Due March 30, 2015
For Project 3, your team is a software development company and is going to make a budget and preliminary schedule for a software development project, and then make a budget for a quotation to the client and a delivery schedule.
Below I'll give you a list of deliverables.
The client organization has hired the Client Representative to develop and install a system; he is your "single point of contact" with the client. The client has three experts in anthrax detection and a patented method of testing for the dread spores. The client has one office administrative assistant, Clyde, who, when he is there, answers the phone, asks the people to hold, then patches through to the cell phone of one of the agents. If the first does not answer, Clyde tells the caller to hang on, and then tries the second agent, and so on. If the third does not answer, Clyde tells the people it is probably just talcum powder and they should call back later. Clyde only works 8 hours a day, while the agents are working 18 hours a day. So when Clyde is not there, they need an automatic system that does the same thing - an automatic Clyde. The three partners are too busy to get things together, so they hired the Client Representative to procure the system for them.
Your team is very knowledgeable on project development for water and wastewater, but you will bid on this job because of your expertise in all around project management. You figure you can hire people to do the work. You have located a software expert, the Project Consultant, who can explain to you what a GUI is, but who is not an expert estimator. The Project Consultant will be a sub-contractor to your firm.
You want a budget based on 3 classes of workers: coders, interface designers, and systems experts, and your one key manager who is traditionally "charged to the project." The upper managers, staff, and clerical are all overhead, i.e., not charged to the job.
You will need several Excel spread sheets.
On one spreadsheet, you will develop an "all in" (all inclusive) hourly rate for your key manager, consultant, coders, interface designers, and systems experts. You will have to guess at hourly rates or look some up on the web, then add what I call "labor burden" look at Table 7-1 and codes 8512 to 8515 for some burden items. Then you have to come up with some sort of overhead rate. Here's a DOT form , page two has some examples of cost items, although they use a slightly different terminology for the general items, the list can remind you of some costs. What you want is an hourly rate that has all the costs, both direct and indirect in one hourly rate. That is, everything except profit. You want the spreadsheet to explain how you got that rate.
The next spreadsheet will have your WBS. Here is a list of typical software development project milestones and deliverables (Thanks to an ESM graduate, Rory O'Neil) 1. You can get the Project Consultant to explain to you what they mean (and Project Consultant, you will need to do some Google searches to come up with good answers; fortunately, there is a lot of information available; also see the book "Rapid Development" by Steve McConnell if you can find it). 2. There are many meetings with the client that will take your managers and key workers time. Ask the Client Representative how long these meetings take and what city they will be in. Don't forget travel expenses. Then you have to estimate man-hours for each unit. How big is your project staff. Ask the Client Representative when his or her clients want the project.
The third spreadsheet will be similar to Table 7-2. You will "spread" the man-hours for each task into the months for the project. The Client Representative can tell you if one task must be complete before the next one starts.
The fourth spreadsheet will again be similar to Table 7-2, but this will be a cash flow chart of your expenses. (You might do this on the third sheet.)
Now you have to decide how much profit the company needs for the job. Having done that you can spread the profit to each month according the man-hours worked. Finally you will add the profit and make a chart of the expected charges to the client. Assume that you will bill on the first of the month. That is, your cash flow chart of expenses for January plus the profit for January will be billing for February.
Summarize in a two or three paragraph quotation to the client that mentions the total cost and schedule for completion. Then attach the spreadsheet with the expected charges by month, which should sum to the total cost on the quotation. Attach to that the other spread sheets that you used to develop the quotation. Write me a one sentence memo that says: Boss, here is the memo we sent to the anthrax group, their expected billings, and the worksheets we used to develop them.