Consider the following scenario. A leading biomedical company hires you as a con
ID: 454274 • Letter: C
Question
Consider the following scenario. A leading biomedical company hires you as a consultant to help with a serious problem. The company had planned to complete their final acceptance testing of a new pacemaker last week but found a significant integration risk between the pacemaker and the instrumentation used to perform diagnostic analysis on the pacemaker. The cause is determined to be a lack of thorough testing due to insufficient time allocated to the integration and test phase. Your job is to investigate the risk and make recommendations to reduce the risk. Project management wants to maximize quality and minimize total cost. How would you handle these conflicting objectives? What are your recommendations to project management regarding this risk? How does this scenario relate to managing contingency allowance?
Explanation / Answer
At the very outset , it is clarified that maximize quality need not be having conflict with the objective of minimization of Total Cost. The term Total Cost must takes into account the costs related to poor quality of the goods and services in the long terms. In the present case the problem is identified as insufficient time allocated to the integration and test phase., therefore either more resources may be considered for the limited time period or time for these activities may be increased and some other critical activity(ies) may be crashed and trade-off between the direct and indirect costs may be evaluated.
In todays competitive world, the customer is conscious about the quality and always ready to pay premium on the good quality products and at the same time do not let the poor quality products survive and or remains unpunished. The risks of consequences (punishment) of poor quality pacemaker out weigh the additional costs, if any, related to thorough testing to complete final acceptance testing of new pacemaker. In real life, every project planning includes contingency allowance, the same must be used in the present case.