Whitbread World Sailboat Race

Project Plan for Whitbread World Sailboat Race

The following paper analyzes the Whitbread World Sailboat Race case scenario presented at the end of chapter 9 in the Gray and Larson text, Project Management: the Managerial Process. The project encompasses two main objectives; one, design, build and test a new vessel, and two, select and train a crew capable of winning the race. Both objectives must be completed within 45 weeks, the start of the race, and with a planned budget of $3.2 million.

Initial projections show that the current schedule will take 50 weeks to finish with a final budget estimate of $3.152 million. Although the project estimate comes in under budget, the time frame for completion extends beyond the acceptable 45 weeks. Therefore, the following discussion takes a closer look at the project's conditions by developing a project priority matrix, project network, and a Gantt chart to help Bjorn Ericksen and his team reduce the project duration. The author then offers a project closure approach.

Bjorn Ericksen Project Strategy Analysis

Bjorn Ericksen was chosen as the project manager because of his past experience as a master helmsman and because of his recent fame as the "best designer of racing sailboats in the world" (Gray & Larson, 2006). Bjorn has designated Karin Knutsen to be his chief design engineer and Trygve Wallvik as his master helmsman. The two will also be acting team leaders responsible for getting their sailing vessel ready for the traditional parade of entries on the Thames River in the United Kingdom, which signals the beginning of the race.

Karin and Trygve both have a thorough handle on the sequence of events, and costs required to design, construct and test the vessel, as well as selecting, hiring and training the crew. Their project plan includes developing both normal and crash costs and durations, a project priority matrix to facilitate the decision making process, and a project network that will show the critical path among the many activities.

The team leaders' projections show that the cost of starting the race under normal circumstances would be $3,152,000 (see table 2), however, normal conditions also dictate that the project will require 50 weeks to finish. As with any solid plan, the team leaders have also calculated crash times and costs as backup options in case the project experiences delays, or in this circumstance an imposed deadline; the start of the race 45 weeks from now. Analyzing crash times and costs we see that if each activity were crashed the project could be finished in 42 weeks, however, the budget would skyrocket to $4.952 million (see table 5). Therefore, the team will need to analyze the project network and its critical path to determine which individual activities can be crashed while maintaining the integrity of the budget.

Plan to Reduce Project Duration

Before deciding which activities should be crashed, Bjorn and his team first need to have a clear understanding of the project's priorities. To do this the team has first defined the project's scope and decided to develop a project priority matrix.

Defining the project scope sets the stage for developing a plan and its primary purpose is to define as clearly as possible the deliverables and to focus project plans (Gray & Larson, 2006). The team has stated the project's objectives, defined deliverables, established milestones and technical requirements, which help define the project's scope and establish priorities.

With the imposed deadline, completion of the project on time should be the project's top priority and thus becomes the constrained parameter; the project must be completed within 45 weeks if they are to enter the race. Performance of the vessel and its crew then is priority number two and is enhanced; winning the race is the team's ultimate goal. The team then must accept the budget as the least important priority. As the project manager, Bjorn Ericksen must understand that when making decision tradeoffs, shortening project durations usually means expanding the project's budget. Table 1 shows the Whitbread World Sailboat Race priority matrix as described above.

With clear expectations of which activities take precedence, the Bjorn project team can then analyze the various events to determine which can be crashed and the additional costs associated with doing so. This analysis should be done prior to finalizing the project network because not all events will be crashed in order to keep costs to a minimum.

Placing the events in a Gantt chart will help clarify and organize the events, the order in which they will occur, as well as any preceding activities that must be accomplished. Table 5 shows the project's normal conditions, their timeframes and associated costs. As noted, normal conditions require 50 weeks to complete and therefore, cannot be used. Table 6 is a similar chart showing the project under ultimate crash conditions. As mentioned earlier, the project can be accomplished in as little as 42 weeks if every activity is crashed. This scenario is not desired however, because the project's budget then approaches $5 million in associated costs, over 50% beyond the original allotted expenditure.

To arrive at the optimal schedule, Bjorn and his team must consider which activities to accomplish using normal conditions and which activities to crash that keeps the budget to a minimum. To accomplish this, using table 2 we first notice that activities C, E, G, H, N, O, and P cannot be crashed and therefore, cannot be considered as time saving events. We also notice, using table 5, that activities D, E, F, J and Q have significant slack and therefore would be of little benefit if crashed. It would likewise be of little value to crash the testing phase, as sailing training can be done simultaneously.

We then choose to crash the design process as well as the building of the hull. Crashing these two activities this early in the project phase allows several other activities to begin sooner, creating a chain reaction that speeds up the entire project. Although increasing the project's cost by $520,000, we have trimmed 4 weeks from the project's schedule and set a precedent for the crew. We next decide to shorten the six week process of