ch06
Controlling the schedule
____ involves controlling and managing changes to the project schedule.
milestone
A(n) ____________________ on a project is a significant event that normally has no duration.
Estimating activity resources
______________________________ involves estimating how many people, equipment, and materials a project team should use to perform project activities.
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.
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.
External
____ dependencies involve relationships between project and non-project activities.
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) ____________________.
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.
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.
Murphy's Law
____________________ states that if something can go wrong, it will.
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 ____.
Tracking Gantt chart
Project managers often illustrate progress with a ____ showing key deliverables and activities.
Developing the schedule
____ involves analyzing activity sequences, activity resource estimates, and activity duration estimates to create the project schedule.
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.
network diagram
A(n) ____________________ is a schematic display of the logical relationships among, or sequencing of, project activities.
right
On a network diagram, all arrowheads should face toward the ____.
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.
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.
Project time management
_________________________ involves the processes required to ensure timely completion of a project.