CIS 348 / Week 4 / Chapter 4 / Exercise / Lab / Quiz / Assessment

The steps involved in the critical chain process

1. Construct the schedule network diagram using activity duration estimates (you'll use non-conservative estimates in this method). 2. Define dependencies. 3. Define constraints. 4. Calculate critical path. 5. Enter resource availability into the schedule. 6. Recalculate for the critical chain.

You are a project manager for Move It Now trucking company. Your company specializes in moving household goods across the city or across the country. Your project involves upgrading the nationwide computer network for the company. Your lead engineer has given you the following estimates for a critical path activity: 60 days most likely, 72 days pessimistic, 48 days optimistic. What is the standard deviation?

4

You are a project manager for Move It Now trucking company. Your company specializes in moving household goods across the city or across the country. Your project involves upgrading the nationwide computer network for the company. Your lead engineer has given you the following estimates for a critical path activity: 60 days most likely, 72 days pessimistic, 48 days optimistic. What is the weighted average or expected value?

60

You are a project manager for Picture Shades, Inc. Your company manufactures window shades that have replicas of Renaissance-era paintings for hotel chains. Picture Shades is taking its product to the home market, and you're managing the new project. It will offer its products at retail stores as well as on its website. You're developing the project schedule for this undertaking. Looking at the following graph, which path is the critical path? /-b(7)-----c(5)----\ / \ a(10)--------d(14)----e(2)----h(8) \ / / \-f(7)------g(6)---/-------/

A-D-E-H

Use the following graphic to answer this question. If the duration of activity B was changed to 10 days and the duration of activity G was changed to 9 days, which path is the critical path? /-b(7)-----c(5)----\ / \ a(10)--------d(14)----e(2)----h(8) \ / / \-f(7)------g(6)---/-------/

A-F-G-E-H

You're working on a project that requires resources with expertise in the areas of hospitality management and entertainment. You're preparing your project schedule network diagram and know that you will use only finish-to-start dependencies. Which of the following diagramming methods does this describe?

ADM

When are milestones typically created?

At the end of each project phase

Which of the following processes is not a part of the Project Time Management knowledge area?

Control Communications

Adding members to the team to squeeze the schedule of the project is known as:

Crashing

You are the project manager working on a research project for a new drug treatment. Your preliminary project schedule runs past the due date for a federal grant application. The manager of the R&D department has agreed to release two resources to work on your project to meet the federal grant application date. This is an example of:

Crashing.

You are the project manager for Changing Tides video games. You have gathered the inputs for the Estimate Activity Durations process. Which of the following tools and techniques will you employ to produce the outputs for this process?

Expert judgment, analogous estimating, parametric estimating, three-point estimating, group decision-making techniques, and reserve analysis

Which of the following terms is used for a schedule compression technique where two activities that were previously scheduled to start sequentially start at the same time?

Fast tracking

Which logical relationship does the PDM use most often?

Finish-to-start

You have been hired as a contract project manager for Grapevine Vineyards. Grapevine wants you to design an Internet wine club for its customers. Customers must register before being allowed to order wine over the Internet so that legal age can be established. You know that the module to verify registration must be written and tested using data from Grapevine's existing database. This new module cannot be tested until the data from the existing system is loaded. This is an example of which of the following?

Hard logic

Which of the following statements is true regarding the critical path?

It's the duration of all tasks with zero or negative float.

Which of the following indicates a delay in the successor activity?

Lag

Which of the following terms is used to describe a major deliverable used to measure project progress?

Milestone

You are the project manager for Design Your Web Site, Inc. Your company is designing the website for a national grocery store chain. You have your activity list in hand and are ready to diagram the activity dependencies using the PDM technique. Which of the following statements is true?

PDM is also the AON diagramming method and it uses one time estimate.

Which of the following estimations is described in the statement below? "It uses a statistical relationship between historical data and other variables to calculate an estimate for activity parameters, such as cost, budget, and duration."

Parametric

You have been hired as a contract project manager for Grapevine Vineyards. Grapevine wants you to design an Internet wine club for its customers. One of the activities for this project is the installation and testing of several new servers. You know from past experience it takes about 16 hours per server to accomplish this task. Since you're installing 10 new servers, you estimate this activity to take 160 hours. Which of the estimating techniques have you used?

Parametric estimating

Your project's primary constraint is quality. To make certain the project team members don't feel too pressed for time and to avoid schedule risk, you decide to use which of the following activity estimating tools?

Reserve analysis

Which of the following types of chart is a visual diagram of what resources will be utilized in the project deliverables?

Resource breakdown structure

Which of the following charts displays the amount of time that a resource is scheduled to work on over a predetermined and specific time period?

Resource histogram chart

You are the project manager for Changing Tides video games. You have produced a project schedule network diagram and have updated the activity list. Which process have you just finished?

The Sequence Activities process, which identifies all the activity dependencies

All of the following statements describe the activity list except which one?

The activity list is an extension of and a component of the WBS.

If you know the expected value is 500 and the standard deviation is 12, you can say with approximately a 95 percent confidence rating which of the following?

The activity will take from 476 to 524 days.

What is one of the problems with project management software?

The project manager manages the software instead of the project.

If your expected value is 110 and the standard deviation is 12, which of the following is true?

There is approximately a 68 percent chance of completing this activity in 98 to 122 days.

You are a project manager for Picture Shades, Inc. Your company manufactures window shades that have replicas of Renaissance-era paintings for hotel chains. Picture Shades is taking its product to the home market, and you're managing the new project. It will offer its products at retail stores as well as on its website. You're developing the project schedule for this undertaking and have determined the critical path. Which of the following statements is true?

You calculated the early and late start dates, the early and late finish dates, and float times for all activities.

You are the project manager for Rivera Gourmet Adventure Vacations. Rivera combines the wonderful tastes of great gourmet food with outdoor adventure activities. Your project involves installing a new human resources software system. Your stakeholders understand this is a large undertaking and that you might experience some schedule slippage. Jason, the database analyst working on this project, is overallocated. He is critical to the success of the project and you don't want to burn him out by overscheduling him. Which of the following actions should you take?

You should use resource leveling to balance out resource assignments.

The longest path through the project that is made up of activities with zero float is known as:

critical path.

The outputs of the Define Activities process

• Activity list: Contains all the schedule activities that will be performed for the project, with a scope of work description of each activity. • Activity attributes: Describe the characteristics of the activities and are an extension of the activity list. • Milestone lists: Record the major accomplishments of the project and mark the completion of major deliverables.

The types of logical relationships

• Finish-to-Start (FS): Says that the predecessor—or from activity—must finish before the successor—or to activity—can start. • Finish-to-Finish (FF): Says that the predecessor activity must finish before the successor activity finishes. • Start-to-Start (SS): Says that the predecessor activity depends on starting before the successive activity can start. • Start-to-Finish (SF): Says that the predecessor activity must start before the successor activity can finish.

The types of dependencies

• Mandatory dependencies: Also known as hard logic or hard dependencies, and are defined by the type of work being performed. • Discretionary dependencies: Also known as preferred logic, soft logic, or preferential logic, and are defined by the project team. • External dependencies: Impacts project activities, and are defined between non-project activities and project activities. • Internal dependencies: Used in projects in which activities and tasks identify the amount of work to be done.

The resource optimization techniques

• Resource leveling: Attempts to balance out the resource assignments to get tasks completed without overloading the individual. • Resource smoothing: Accommodates resource availability by modifying activities within their float times without changing the critical path or project end date. • Reverse resource allocation scheduling: Requires the resources to be scheduled from the end date of the project to assign the key resource at the correct time.

The inputs of the Estimate Activity Resources process

• Schedule management plan • Activity list • Enterprise environmental factors • Organizational process assets • Activity attributes • Resource calendars • Risk register • Activity cost estimates • Enterprise environmental factors • Organizational process assets

The inputs of the Define Activities process

• Schedule management plan • Scope baseline (including deliverables, constraints, and assumptions) • Enterprise environmental factors (project management information systems, organizational culture, published commercial databases) • Organizational process assets (existing guidelines and policies, templates, lessons learned knowledge base, and historical information)

The schedule management elements

• Schedule model development: Refers to the methodologies and tools you'll use to develop the schedule. • Accuracy levels: Describe the rounding you'll use when deriving activity duration estimates. • Units of measure: Concern activity duration estimates as well as schedule activities. • Control thresholds: Refer to the level of variance the schedule can experience before you take action. • Performance measurement rules: Refer to where and what types of measures you'll use to verify schedule performance.