The task chosen in the hypothetical situation involves IT vaccination record keeping. The scheme aims at ensuring seamless and stringent record-keeping, thus minimizing the possibility of errors. The record-keeping process requires technical expertise to run securely and is dependent on virtual private networks and consequently the internet. An internet crash would therefore shut down all electronic record-keeping operations. The task was chosen since the electronic record-keeping can be substituted by the manual records as a backup plan. The task was also selected since it does not hamper the project’s main goal to vaccinate the population against MMR. The manual forms can also be used to show the progress of the vaccination drive.
The crash of the IT vaccination record-keeping drive would reduce the project’s duration by approximately 100 days. The electronic record-keeping task was planned to cover 196 days; thus, with the task’s exclusion, the duration would reduce by almost the same number of days. The variables used to estimate the reduction in the number of days entail the speed of recovery of the manual files and the check for glaring mistakes (Heywood & Boone, 2015). The IT vaccination record keeping confirms the values using a manually written report; hence the time duration to consolidate the manuals to form a presentable report is minimal.
The hypothetical situation would increase the total project cost since the computers replaced human labor, which was expensive. Computers substitute human labor, are capital intensive, but they are efficient in projects with budget constraints since it reduces the number of personnel employed, ultimately leading to reduced wages. The human labor cost to manually record the vaccination drive and file the records exceeds the internet’s cost and the number of personnel employed. The electronic vaccination record would require less staff, thus reducing the overall project cost. In addition, crashing of the task results in increased labor which translates to more overhead expenses.
