Group 2

Cubs Win…well not yet but changes are coming.

Posted on by justin30123f14

Chicago Cubs

We can all agree the Chicago Cubs most likely will not contend for the World Series next year, adding to the 106 year drought. However, under the new ownership and leadership of Tom Ricketts the Cubs have begun making changes that will help their chances of getting back to a World Series.

 

26 Weeks…and Counting

After a turbulent period of battling with the City of Chicago, the adjacent rooftop owners, and the court system they have finally begun construction on an estimated $575 million dollar renovation this offseason.

The major issue arising with the renovation is that the cubs want to play next season in Wrigley Field. Unlike other renovations or new stadiums, the Cubs will not take a season off from playing in Wrigley Field. This puts a tremendous time restriction on when the project needs to be complete. The Cubs opening day next year is April 6th against the St. Louis Cardinals. That allows the project manager (PM) just 26 weeks to complete the project. At the time of this writing (Oct 6th) they will have exactly 6 months to finish the renovation.

The major renovations this winter will be extending the outfield walls, constructing new bleachers, and adding several digital screens including a Jumbotron in left field. Under perfect conditions this short of a deadline would be a challenge, but when you add in the harsh Chicago winters you introduce a whole new set of challenges.

With construction to begin next week on the bleachers, many individuals question if the renovations will be completed in time. And if they are, how much over budget will it go? Fortunately, for the taxpayers of Chicago this project is privately funded. However, many stadium construction and renovation projects are partially funded with public funds (i.e. Soldier Field renovation) and the tax payers are on the hook for budget overruns.

If you’re interested in seeing the full scale of renovations that will take place over the next few years take a look at the video below.

 

Project Management

This tight timeline would test the best of project managers, and any construction team. In order to stay within the short timeframe, construction started immediately following the Cubs season. Fortunately, for the construction company the Cubs did not make the playoffs this year. However, this offseason’s construction project is only the first in a planned series of projects. Next offseason the Cubs are planning on renovating the clubhouse and a few other areas of the ballpark. If this current construction project does not go as planned, or if the Cubs can make the playoffs next year, the future construction plans could be altered.

Come late March 2015 it will be interesting to see where the Wrigley Field renovation project stands. If the project is behind schedule will the PM crash the project and risk going over budget? Or will they risk having an uncompleted stadium for opening day? Each of these options has potential drawbacks, but these are the types of questions that PMs face on most projects they handle.

Hopefully, all goes well with the Wrigley Field construction project. However, with the pending winter weather, do you think the construction project will get done in time? Also, as a project manager in this situation how would you manage a team under this type of a timeline?

http://abc7chicago.com/sports/wrigley-field-$575m-renovation-set-to-begin/323525/

http://www.thisdayinchicagocubshistory.com/2013-Cubs-Convention-Wrigley-Restoration.html

http://www.csnchicago.com/cubs/proposed-wrigley-field-renovation-mock-ups

http://www.wrigleyfield.com/plan

So this is what Deja vu feels like…

Posted on by grzegorz30123f14

About a year ago I was working my first big job on a large web project. I had to teach myself pretty much everything along the way. My supervisor asked me many many times when (approximately) I would finish each part of the project. I never really understood what all the fuss was about regarding timelines. I never knew what to say. On the inside I always thought that I would just get it done when I got it done. I was not able to predict efficiently until the very end of activities how long they would take because everything was relatively new to me. Now in hindsight I see how helpful these planning concepts and skills would have been in planning and changing the project according to time constraints. Learning planning techniques in class such as identifying activities, mapping out precedence, estimating time and identifying critical activities/paths is very new for me but finally brings all those questions I was being asked into perspective. I knew that having time estimates was important and necessary to plan but I never realized how important and complex planning could be. I now plan to take a more proactive approach and will do my best to give time estimates when possible in future projects.

I am glad to say that as I am learning how to plan in class I am applying what I am learning in another classroom. In another class I am currently in we have to plan, design and build a web application in 10 weeks. This means that time is valuable and we need to balance it out with the other key project metric triangle components to make sure performance and cost (our personal time in this case) are within reason. In this project we have had to develop a GAANT chart and plan out some of the most meticulous details of the project weeks ahead of even starting to build it. In addition, we had to plan out how long activities would take. When the planning requirements were brought up in the class I was one of the only students in the group familiar with the basic terms due to MGT 301. I have been able to help the team and manage our time so that we do not get behind in our project. We have identified activities that can be crashed (by investing more time in the week and putting our more experienced group members on specific tasks) as well as identifying activities that could be run concurrently (done at the same time) so that we can get more done in the same amount of time by splitting our group into mini groups.

Questions:

–          Have any of you had the above issues at a new job or on a unique project?

–          Have any of you seen the lessons and concepts we are learning in class come up in a current or past class?

–          How did these concepts help you to do better or contribute in that class?

–          Have you applied these concepts to a class or work project?