This post has two Assignments
- Critical Race Theory
Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline.
Opponents of CRT note that its beliefs are, of course, untestable, and as such, one has no choice but to
accept or reject CRT outright, not based on empirical, rational reflection, but on one’s emotional
reaction to the fictional, highly subjective “evidence” that is the basis on which all CRT claims are
supported: the counterstory; moreover, such critics contend that CRT, rather than promoting positive
change, reinforces racial and ethnic stereotypes by rejecting logical thought in favor of anecdotal
evidence. How do you respond to these criticisms? Is CRT invalid because its tenets are largely
untestable? Explain.
2.
A Case Study for Tasks 1 and 2
Manage Your Health, Inc. (MYH) is listed in the Fortune 500 Company that provides a variety of healthcare service across the globe. They have 25,000 full-time and 8,000 part-time employees. A study found that MYH, Inc. pays 45% more than the industry average for their employee healthcare premiums, due to the poor health of its employees. Therefore, the company has planned to provide a web application that provides online functionalities to help their employees enrol and manage their health-management and recreational programs. This application will have the following capabilities.
- Allow employees to register for company-sponsored recreational programs such as soccer, netball, bowling, jogging and walking etc.
- Allow employees to register for company-sponsored classes and programs to help them manage their weight, reduce stress, and stop smoking etc.
- Track employees’ involvement in these recreational and health-management programs
- Over incentives for people to join the programs and do well in them
Project’s financial information
The project is expected to cost the company $950,000 for the web application development and $550,000 for web and database servers. The project is expected to take 6 months to complete. They believe that this application will help improve their employees’ health after a year of its rollout so that the company can negotiate lower healthy insurance premiums, providing a net saving of at $300 per employee per year for full-time employees and $150 per employee per year for part-time employees over next five years. The company does not expect any savings in employee healthcare premiums for the first two years when the application will be up and running. A yearly budget of $300,000 has been set aside for the next five years for system maintenance. A new role “Application Support Engineer” has been created with the responsibility to work with the software engineering team to develop the application and to provide on-going application support after the roll out of the application. This role will cost the company $120,000 with a 5% yearly increase in the annual salary. Assume that the discount rate is 6%.
Task 1: Business case financial anaylsis (15 marks)
- You are required to prepare a financial analysis up to year 5 using the table provided below for the MYH’s project in order to find the return of investment (ROI) and payback period of the project based on the financial information provided. (7 marks)
| Discount rate | 6% | ||||||
| PROJECT 1 | Year 0 | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Year 4 | Year 5 | Total |
| Revenue | |||||||
| Discount Factor | |||||||
| Discount revenue | |||||||
| Costs | |||||||
| Discount factor | |||||||
| Discount Cost | |||||||
| Discount benefit | |||||||
| Cumulative benefit |
- Calculate the ROI of the project (3 marks)
- Calculate the payback period of the project (3 marks)
- Justify if the proposed project is worthehile undertaking (2 marks)
Task 2: Project cost control (25 marks)
You are required to control the budget for the above MYH’s project.
- What is the total budget at completion (BAC) for the project? (3 marks)
- Assume that the work for the first month is completed in the project. The following information has been provided as a result of work done so far.
Plan Value (PV) = $160, 000
Earned Value (EV) = $120, 000
Actual Cost (AC) = $180, 000
Answer the following questions 2.2.1 – 2.2.5 (must show all the working).
- Explain a likely reason for the difference between PV and AC for the first month of this project. (4 marks)
- Calculate the cost variance (CV) and the cost performance index (CPI) for the first month in this project? Is the project under or over budget? (6 marks)
- Calculate the schedule variance (SV) and the schedule performance index (SPI) for the first month in this project? Is the project ahead of or behind schedule? (6 marks)
- Calculate the new estimate at completion (EAC) for this project after the completion of first month’s work. (3 marks)
- Calcuate how long it will now take to finish this project after working on the project for a month. (3 marks)
Task 3: Project schedule development (30 marks)
The Table shown below provides the activities (A to L) and their three point estimates for an Auckland city IT infrastructure (LAN Network) project.
| Task | Predecessor | Optimistic duration | Most Likely duration | Pessimistic duration | Task effort |
| A | – | 15 | 17 | 30 | |
| B | – | 15 | 13 | 25 | |
| C | A | 20 | 22 | 35 | |
| D | A | 10 | 15 | 30 | |
| E | C | 10 | 7 | 15 | |
| F | D | 15 | 10 | 20 | |
| G | B | 5 | 5 | 10 | |
| H | B | 5 | 5 | 10 | |
| I | E,F, G | 5 | 5 | 10 | |
| J | H | 3 | 2 | 17 | |
| K | J | 5 | 4 | 12 | |
| L | I, K | 5 | 3 | 10 |
- Complete the PERT estimation to show the duration of each activity. (8 marks)
- Draw the network (AOA) diagram to show the order in which all the activities will be undertaken in this project. The diagram must be clearly labelled. (6 marks)
- List all the possible paths for this project with their total durations. (5 marks)
- Clearly identify and briefly explain the critical path for this project. (7 marks)
- This network is expected to be up and running within 4 months from the time the work on the project is started. Does this opening date appear feasible? (4 marks)
Task 4: Project selection (30 marks)
You are required to perform some analysis to help identify the order in which the projects will be undertaken from the available four projects.
- Use the information below to create a table that must show the weighted score and priority for each project. (7 marks)
The factors that impact the success of a project include (a) the availability of at least 4 senior software engineers with local development experiences) (40%); (b) a senior product manager (on-site customer) (35%); (c) interest from sales & marketing team (5%); (d) availability of an agile tester (10%); and (e) a clear product backlog (10%). Table below provides the scores based on these factors for each project.
| Project / Criteria | A | b | c | d | e |
| Project 1 | 70 | 55 | 60 | 80 | 65 |
| Project 2 | 65 | 60 | 50 | 75 | 65 |
| Project 3 | 60 | 55 | 75 | 60 | 75 |
| Project 4 | 75 | 45 | 70 | 80 | 70 |
- Explain the order in which these 4 project should be undertaken. (3 marks)
- Based on the information provided below, perform a quantitative risk analysis using a decision tree diagram to calculate expected monetary value (EMV) and contingencey reserve for each project. (10 marks)
| Project |
Risks |
Chance of Outcome | Estimated Impact | Expected monetary value (EMV)
|
Contingencey reserve
|
| Project 1 | Risk 1 | 30% | $80,000 | ||
| Risk 2 | 70% | -$60,000 | |||
| Project 2 | Risk 1 | 20% | $100,000 | ||
| Risk 2 | 15% | $70,000 | |||
| Risk 3 | 65% | -$50,000 | |||
| Project 3 | Risk 1 | 20% | $70,000 | ||
| Risk 2 | 20% | $50,000 | |||
| Risk 3 | 60% | -$30,000 | |||
| Project 4 | Risk 1 | 30% | $60,000 | ||
| Risk 2 | 60% | $50,000 | |||
| Risk 3 | 10% | -$80,000 |
4.4 Explain the contingency reserve for each project (10 marks)
