Habitat for Humanity – Simulation

1. When the project first started, you were asked to order the tasks to build the WBS. How did you decide the order tasks should appear in for the WBS? In a typical project, how do you think a WBS should be created, and what stakeholders or team members should be involved?
Answer – The approach that I took for ordering tasks is to order them in the sequence of work that would generally be completed, so buying the supplies would come before installing them with electrical and painting works being performed sequentially. However, as there was a constraint that the work should be completed in a week’s time, I made use of two opportunities to perform tasks in parallel so that time could be saved there, thus allowing the work to be completed within the given time period. Therefore the order for tasks was based upon a logical ordering related to dependencies between tasks and saving time by working in parallel to achieve schedule goals.
In a typical project, I think the WBS should be created using an iterative fashion where the high level tasks are listed, then the next level tasks are listed and then going down into the detail of the tasks. Once an initial WBS is ready, it must be studied in detail to ensure that no tasks are missing and the dependencies have been captured properly. In addition to the project manager, ideally the stakeholders who would be working on the various work packages should be involved in coming up with the tasks and the estimates for each of the tasks. It is also recommended that the WBS is reviewed and approved by a set of knowledgeable stakeholders and optimized for cost and schedule before arriving at the final WBS.

2. What challenges did you face during the simulation, and what solutions did you propose? Indicate any research that you did In order to gain your own knowledge about remodeling a