PM Chapter 11

Your next project consists of 5 consecutive 10-day activities, each estimated by a different worker in your organization. You have all secretly added your own safety margin of 4 days into your estimates and you watch in horror as the project manager whips out his copy of Critical Chain and slams it on the table midway through their first project meeting. "I'm taking your buffers and making them my own," he bellows. You recoil from this news and do some quick mental arithmetic. Now that you know the project manager is a Goldratt disciple, you know that the new project buffer will be:

10 days

Your next project consists of 10 consecutive 8-day activities, each estimated by a different worker in your organization. Note that the estimators have not yet added any buffer to the 8-day figure. Your organizational culture dictates that you add your own safety margin of 30% into your estimates. The new project manager has just completed an excellent course in project management offered at the local university. When the first project meeting begins, he dazzles you with his wit and sophistication. You are considerably less charmed when he reveals that he has an exciting new technique for managing projects. He adheres to critical chain project management ideas and plans to create an overall project safety buffer after trimming the safety buffers from each of the 10 activities. How much closer has the project deadline moved?

12 Days

Your next project consists of 8 consecutive 8-day activities, each estimated by a different worker in your organization. Your organizational culture dictates that you add your own safety margin of 3 days into your estimates. Unbeknownst to you, the project manager has recently converted to a critical chain project management view. The project manager knows perfectly well what sorts of games are played with activity estimates and she knows exactly how much activity padding takes place. What will the overall project safety margin be once the project manager reviews your estimates and makes the project schedule?

12 Days

The sprint portion of the Agile Project Management process is targeted to last:

2.5 plus or minus 1.5 weeks.

A key element of extreme programming is:

A hierarchical management structure.

In Agile Project Management, the term "scrum" refers to:

A meeting.

CCPM advocates performing all non-critical activities:

As late as possible.

Agile Project Management is well-suited for instances where

Customer needs are well-defined.

A resource constraint can be exploited using CCPM methodology by:

Determining the priority among projects for access to the drum.

A system-wide constraint is called a:

Drum

Keith welds a one-fourth-inch diameter ball bearing and a three-eighths-inch diameter ball bearing on each end of an eighth-inch diameter cylinder. Sure, the work is tedious, but he knows he's doing his part keeping this country running and lining his employer's pockets with sweet cash. His employer hopes to speed up this activity by hiring another skilled worker, and in doing so will:

Elevate the system constraint.

Successful implementation of CCPM depends on first:

Examining and changing the culture of the project organization.

ABC project organization has one workstation that is capable of generating the drawings that their clients study before accepting ABC's bid. ABC is currently in the midst of three proposal projects and knows which proposed project will be most profitable and which will be least profitable. The workstation is scheduled so that the most profitable project's work is done first and the least profitable project work is done last. This is an example of:

Exploiting a constraint.

Drum buffers are:

Extra safety that is applied to a project immediately before the use of the constrained resource.

A product backlog is the final list of what is needed to complete the project.

FALSE

A scrum is one iteration of the Agile planning and executing cycle, that is, the actual "work" being done.

FALSE

Agile project management features a logical series of steps that occur sequentially, each one is begun only when its predecessor is complete.

FALSE

An important element in critical chain scheduling is to change from a late-finish (procrastination) approach to an early-start approach.

FALSE

Extreme programming advocates a large development staff, several times the number of programmers than would appear in a traditional software project, since the objective is to deliver the project quickly.

FALSE

Once the organization elevates its constraint, its system has no constraint.

FALSE

The critical chain is usually the same as the critical path.

FALSE

The one element that Agile shares with traditional project management in a software development environment is that all testing is done at the very end of the project.

FALSE

The term capacity constraint buffer refers to a safety margin separating different tasks scheduled to use the same resource.

FALSE

An important departure from traditional project management is that critical chain project management logic:

Factors in the effects of resource contention.

The buffers supplied to non-critical paths in critical chain project management are called:

Feeder buffers.

Which of these is difficult when Agile Project Management is used?

Fixed-price contracts between customers and the project organization

The first step in TOC methodology is to:

Identify the constraint.

Which statement about critical chain project management is BEST?

In a multi-project environment where resources are shared, it is impossible to avoid multitasking.

A product backlog:

Is a constantly evolving list.

Which adjective is most appropriate for Agile Project Management?

Iterative

When choosing the most viable solution to resource conflict issues, the BEST option is the one that:

Minimizes total network schedule disruption.

Wayne and Garth are engaged in XP and are writing code while sitting at one terminal. In XP terminology, they are engaged in:

Pair programming.

In Agile Project Management, a sprint backlog is essentially a:

Punch list.

Wayne and Garth are engaged in XP and are constantly streamlining the design and improving the code. In XP terminology, they are engaged in:

Refactoring.

All of these happen during the sprint phase EXCEPT:

Sprint goal modification.

Which of these numerical (quantity) comparisons is CORRECT?

Sprint time box > Project duration

The customers articulate the necessary features of a software project through:

Stories.

Subcontractor deliveries are difficult to schedule with the critical chain project methodology because:

Subcontractors routinely operate according to calendar delivery dates.

XYZ project organization has one workstation that is capable of generating the drawings that their clients study before accepting XYZ's bid. XYZ is currently in the midst of three proposal projects and knows exactly when it will need to use the workstation. All other work to be done, both before and after the workstation is used, is scheduled such that it flows to the workstation and keeps it busy. Resources used after this step are less critical; so while the subsequent work and resources are important, they aren't viewed with the same reverence as the workstation. This is an example of:

Subordinating a system.

A feeder buffer is a buffer that is created for a non-critical path activity.

TRUE

Agile project management is well-suited for the case where requirements change in the middle of project development.

TRUE

Refactoring is the continuous process of streamlining the design and improving code; not waiting until final testing to edit and fix code for a software project.

TRUE

The Central Limit Theorem states that if a number of probability distributions are summed, the variance of the sum equals the sum of the variances of individual distributions.

TRUE

The legal department is needed to review all contracts a project organization enters. The legal department is continually swamped with work and all other departments find themselves waiting on legal before they can begin their work. Legal is the drum for this organization.

TRUE

Which of the following statement is BEST?

The critical chain requires that all resource leveling be done before the critical chain can be identified.

Which of these is a drawback for Agile Project Management?

The frequent rescoping of a predictable project becomes wasted expense as it won't deliver added benefits.

Which statement about critical chain methodology is BEST?

The total safety buffer for aggregated activity durations is smaller than the sum of safety buffers for individual activity durations at any likely level estimate.

The Central Limit Theorem says that if a number of probability distributions are summed:

The variance of the sum equals the sum of the variances.

Which of the following statements about CCPM activity networks is CORRECT?

There are no milestones in the CCPM activity network.

The waterfall project development process is well-suited for instances where:

Time constraints exist.

In order to resolve a resource conflict, it is advisable to:

Work backwards from the end of the project.

Traditional, highly structured approaches to planning and managing projects are recognized as being less effective for ________ than Agile Project Management.

software development