feasibility study Systems analysis Prelim budget & schedule Functional specification Prelim design Configuration & perf needs Hardware requirements System specification Detailed design Program specification Programming-first phase Documentation 2 2 3 4 5 2 4 5 10 12 3 8. 10 5 3 10 10 12 14 11 10 11 12 8 13 10 14 12 14 16 12, 13 14 15 8 10 12 16 27 32 37 15 17 14 16 18 10 18 Prototype Development User testing & feedback Programming second phase Beta testing Final documentation pkg Training pkg Product release 19 16 20 12 10 18 19 16 21 17, 20 21SS, 23 22, 23, 24 14 16 21 12 14 22 23 24 25 20 22 10 11 3 5 SS Start to Statlag