Project Management Final

what is the assumed default time available in MSP?

1 day of duration has 8 hours, if a resource is assigned, MSP will use up to 8 hours of resource time for work or effort- both default settings may be changed

Given that task A will use three carpenters and have duration of six days, task A requires _______________ labor days of work

18

which system has 99% of the work completed in the testing phase

5 complete system

Scope Statement

A document that clearly defines the business need, benefits of the project, objectives, deliverables, and key milestones. A scope statement may change during the project, but it shouldn't be done without the approval of the project manager and the sponsor.

CLEAR goals

A newer method for setting goals that takes into consideration the environment of today's fast-paced businesses. Collaborative - The goal should encourage employees to work together. Limited - They should be limited in scope and time to keep it manageable. Emotional - Goals should tap into the passion of employees and be something they can form an emotional connection to. This can optimize the quality of work. Appreciable - Break larger goals into smaller tasks that can be quickly achieved. Refinable - As new situations arise, be flexible and refine goals as needed.

Clarify differences in types of schedules: CPM - AON and AOA PERT Gantt

AON- activity on node model- nodes are activities, arrows (arc) indicate the precedence relationships AOA- used frequently in practical, non-optimization situations AOA is used in optimization settings CPM- determine the "critical path", the minimum completion time for a project A PERT chart is a project management tool used to schedule, organize, and coordinate tasks within a project. PERT stands for Program Evaluation Review Technique, a methodology developed by the U.S. Navy in the 1950s to manage the Polaris submarine missile program. A Gantt chart is a horizontal bar chart developed as a production control tool in 1917 by Henry L. Gantt, an American engineer and social scientist. Frequently used in project management, a Gantt chart provides a graphical illustration of a schedule that helps to plan, coordinate, and track specific tasks in a project.

What is the heuristic technique for calculating schedule duration?

Activities that are on-going are resource users. Those that are stopping are resource contributors, while those that are waiting are resource demanders. Activities are assigned resources based on the minimum slack rule. If insufficient resources are available, non-critical activities can be either slowed or stopped to free up more resources. This heuristic, like others, makes the simplifying assumption that all like resources are fungible, that is completely interchangeable. This is of course is a highly suspect assumption.

what is earned value?

An overall performance measurement that assumes 50 % of the value is earned when the task is 50% done and 50% at task completion. Too many reports cause information overload

In earned value analysis, the _______________ is computed as the earned value minus the actual cost of work performed.

Cost variance

Why would you crash a project?

Crashing is the process of attempting to shorten project activities and in turn the overall project by assigning additional resources. To determine if crashing makes sense, a cost/time slope is calculated for each activity that can be expedited (crashed). The formula looks like this: slope = crash cost - normal cost/crash time-normal time This formula allows the analyst to determine the relative cost of crashing each activity. The formula implies that the activities can always be crashed in one-day increments, which may not be true. The formula also does not address the risks that may be associated with crashing.

what can bias the control system?

Effective controls are simple and easy to use. But too much weight on easy to measure factors

what is an effective method of expediting a schedule?

Fast-Tracking - Another way to expedite a project is to overlap activities. In a design to production project, one way to accomplish this is to overlap the design and production phases. In other words the design is not complete when construction starts. Research has shown that this can be an effective method of expediting.

How do you address the sponsor's request to add scope to an approved project? How does too much control inhibit creative activities?

Formal Change Control

risk management plan

Identify all foreseeable risks. Common risks include unrealistic time and cost estimates, customer review cycle, budget cuts, changing requirements, and lack of committed resources.

project objectives

Measuring if a project is on schedule and budget is an indication if the project will meet stakeholder objectives

what are good measures for schedule status

Milestone completion or Gate Review -monthly planned v actual costs are good cost status measures -risk and changes are good sources of things to be measured - quality can be measured by measuring the number of performance requirements which pass testing

effort and cost trackng

PMs will account for the effort and cost of resources to see if the budget is on track. This type of tracking informs if a project will meet its completion date based on current performance.

What are the 5 phases of project schedule?

Phase 1: Project Initiation - This should begin in the Enterprise Strategic and Tactical planning process. Ultimately the enterprise program management of the portfolio of projects.This is the start of the project, and the goal of this phase is to define the project at a broad level. This phase usually begins with a business case. This is when you will research whether the project is feasible and if it should be undertaken. If feasibility testing needs to be done, this is the stage of the project in which that will be completed. Phase 2: Project Planning This phase is key to successful project management and focuses on developing a roadmap that everyone will follow. This phase typically begins with setting goals. Two of the more popular methods for setting goals are S.M.A.R.T. and CLEAR: Phase 3: Project Execution This is the phase where deliverables are developed and completed. This often feels like the meat of the project since a lot is happening during this time, like status reports and meetings, development updates, and performance reports. A "kick-off" meeting usually marks the start of the Project Execution phase where the teams involved are informed of their responsibilities. Phase 4: Project Performance/Monitoring This is all about measuring project progression and performance and ensuring that everything happening aligns with the project management plan. Project managers will use key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine if the project is on track. A PM will typically pick two to five of these KPIs to measure project performance: Phase 5: Project Closure This phase represents the completed project. Contractors hired to work specifically on the project are terminated at this time. Valuable team members are recognized. Some PMs even organize small work events for people who participated in the project to thank them for their efforts. Once a project is complete, a PM will often hold a meeting - sometimes referred to as a "post mortem" - to evaluate what went well in a project and identify project failures. This is especially helpful to understand lessons learned so that improvements can be made for future projects.

If CSI is less than 1, it is indicative of a(n)

Problem

Most important phase of a project - short answer

Project planning Without proper scope planning, a project has a poor chance of success. This phase is key to successful project management and focuses on developing a roadmap that everyone will follow. At this time, roles and responsibilities are clearly defined, so everyone involved knows what they are accountable for. It involves identifying the cost, quality, available resources, and a realistic timetable. Documents clearly define business need and ensures project will stay on track

Why and how would you report the following: - schedule status - budget status - Risks - Issues - Quality

Reports can be divided into three types: routine, exception, and special analysis. Routine reports are those that come out periodically or to some other predetermined schedule. Exception reports support instances of decision-making and are distributed to the participants in that decision. Exception reports may be issued when a decision is made on an exception basis and it is desirable to inform other managers as well as to document the decision. Special analysis reports are used to disseminate the results of special studies or problem reports.

What are resources assigned to? and What does this include?

Resources are assigned to tasks and include labor hours, equipment and parts

Prepare a Raci Matrix with Resources: Board of Directors, president, CFO, Director of marketing, director of production, director of HR and Director of IT Functions: Scope, business and tech requirements, procurement, training new employees, user acceptance testing, marketing plan for auto tires, processes for auto tire, plant and equipment for auto tire

Responsible, Accountable, Consult & Inform matrix. Responsible: The person who does the work to achieve the task. They have responsibility for getting the work done or decision made. As a rule this is one person; examples might be a business analyst, application developer or technical architect. Accountable: The person who is accountable for the correct and thorough completion of the task. This must be one person and is often the project executive or project sponsor. This is the role that responsible is accountable to and approves their work. Consulted: The people who provide information for the project and with whom there is two-way communication. This is usually several people, often subject matter experts. Informed: The people kept informed of progress and with whom there is one-way communication. These are people that are affected by the outcome of the tasks, so need to be kept up-to-date.

What is the PM's role to guard physical and financial assets of the company?

Safeguard all assets through physical asset controls, and financial asset controls

What is information overload?

The PMIS makes it easy to overwhelm the participants with data.

what is resource loading

The amount of resource required by a task during a specific time frame is its resource loading. This information can be easily displayed using tools like Microsoft® Project.

time limited projects

The project must be finished on time with resources applied as necessary.

resource limited projects

The project must stay within set resource limits and the schedule is allowed to drift as necessary.

What are go/not go controls?

These controls determine if a predetermined condition has been met and, if so, allow the process to proceed. One challenge in applying this type of control is determining how precisely the predetermined condition must be met to allow the "go." Go/no-go controls should be linked to project milestones, as opposed to arbitrary schedules (e.g. every quarter) to ensure that decisions are made with meaningful data at significant points in the project's schedule.

quality deliverables

This determines if specific task deliverables are being met

Communication Plan

This is of particular importance if your project involves outside stakeholders. Develop the proper messaging around the project and create a schedule of when to communicate with team members based on deliverables and milestones.

SMART goals

This method helps ensure that the goals have been thoroughly vetted. It also provides a way to clearly understand the implications of the goal-setting process. Specific - To set specific goals, answer the following questions: who, what, where, when, which, and why. Measurable - Create criteria that you can use to measure the success of a goal. Attainable - Identify the most important goals and what it will take to achieve them. Realistic - You should be willing and able to work toward a particular goal. Timely - Create a timeframe to achieve the goal.

project performance

This monitors changes in the project. It takes into consideration the amount and types of issues that arise and how quickly they are addressed. These can occur from unforeseen hurdles and scope changes.

The use of _______________ activity time estimates may reduce the chance that crashing the project will be needed.

Three Probabilistic

what is resource leveling

Typically the first resource-loading pattern coming from a CPM schedule has problems. Either the peak load exceeds the availability or the variation in load is too extreme from time period to time period. In many cases, both problems will occur simultaneously. Resource leveling attempts to solve these problems by shifting activities within their slack. There are many advantages to a level resource plan including improved morale and reduced administrative costs. Project that have more than a few tasks are very difficult to level manually and benefit from the use of tools like Microsoft® Project.

What is scope creep?

a natural tendency of the client and project team to try to improve the original plan. Formal change control is the process to manage scope. PMs must prepare a new schedule and cost analysis to help decision makers approve or disapprove a proposed change.

what is needed for any factor to be measured?

a performance criteria standards and data collection procedures

what does project status measure?

a variance between plan and actual for schedule, cost, scope, and quality.

Resource Assignment

assigning available resources in the most effective and economical manor, projects need resources and resources are scarce. The task lies with PM to determine propr timing

is a management approach that may be used to make comparisons to "best in class" practices across organizations.

benchmarking

In earned value analysis, BAC refers to the

budget at completion

What documents are input to a status meeting?

budget, schedule, risks, issues, contracts from vendors and status reports

A person with organizational clout who takes on personal responsibility for the successful completion of a project for the organization is referred to as a(n)

champion

Thamhain (2013) found that __________ was/were not only the most frequent risk class but also had the most impact on project performance.

changing project requirements

Excessive computer involvement with computer activity replacing project management; loss of touch with the project and its realities, is referred to as

computer simulation

Change control systems, in some industries, are part of a firm's

configuration management system

____ times result from an attempt to expedite the activity by the application of additional resources.

crash

what does process control measure

create a confidence interval +/- around a baseline measure - example the confidence interval of a machine part could be + / - .005 millimeter

control systems tend to inhibit ________________

creative activities

Using Goldratt's meaning of the word "dependent," the activities of a project can be ordered into paths based on their resource dependencies as well as on their technological precedence requirements. The longest of these paths of sequentially time-dependent activities is known as the

critical chain

The ___________ is calculated as (actual progress/scheduled progress) × (budgeted cost/actual cost)

critical ratio

Scope creep can be caused by the

customer and team members

the most common type of control system is the __________, or steering control

cybernetic

Three types of control processes

cybernetic (a steering control, which is automatic), go/no go, and post control (examples - project objectives, milestones, gates, and budgets, the final report and recommendation for performance and process improvement.)

_ can often give the project manager early warning signals of potential problems in a project and help understand the relationships of individual tasks to one another and to the overall project.

detailed and timely reports

With respect to financial controls, courts will require the practice of __________ regarding financial controls, practices, and record-keeping.

due diligence

A(n) __________ is a monitoring system that forewarns the project manager if trouble arises.

early warning system

A majority of uncertainty has its source in systems that lie outside the project, in its

environment

In earned value analysis, EAC refers to the

estimated cost at completion

Unfortunately, it is common to focus monitoring activities on data that are easily _______________ but not necessarily important.

gathered

The __________ controls take the form of testing to see if some specific precondition has been met.

go / no-go

Which control process do PM's primarily use

go/no go criteria. Example, task completion, document approval, test completion.

what are data collection procedures?

how you are getting data - emails, forms, formalized procedure

what is the first step in setting up a monitoring process ?

identify key factors to be controlled

With respect to project scheduling, _______________ is the amount of work waiting to be processed because there is a shortage of some resource.

in-process inventory

____ are used when some aspect of system performance cannot be measured directly.

indicators

A(n) _______________ can be used to deal with issues of honesty related to the monitoring system.

internal audit

If schedule, cost, and specification (scope) are all fixed.....

it is unlikely that the PM can succeed. Generally, at least one of the three must be flexible. The PM may also encounter system-constrained tasks that need fixed amounts of time and resource. No tradeoff of time or resource is possible with these.

What is the purpose of Project Control

keeps the project on the original plan and when there is a variance between plan and actual it help bring it into alignment with the plan. Control begins with project start and ends with project completion. This is a closed loop system.

Assume two activities, printing and binding. Printing is a predecessor of binding. If printing is _______________, then binding will start late by whatever amount of lateness is bequeathed to it by printing.

late

For all but __________ changes, a risk identification and analysis should be performed.

minor

Vague or incomplete project requirements is an example of which telltale sign that a project is in trouble?

muddy waters

The cybernetic control system that acts to reduce deviations from standard is called a

negative feedback loop

when you expedite a project, what often happens?

often leads to implementing a crash plan, when resources are added to the project to get it done sooner - problems and complications - use extra resources to catch up

With few exceptions, the control of projects is exercised through

people

_______ are directed towards improving chances for future projects to meet their goals, Postproject controls or reviews are examples of

postcontrols

________ are seen as much the same as a report card.

postcontrols

Once the project is complete, PMs still have a few tasks to complete. They will need to create a ________ of things that didn't get accomplished during the project and work with team members to complete them

project punchlist

The earned value rule that divides the actual task time-to-date by the scheduled time for the task to calculate percent complete is called the _______________ rule.

proportionality

When doing multiproject scheduling, each individual project is represented by a network of tasks. We can form a single network of these projects by connecting them with dummy activities and/or

pseudoactivities

The process review focuses on the process of __________ outcomes rather than the outcomes per se.

reaching

When performing control, project managers need to be attentive to

regulation and conservation equally.

what is ordinal ranking?

relies on a subjective numerical ratings. Example the 1st priority is to complete the project on schedule, within budget and to the quality standard.

Three important parameters used to assess the effectiveness of a scheduling system include schedule slippage, in-process inventory, and

resource utilization

When we change technology, we may also be changing the level of _______________ in carrying out the activity.

risk time and money

When comparing raw data, be sure to use the _________ collection period.

same

____ controls are usually viewed as helpful rather than as a source of unwelcome pressure if the controllers perceive themselves as able to perform inside the prescribed limits.

steering

Which of the following describes a situation where priorities are assigned to activities according to some rule not associated with task length, slack, or resource requirements?

student's syndrome

Ordinal rankings of performance are examples of a _______________ type of measure

subjective numeric rating

A status report that is vague or contains overly optimistic language like "very soon" or "marginal increase" in costs is referred to as

suspicious

what is monitoring and what data do you want to/not want to monitor?

taking in data and reporting on it to people, measuring schedule ( time), cost (budget) and scope - monitor directly related to these things

which system of measuring events has a 9 of 10 performance criteria passed testing?

tally system

What is always a critical resource in projects?

time

When collecting raw project data, it is important to make sure that all data are collected from sources that operate on the same _______________ and with the same rules for data collection.

time intervals

what are mistakes in monitoring?

to gather information which has little or no probability of changing significantly between collection periods. Collecting data which rarely changes is an error.

What is the Project Manager's primary function?

to manage human resources and guard physical and financial assets of the company. Physical assets include scheduling maintenance, repair, and or replacement of project equipment.

is the amount of one factor that must be sacrificed in order to achieve more or less of another factor.

trade-off

What does the WBS describe?

what is being done, when and the planned level of resources usage.

What are the most common priority rules?

• As Soon As Possible - This is the general rule for scheduling tasks using CPM. • As Late As Possible - This rule attempts to delay activities as much as possible to defer their use of resources. • Shortest Task First - This rule sorts the competing tasks by duration and assigns resources starting at the short end of the list. This rule maximizes the number of activities to be completed in any given time period. • Most Resources First - This rule sorts the competing tasks by the amount of resource required and assigns resources starting at the highest end of the list. This favors tasks with high resource consumption under the assumption that they are more important. • Minimum Slack First - This rule sorts the competing tasks by the amount of slack they currently have and assigns resources starting at the low end of the list. This rule favors activities on or close to being on the critical path. Tasks that are delayed lose slack and so have a relatively higher priority in the next time period. • Most Critical Followers - This rule sorts the competing tasks by the number (count) of critical path activities that follow each one. Resources are assigned starting at the high end of the list. • Most Successors - This rule sorts the competing tasks by the number (count) of successors that follows each one. Resources are assigned starting at the high end of the list. • Arbitrary - Resources are assigned in some other way. This may involve a value judgment like which customer is perceived as most important.

The purpose of control is:

• Regulate results • Stewardship of organizational assets • Human resource control • Financial resource control

According to the PMBOK, the elements of a project lifecycle should define:

• What work must be accomplished • What deliverables must be generated and reviewed • Who must be involved • How to control and approve each phase