Question: When making an estimate for the time

> You are offered the chance to play a dice game at $10 per toss of 2 die. If the sum of the two dice tossed is 4, you will receive $100. Should you play or not?

> Laptops-R-Me keeps detailed data on their laptop sales. In the last 300 days the number of laptops sold was as shown in the table …

> In Exericse 1, base your decision instead on the worst possible outcome for each alternative. Now consider a decision based on the best possible outcome. When might both of these give you the same decision?

> Your firm designs PowerPoint slides for computer training classes, and you have just received a request to bid on a contract to produce the slides for an 8-session class. From previous experience, you know that your firm follows an 85 percent learning ra

> Explain the reasons for the growth and decay of each source of conflict in Figure 2.6, and for the Total as well.

> Give an example of a case in which project management could be important in your personal life. Explain why, as well as how and why you might organize such a project.

> There is a danger in letting the client “visit” the project operation too frequently, not the least of which is “scope creep” or informal changes to the project’s performance specifications. What other dangers might arise? How might the danger of scop

> 1. What has a larger impact on Palmstar’s profits, delaying the 2000HD’s introduction by 3 months or increasing the project’s budget by 30 percent? 2. Are there other factors you would consider in addition to profit? 3. What should Palmstar do? Why? 4. H

> The Chapter mentions that regular functional managers are moving from their classic authoritarian style to a facilitative, participative style because it is more effective. Do you think it took managers 200 years to learn this, or is something else drivi

> Construct a list of factors, conditions, and circumstances you think might be important for a manufacturing firm to evaluate during the project selection process. Do the same for a computer repair shop.

> For each of the projects identified in the answer to Question 5, is the life cycle for the project S-shaped or J-shaped?

> Give several examples of projects found in your city, region, or country – avoiding those used as examples in the chapter.

> In Figure 1- 5, what distribution of large and small circles and squares across the four boxes would characterize a strong, well-positioned product development business? A weak business?

> You are the project manager of a team of software specialists working on a project to produce a piece of application software in the field of project management. Give some examples of things that might go wrong on such a project and the sorts of trade-o

> What errors in a firm’s project portfolio might the Wheelwright and Clark aggregate project plan graphically identify?

> Contrast the three types of nonnumeric project selection methods. Could any specific case combine two of them, such as the sacred cow and the operating necessity, or the comparative benefits and the competitive necessity?

> In Section 8.2, subsection The Audit Report, six elements are listed that should be included in every audit report. For each element, explain why its inclusion is important.

> How might an audit team deal with an attempt to co-opt the team?

> 1. Draw a network diagram for this project. Identify all the paths through the network diagram. 2. 3. Develop a histogram to summarize the results of your simulation. 4. Calculate the probability that the project can be completed within 30 months. Wha

> Can you think of any acceptable ways of assigning credit for profits (or responsibility for costs) resulting from a project on which several departments worked?

> It is frequently suggested that items that will become potential problems later in the project life be decided up front, such as how to allocate revenues or dispose of project assets. How can this wisdom be used for project problems that cannot be fores

> What are the dangers of evaluating a project based on the reason(s) it was selected (such as being a competitive necessity), rather than the goals and objectives in the project proposal or contract?

> What steps might be taken to reduce the anxiety of project team members facing an audit?

> How should a committee determine which closure method to use?

> What might be some characteristics of a good closure manager?

> Under what circumstances is a detailed audit apt to be useful?

> Should the results of an evaluation or audit be shared with the project team?

> Would frequent brief evaluations be best, or would less frequent major evaluations be preferred?

> Who would make the best auditors: outside unbiased auditors or inside auditors who are more familiar with the organization, its procedures, and the project? Why?

> 1. Do you have any concerns about the audit process at ITS? If so, what are they and what changes to their auditing process would you recommend for the future? 2. Critique the audit report. What are its strengths and weaknesses? 3. What are the pros and

> What might make a project unsuccessful during the termination process?

> What are some reasons that a failing project might still not be terminated?

> If the actual termination of a project is a project in itself, how is it different from other projects?

> Referring to the “Evaluation Criteria” subsection of Section 8.1, how do you reconcile the difference between the goals and objectives of the project as given to the project manager in Chapter 1 and these criteria by which she or he is now judged?

> How should an audit team handle an audit where it is explicitly restricted from accessing certain materials and/or personnel?

> How should a PM reconcile the dual purposes of control: conserving resources and regulating results through the use of resources?

> When would spending and schedule variances be more informative than ratios? When would ratios be better?

> Why isn’t there an earned value reporting convention that allows progress on a task to be credited when the task is half completed? Wouldn’t this be more accurate than giving credit only when the task is fully completed?

> Explain how the earned value chart captures all three objectives of a project: performance, cost, and schedule.

> How might using electronic media to report project information lead to problems with control?

> 1. Prepare a Gantt chart with resources for the action plan Dr. Alison submitted. Begin this project on January 2. Prepare a resource calendar for Dr. Alison. 2. How would you handle Dr. Alison’s resource problem? 3. Given Dr. Alison’s availability, how

> How can the PM circumvent the problem that the monitoring system can only report on activities that have passed, thus telling the PM what has already gone wrong but not what will go wrong in the future?

> In such fields as psychology and sociology, verbal characterizations are frequently used to show the amount of some factor. How might one set up such a measure for a project management characteristic such as the “energy” of the project team?

> The chapter includes an example of a firm where the PM dispensed with all the planning formality because no one ever looked at it anyway. What did the PM think the purpose of such planning was in this firm? What should the firm do in the future to correc

> Logically, when using earned value data in the critical ratio formula, should the “budgeted” cost be the planned value or the earned value? What problems occur with each choice?

> If your project management software calculates earned value, or any other standard item to be reported, differently than the Project Management Institute suggests, should you deal with this matter in management reports? If so, how?

> Of all the rules for conducting meetings, the most difficult to enforce is the injunction against the weekly (or daily) standard project progress report (the “show and tell” meeting). Why is this, and under what circumstances do you think such meetings a

> Select a hypothetical project (e.g. designing and building a Web site, installing a new machine in an assembly line, or conducting a major inspection and repair of a passenger aircraft), and briefly describe an example of how each of the following types

> Identify situations where each of the following control tools might be useful: earned value charts, benchmarking, critical ratios, control charts, variance analysis, trend projections.

> Describe as many types of resource allocation problems as you can, based on the situations described in the chapter.

> 1. Draw a Gantt chart for the construction phase of the project. What is the completion date if construction starts in March? What is the completion date of the project if construction is started in November? 2. Why is it not possible to meet the schedul

> Goldratt suggested that to avoid the student syndrome,” it is a good idea to set the activity durations so short that there is a high probability that the task will not be finished on time. On the other hand, it has long been known that setting up people

> Projects A and B are both nearing completion. You are managing a super important project C that requires an immediate input of resource being used by both projects A and B, but is otherwise unavailable. Project A has an S-shaped life cycle. Project B’s l

> Linking a group of projects together with pseudoactivities creates a sort of superproject. What does this mean, and why would anyone want to do it?

> What purpose(s) might be served by using each of the following priority rules for allocating scarce resources? a. As late as possible. b. Shortest task duration time first. c. Minimum slack first.

> Discuss the advantages of “labor pools” in a project – oriented company. Are there any potential disadvantages with the use of pools?

> Describe the fundamental trade-offs when deciding whether or not to crash a project.

> It was noted that “the PM must manage the project team as well as the project.” Explain why.

> Given all the estimating done to determine the duration of project activities, what does it mean to say that “only after the fact do we know which path was actually the critical path”?

> In the calculation of variance for optimistic and pessimistic activity duration estimates made at the 95 or 90 percent level, the denominator of the fraction that approximated the standard deviation of the time distribution changes from the traditional (

> Which of the linkages in precedence diagramming do you think is most commonly used? Why?

> 1. Estimate the final construction budget. 2. What should they do about the work slowdown? 3. Create a Gantt chart with the revisions to the duration of the interiors step. When will the project be completed? 4. What is the importance of the fact that

> If this approach is not accurate, would the probability of completion considering the critical path alone be more accurate? How might you estimate the correct probability without resorting to simulation?

> When would it be accurate to determine the probability of project completion by multiplying the probabilities of all the paths through the network together? When would it not be accurate?

> How might you use the network approach to help prepare cost estimates?

> Why do you think scheduling has been the major focus of effort throughout the history of project management rather than performance or budgeting?

> Should a PM manage critical path tasks differently than noncritical path tasks?

> Contrast simulation to other risk analysis tools discussed in Chapter 3 such as decision tables, FMEA, logic charts, and contingency planning. What are its advantages and disadvantages? If you were to do an important risk analysis, which tool would you p

> So what went wrong with the assistant purchasing manager’s solution to the problem of having an inadequate supply of hard-to-obtain parts?

> As a senior manager, you oversee a project with a total estimated cost of 245 engineer-months of effort. Three months ago, however, the project had fallen behind by about 25 engineer-months so you authorized the hiring of three additional engineers, whic

> If a firm uses program budgeting for its projects, is an activity budget not needed? If it is, then of what value is the program budget?

> The chapter describes the problems of budgeting projects with S-shaped and J-shaped life cycle curves. What might be the budget problems if the life cycle of a project was just a straight diagonal line from 0 at project start to 100 percent at project co

> 1. What do you think the construction project manager should have done when the Director of Security stopped attending the project meetings? 2. Do you think it is an effective communications tool to send the construction project meeting minutes to the AL

> Given the tendency of accountants to allocate a project’s estimated costs evenly over the duration of the task, what danger might this pose for a project manager who faces the following situation? The major task for a $5 million project is budgeted at $3

> Consider the differences between Agile Project Management and the traditional waterfall approach summarized in Table 3-4. Which practices associated with the APM approach do you see as having the greatest potential to compliment the traditional waterfall

> Consider one or more projects (from this course or elsewhere) that you understand reasonably well. Identify situations where information learned from a later task of the project becomes important to an earlier task.

> 1. What do you think Alex should show to his boss, so that the boss would feel more comfortable letting Alex determine and monitor the project’s budget? 2. What should Alex say to persuade his boss?

> What should the CFOP do?

> If you were the President, how would you handle this problem?

> 1. What is the expected value of the project? 2. Simulate this project 1000 times and compute the average profit over the 1000 replications. Plot a histogram of the outcomes of the 100 replications. 3. How does the average of the simulation compare to th

> Construct a WBS for the project in Question 3.5.

> 1. The cost per square foot for the units is given in the text together with its standard deviation. What other areas of cost or revenue are likely to have cost uncertainty? 2. How would you suggest the team handle the issue of Dr. Link’s supposedly inf

> Contrast the traditional waterfall approach to project management with Agile Project Management.

> Why are R&D projects in a company’s Aggregate Project Plan significantly different in type from the firm’s Derivative, Breakthrough, and Platform projects?

> Draw a distinction between a project and a program. Why is the distinction important?

> What is “micromanagement?”

> Explain what is meant by the project manager having credibility.

> What is a virtual project?

> Why is the problem of allocating scarce resources to a set of projects similar to the problem of scheduling a job shop?

> When using AON networks, how does one indicate an event such as a project milestone?

> What is meant by “project slack”?

> You and your family and friends are planning to host a graduation party at the end of the school year. Construct a WBS for this party.

> What limitation associated with traditional project management techniques like Gantt charts and precedence diagrams does the Design Structure Matrix overcome?

> What are the important characteristics of project team members?

> If the calendar should not dictate reporting frequency, what should?

> Aside from the obvious benefits for project control, what other benefits might result from a good project reporting system?

> Explain the difference between a project that has a fixed delivery day and one that has a fixed limit on resource usage.

> In order to manage for overall project success, control must be exercised at the detailed work level for each aspect of project performance or no significant change will occur.” Does this mean that the PM should micromanage the project? If not, what does

> How might the existence of a change control system affect the behavior of a client, or a project team member, who desires to make a change in the project?

> Can you think of any circumstances where deferring conflict might be a wise course of action?