Page 16 - CIMA MCS Workbook February 2019 - Day 2 Suggested Solutions

CIMA FEBRUARY 2019 – MANAGEMENT CASE STUDY

TASK 3 – WEBSITE PROJECT

To: Finance Director
Date: Today
Subject: Website project

The successful accomplishment of project objectives is usually constrained by time, cost and
quality factors. These factors can often be conflicting in nature and decisions on the strategies to
implement are difficult as they will often require a trade‐off between these factors. For example
getting the project back on time may require extra resources and therefore additional costs or a
compromise on the original scope.

Reducing excess expenditure may mean using fewer or lower quality resources which may again
affect the overall scope and performance of the final project. For this particular project, improved
customer satisfaction (by making the website easy to use) is vital important so should not be
compromised. On the other hand, time and cost tend to be positively correlated in projects as
taking longer to complete a project generally means that human resources are needed for longer,
adding to the cost..

Time

If there is a degree of urgency in a project it may be possible to reduce the timescale to
completion by adding additional resources. The timescale can also be reduced by scheduling
overtime working. Both of these situations will increase cost while reducing time. This will
however be a concern for Crowncare as many of our key staff are already working at full capacity.

Resources could also be asked to work smarter, eliminating any distractions and focusing time on
real output producing activities. The team should focus on activities that add real value to the
website project for example the website functionality and eliminate any non‐value adding
activities. There is a need for a separate discussion in this context however particularly given the
workload of the staff to determine exactly what a non‐value added activity is.

Increasing the amount of resource will have an impact on profitability. The addition of resources
will increase costs, reduce the profit margin and indeed, in the extreme, may make the project
itself unprofitable.

Although the deadline date is important to Crowncare, due to the revenues that might be
generated by the website, it is unlikely to be crucial. It is unlikely that the customers will know
that the website is being re‐designed so will have no expectation of when the new site is due to
come on‐line. The deadline is not crucial in the wider scheme of things and there is no statutory
requirement to deliver on time.

Quality

Project quality is usually about customer specification and requirement. Quality in terms of
computer systems can be measured in terms of the number of errors, response times and fit‐for‐
purpose, i.e. matches the business process it is intended to support. Project quality tends to be
positively correlated with cost and time.

106 KAPLAN PUBLISHING