CS6388 and CS4381 Project Phase 3  Due April 28, 2008 at midnight.

You have now completed a substantial portion of your project plan.  Your costs have been computed, you know how long it will take, and you're close to getting everyone on board with it.  However, two things are missing.

1. Create a critical path or critical chain diagram for your project, or, if it is too large to do this for the entire project, do it for a significant part of the project where such a diagram would be "interesting."  That is, there must be more than one path, at least one of which is critical.  Show the times for each of the paths. If you didn't break down your entire project into sub-subtasks, show a critical path with your best numbers.  However, you must have at least two paths.

2. Risk analysis.  This need not cover all the areas of project risk, but pick at least two and analyze your project with respect to them.  Ideally, these should be the areas where there is the most risk, such as market risk, technological risk, etc.  Describe the risks, their possible impact on schedule and costs, and what you would do should this event actually occur.  Thus you should have a few paragraphs for each area of risk.  Again, be specific to your project.  A generic description of risk will lose 10 points or more.

3. I'm still grading 10 points on grammar and spelling, so please proof-read your project.

4. Get started now, even if you don't have Phase 2 back. 

The grading falls out like this:

40 points for the critical path/chain.
40 points for risk analysis.
10 points for grammar and spelling.
10 points for fixing problems from Phase 2.  If there were none, no points will be deducted.

Additionally, go through the comments I have made on phase 2 and incorporate any changes that I might have suggested that you feel need to be made.

Please be clear that what you are to hand in is a complete project plan, including all three phases.  This should be one document.

The due date is non-negotiable.

  • Please send this to John.Cole@utdallas.edu as a Word file with the naming convention of <Team Number>Phase3.doc.  Thus team 1 would name the file Team1Phase3.doc . Make sure you include the course number in the subject line.
  • Please put the names of all of your team members, team number, date, and school e-mail address in the text of your paper.