CMGT/410 Wk 3 Sample Paper

Scope, Critical Path and a Second Install Crew: A Project Plan Segment for a Wireless and Handheld Scanner Refresh Across Three Distribution Centers

[Author Name]

College of Business and Information Technology, University of Phoenix

CMGT/410 Project Planning and Implementation

Wk 3 Assignment

[Faculty Name]

August 11, 2026

Northbridge Supply Company is a composite organization written as a model document. No real employer, vendor or contract is described.

What this page is doingThe title names the three things the paper actually contains: scope, a critical path and a decision. A reader looking for a planning example knows in one line whether this is the right page. The course line prints the code exactly as University of Phoenix writes it, slash included, alongside the Wk 3 label the course uses. The composite line matters as much here as in a clinical paper, since an invented employer with named sites and a budget could otherwise read as a real contract.

Scope Statement and Work Breakdown

Northbridge Supply Company is a composite regional distributor with 640 employees and three distribution centers: 210,000 square feet in Reno, 168,000 in Fort Worth and 145,000 in Columbus. The wireless controllers and 214 access points that cover the racking aisles reached vendor end of support on June 30, 2026, and the 480 handheld barcode scanners on the floor run an operating release that no longer receives security patches. The sponsor is the vice president of distribution operations and the approved budget is 612,000 dollars. The project objective is stated in measurable terms: replace 3 controllers, 214 access points and 480 scanners, verify signal at or above minus 67 dBm across 99.5 percent of aisle floor space at each site, and complete every production change before the November 1 peak-season freeze.

The work breakdown structure carries six branches at the second level: 1.0 survey and design, 2.0 procurement, 3.0 cabling remediation, 4.0 site deployment split into 4.1 Reno, 4.2 Fort Worth and 4.3 Columbus, 5.0 scanner rollout and floor validation, and 6.0 hypercare and closeout. Acceptance requires the wireless security configuration baseline written into the design, including enterprise authentication and separated guest traffic (Souppaya & Scarfone, 2012). Out of scope, and stated so that nobody argues about it in week six: the wired office refresh, the warehouse management software upgrade and the public guest portal. The budget divides into 249,600 dollars for 480 scanners at 520 each, 228,000 for network hardware, 46,000 for cabling remediation, 58,000 for contract labor and 30,400 held as contingency, which sums to the approved 612,000.

Three constraints shape everything that follows. The peak-season freeze bars production changes from November 1 through January 15. The single network engineer assigned is available at 60 percent, and one install crew is under contract. The hardware vendor quotes 25 working days from purchase order to delivery. Scope is written before the schedule for a reason that survives contact with a real project: an activity list that is not tied to a named deliverable cannot be verified as complete, and unverifiable completion is where schedules quietly rot (Project Management Institute, 2021).

What this page is doingThe objective is written in numbers that can be checked at the end: 3 controllers, 214 access points, 480 scanners, minus 67 dBm across 99.5 percent of aisle floor space, all changes before November 1. That single sentence makes the whole plan verifiable. The out of scope list is doing defensive work, and the budget lines are itemized so they add to the approved figure. Scope written this way is what lets the next section schedule anything at all.

Schedule Logic and the Critical Path

The activity list carries durations in working days with explicit predecessors. Site survey and radio frequency assessment at all three centers runs 10 days and starts the project. Design and bill of materials runs 8 days after the survey. Procurement and delivery runs 25 days after design. Two branches run in parallel with procurement, both starting from design: cabling remediation at 15 days and scanner image build with application testing at 12 days. Reno install and cutover runs 5 days once hardware has arrived and cabling is finished. Fort Worth follows at 5 days, then Columbus at 5 days. Scanner rollout and floor validation runs 4 days per site after that site cuts over, and hypercare with closeout runs 10 days after the last validation.

The sequencing of the three sites deserves a note, because it is a resource dependency and not a technical one. Reno, Fort Worth and Columbus share one contracted install crew, so Fort Worth waits on Reno only because the same people are doing both. Adding the durations along the longest chain gives the critical path: 10 plus 8 plus 25 plus 5 plus 5 plus 5 plus 4 plus 10 equals 72 working days. Counting from Monday, August 3, 2026, with weekends and the observed September 7 holiday excluded, the baseline finishes on Wednesday, November 11. Cabling holds 10 working days of float against the 25-day procurement branch and the scanner image build holds 13, so neither drives the finish unless it slips past that float.

The baseline therefore fails the constraint that matters most. Its last eight working days fall inside the freeze, which means the Columbus cutover and part of the validation would need an exception during the busiest weeks of the year. Compressing survey and design saves little, since the two together are 18 days and shortening them degrades the counts everything else depends on. The 25-day procurement block is the largest single element but sits with a vendor rather than with the project. That leaves the sequential site work as the candidate for compression, and compression by adding resources is the recognized response when a sequence exists for resource reasons alone (Schwalbe, 2019).

What this page is doingEvery activity carries a duration and a predecessor, so the path total can be added by the reader rather than taken on trust. The strongest move is naming why the three sites run in sequence: one crew, not one technical constraint. That distinction is what makes the decision in the next section available. Float is reported for the parallel branches, which shows that the writer knows why those activities are not the problem, and the breach is stated as a date rather than a worry.

Risk Register and the Resource Decision

Five risks carry a probability and a schedule impact in the same working days the plan uses. Hardware delivery slipping past the quoted 25 days is rated at 40 percent with a 10-day impact. Cabling remediation finding more dead runs than the survey counted, since the survey tested 30 of 214 drops, is rated at 35 percent with a 4-day impact and an 18,000 dollar cost impact. Scanner authentication failing against the warehouse management software is rated at 25 percent with a 6-day impact. Operations pulling the freeze date earlier than November 1 is rated at 20 percent with a 7-day impact. The single network engineer becoming unavailable is rated at 30 percent with a 5-day impact. Multiplying each probability by its days and summing gives 9.8 working days of expected schedule exposure (Project Management Institute, 2019).

Three options were priced against that exposure. Adding a second contracted install crew costs 960 dollars per crew-day for 14 crew-days, or 13,440 dollars, which is 2.2 percent of the budget and is funded from the 30,400 contingency, leaving 16,960. It lets the three sites cut over in parallel, which removes 10 days from the critical path and brings the last production change to Wednesday, October 14, with 12 working days standing between that change and the freeze. Air freighting the hardware to cut the lead time from 25 days to 15 saves the same 10 days but costs 26,500 dollars, consuming 87 percent of the contingency and leaving 3,900 against a register that still carries 9.8 expected days. Deferring Columbus past January 15 costs nothing and leaves 145,000 square feet running unsupported wireless through the peak season, which is the exposure the project exists to remove.

The recommendation is the second crew. It buys 12 working days of buffer against 9.8 days of expected exposure, it leaves most of the contingency intact, and it removes the only dependency in the schedule that has no technical reason to exist. The reasoning is not hidden and neither is its weakness: the remaining 16,960 dollars does not fully cover the 18,000 dollar cost impact in the cabling risk, so that 1,040 dollar gap is written into the register as an accepted shortfall rather than assumed away (Kerzner, 2022). One condition reverses the recommendation. If the vendor confirms a firm delivery longer than 25 working days at design approval, crews stop being the constraint, the expedite option returns, and the plan goes back to the sponsor before any crew is contracted.

What this page is doingRisks are priced in the same working days the schedule uses, so the 9.8 day expected exposure can be compared directly with the 12 days of buffer the recommendation produces. All three options are costed against the same contingency line, which turns a preference into a comparison. Two moves lift this above a standard register: the honest note that contingency falls 1,040 dollars short of one risk, and the stated condition under which the recommendation is withdrawn.

References

Kerzner, H. (2022). Project management: A systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling (13th ed.). Wiley.

Project Management Institute. (2019). The standard for risk management in portfolios, programs, and projects. Project Management Institute.

Project Management Institute. (2021). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK guide) (7th ed.). Project Management Institute.

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project management (9th ed.). Cengage Learning.

Souppaya, M., & Scarfone, K. (2012). Guidelines for securing wireless local area networks (WLANs) (NIST Special Publication 800-153). National Institute of Standards and Technology. https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/sp/800-153/final

How this CMGT 410 Wk 3 example is structured

University of Phoenix publishes no week-by-week deliverable name for Project Planning and Implementation, so read this CMGT/410 Wk 3 example as a model of the genre rather than a copy of one section's prompt; students reach the same page searching week 3. In many sections this week asks for a planning segment covering scope and schedule with a risk or resource decision attached, and your course instructions and rubric decide the exact form. The order is the order the plan has to be built in for an undergraduate information technology paper: scope first, because nothing can be scheduled until the deliverables are named; schedule logic second, with durations, predecessors and a path total a reader can add; risk and the resource decision last, priced in the days and dollars the earlier sections established. A five-week course forces all three into one pass instead of three separate hand-ins.

CMGT/410 Wk 3 questions, answered

What does CMGT/410 Wk 3 usually ask for?

University of Phoenix does not publish week-by-week deliverable names for Project Planning and Implementation, so treat this as a model of the genre. In many sections this week asks for a planning segment built on a defined scope, with schedule logic and a risk or resource decision attached to it. Your course instructions and rubric decide the exact form.

Do I need scheduling software or a Gantt chart for this?

Prose can carry schedule logic on its own if it names each activity, its duration, its predecessors and the total along the longest chain, as the model above does. If your section asks for a chart or a project file, build it from the same numbers. A chart that disagrees with the paragraph beside it is the most common avoidable error.

How many risks belong in the register?

Enough to cover what can actually move the finish date. Five priced risks beat twenty generic ones, because each entry has to carry a probability, an impact measured in the same days or dollars the plan uses, and a response someone owns. Anything that cannot change the schedule or the budget belongs in the assumptions list instead.

Write yours, or have the desk draft it

This paper is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official University of Phoenix document. Read it for the moves, then write your own to the instructions in your classroom. If you want one built to your exact prompt and rubric, the first custom sample is free and arrives in 24 to 48 hours.

CMGT/410 Wk 3: sample paper, in real form