ch06

Defining activities

____ involves identifying the specific activities that the project team members and stakeholders must perform to produce the project deliverables.

schedule control

The goal of ____ is to know the status of the schedule, influence the factors that cause schedule changes, determine that the schedule has changed, and manage changes when they occur.

Tracking Gantt chart

Project managers often illustrate progress with a ____ showing key deliverables and activities.

External

____ dependencies involve relationships between project and non-project activities.

Developing the schedule

____ involves analyzing activity sequences, activity resource estimates, and activity duration estimates to create the project schedule.

Controlling the schedule

____ involves controlling and managing changes to the project schedule.

Fast tracking

____ involves doing activities in parallel that you would normally do in sequence.

Estimating activity durations

____ involves estimating the number of work periods that are needed to complete individual activities.

Sequencing activities

____ involves evaluating the reasons for dependencies and the different types of dependencies.

Sequencing activities

____ involves identifying and documenting the relationships between project activities.

late start date

The ____ for an activity is the latest possible time an activity might begin without delaying the project finish date.

PDM

The ____ is a network diagramming technique in which boxes represent activities.

activity attributes

The ____ provide(s) schedule-related information about each activity, such as predecessors, successors, logical relationships, leads and lags, resource requirements, constraints, imposed dates, and assumptions related to the activity.

activity list

The ____________________ is a tabulation of activities to be included on a project schedule

Theory of Constraints (TOC)

The ______________________________ is based on the fact that, like a chain with its weakest link, any complex system at any point in time often has only one aspect or constraint that limits its ability to achieve more of its goal.

duration estimates

The activity list, activity attributes, activity resource requirements, resource calendars, project scope statement, enterprise environmental factors, and organizational process assets all include information that affect ____.

longest; shortest

The critical path is the ____ path through a network diagram, and it represents the ____ time it takes to complete a project.

defining activities

The goal of ____ is to ensure that the project team has complete understanding of all the work they must do as part of the project scope so they can start scheduling the work.

resource breakdown structure

A ____ is a hierarchical structure that identifies the project's resources by category and type.

slipped milestone

A white diamond on the Tracking Gantt chart represents a(n) ____________________.

Tracking

A(n) ____________________ Gantt chart compares planned and actual project schedule information.

forward pass

A(n) ____________________ determines the early start and early finish dates for each activity.

critical path

A(n) ____________________ for a project is the series of activities that determine the earliest time by which the project can be completed.

network diagram

A(n) ____________________ is a schematic display of the logical relationships among, or sequencing of, project activities.

milestone

A(n) ____________________ on a project is a significant event that normally has no duration.

feeding buffers

Critical chain scheduling protects tasks on the critical chain from being delayed by using ____, which consist of additional time added before tasks on the critical chain that are preceded by non-critical-path tasks.

three-point estimate

Duration estimates are often provided as a discrete number, such as four weeks, or as a range, such as three to five weeks, or as a(n) ____________________.

finish-to-finish

In a ____ relationship, one task cannot finish before another finishes.

start-to-start

In a ____ relationship, the "from" activity cannot start until the "to" activity is started.

finish-to-start

In a ____ relationship, the "from" activity must finish before the "to" activity can start.

node

In a network diagram, a(n) ____________________ is simply the starting and ending point of an activity.

start-to-finish

In a(n) ____________________ relationship, the "from" activity must start before the "to" activity can be finished.

activity list

In the activity definition process, the project team should review the ____________________ and activity attributes with project stakeholders before moving on to the next step in project time management.

month

Managers like to see progress made on projects approximately each ____________________.

templates

Many project management software programs come with ____________________ or sample files.

right

On a network diagram, all arrowheads should face toward the ____.

draft schedule

One of the first reality checks on scheduling that a project manager should make is to review the ____________________ usually included in the project charter.

controlling the schedule

Outputs from ____ include work performance measurements, organizational process assets updates, change requests, project management plan updates, and project document updates.

estimating activity durations

Outputs of ______________________________ include activity duration estimates and project document updates.

red

Project management software highlights the critical path in ____ on a network diagram.

project schedules

Project managers must use discipline to control ____.

schedule control

The main outputs of ____________________ include work performance measurements, organizational process assets updates, such as lessons-learned reports related to schedule control, change requests, project management plan updates, and project document updates.

defining activities

The main outputs of the ____ process are an activity list, activity attributes, and milestone list.

developing the schedule

The ultimate goal of ____ is to create a realistic project schedule that provides a basis for monitoring project progress for the time dimension of the project.

six

There are ____ main processes involved in project time management.

SMART

To make milestones meaningful, some people use the ____________________ criteria to help define them.

Mandatory

____ dependencies are inherent in the nature of the work being performed on a project.

Discretionary

____ dependencies are sometimes referred to as soft logic and should be used with care since they may limit later scheduling options.

Critical chain scheduling

____ is a method of scheduling that considers limited resources when creating a project schedule and includes buffers to protect the project completion date.

Critical path analysis

____ is a network diagramming technique used to predict total project duration.

Crashing

____ is a technique for making cost and schedule trade-offs to obtain the greatest amount of schedule compression for the least incremental cost.

Total slack

____ is the amount of time an activity can be delayed from its early start without delaying the planned project finish date.

Free slack

____ is the amount of time an activity can be delayed without delaying the early start date of any immediately following activities.

Bursts

____ occur when two or more activities follow a single node.

Gantt charts

____ provide(s) a standard format for displaying project schedule information by listing project activities and their corresponding start and finish dates in a calendar format.

Defining activities

____ results in supporting detail to document important product information as well as assumptions and constraints related to specific activities.

Parkinson's Law

____ states that work expands to fill the time allowed.

PERT

____ use(s) probabilistic time estimates—duration estimates based on using optimistic, most likely, and pessimistic estimates of activity durations—instead of one specific or discrete duration estimate.

Dummy activities

____________________ have no duration and no resources but are occasionally needed on AOA network diagrams to show logical relationships between activities

Effort

____________________ is the number of workdays or work hours required to complete a task.

Time

____________________ is the one variable in project scheduling that has the least amount of flexibility.

Multitasking

____________________ occurs when a resource works on more than one task at a time.

Murphy's Law

____________________ states that if something can go wrong, it will.

Project time management

_________________________ involves the processes required to ensure timely completion of a project.

Estimating activity resources

______________________________ involves estimating how many people, equipment, and materials a project team should use to perform project activities.