Contemporary Management 9th Edition Gareth Jones, Jennifer George - Solutions

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What is the purpose of an order of magnitude cost estimate?
Which method of estimating can produce the most accurate estimate: parametric or bottom-up?
What are some examples of supporting detail pertaining to cost estimates?
What does the Agile term “shift left” mean?
What can be used to determine whether a vendor’s bid is reasonable?
Define value engineering.
For a routine project, what is a typical percentage of total project costs that should be placed into contingency reserves? For an unusual project?
What is used to compare actual project spending with planned expenditures to determine if corrective action is needed?
Describe the difference between direct and indirect project costs.
During which phase(s) of a project do nonrecurring costs typically occur? Give an example of a nonrecurring cost.
The project manager at a software company predicts their project’s costs based on previous projects they have worked on that were similar. (They take into account the differences between their current and previous projects, as well.) What type of cost estimating are they using?
What is the difference between deterministic and probabilistic estimates?
What is an Agile “spike,” and when would it be used?
A rockslide closes down a major highway on your delivery route and leads to unforeseen costs. Does the extra money needed come from contingency reserves, management reserves, or elsewhere? Why?
Using the same project described in questions 2 and 3, which method(s) of estimating cost would you use to establish a baseline budget? Why?Question 3Using the same project described in question 2, what are a few examples of milestones at which you might measure cost control?Question 2You are the
Give an example of how a project manager could run into problems with cash flow, even when they are within budget on the overall project.
Describe a few normal causes and special causes of variation on a project you have worked on. How did you address these variations?
What is the purpose of dummy tasks, and on what types of projects would you use them for budgeting purposes?
The order of magnitude budget estimate you created during chartering is deemed by your sponsor to cost far more than your organization is willing to spend on your project. What are your options as a project manager?
Give an example of a leading indicator and a lagging indicator from a project or type of project you are familiar with.
Why is it important for the metrics we use to have thresholds associated with them?
In what circumstances might a project manager use “dummy” tasks?
The “process that establishes the policies, procedures, and documentation for planning, managing, expending, and controlling project costs” is referred to as:a. determine budgetb. estimate costsc. plan cost managementd. control costs
Activity cost estimates, the basis of estimates, and other supporting detail are outputs of which process?a. determine budgetb. estimate costsc. plan cost managementd. control costs
As the project progresses from initiation through planning and executing, and additional detail is gathered, the range of values for the project cost estimate will:a. broadenb. stay the samec. narrowd. be replaced with a single number
Determine budget is “the process of aggregating the estimated costs of individual activities or work packages to establish an authorized time-phased project budget or cost baseline.” This is used for _____________ projects.a. Agileb. Plan-drivenc. Iteratived. both Agile and plan-driven
A(n) _____________ is used to compare actual project spending with planned expenditures over time to determine if corrective action is needed.a. cost baselineb. funding limit reconciliationc. reserve analysisd. activity resource estimate
Jason, a project manager, is working with his team to estimate the total cost of developing a web-based CRM system. After reviewing the planned scope of work with Jason, his sponsor suggests that Jason use the budget from a previous, similar project as the basis for his project budget. The
One of the principal benefits of creating a bottom-up estimate during planning is that the estimate:a. can be created quicklyb. is very accuratec. matches the high-level estimate in the project charterd. will not change once the project is in flight
The amount of project budget reserved for unforeseen project work that addresses the“unknown unknowns” that can affect a project is the _____________.a. project bufferb. funding limitc. contingency reserved. management reserve
Ellen is estimating how much it will cost to recarpet the executive conference room. After selecting the grade and pattern of carpet, Ellen multiplies the carpet price per square yard times the number of square yards in the conference room to derive the total price of the material. This estimating
The budget within the cost baseline that is allocated for identified risks, for which mitigating responses are developed, is called the _____________.a. contingency reserveb. management reservec. control accountd. activity cost estimate
A baker has a contract to bake three dozen chocolate chip cookies for a customer’s party. Create a bottom-up estimate that includes both items needed for the project and the cost. According to your estimate, how much should the baker charge for the cookies?
The budget for this project was not formalized. It includes partial funding from several departments and some in-kind donations of trees and work. The various departments that have an interest in the project and may provide some funding include:• Building and Grounds Maintenance since they
Theink is barely dry on its $68 billion merger with Wyeth, but that hasn’t stopped Pfizer from launching yet another deal. On April 16, Pfizer announced it will join forces with Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline to pool their HIV operations to create a new company devoted to marketing the two
Almost 30 months after Alan R. Mulally left Boeing to become chief executive of Ford Motor, it’s still easy to peg him as an industry outsider. Talking to Wall Street analysts in November, Mulally described the debut of the tiny, fuel-sipping Ford Ka at the “Paris Air Show” when he meant the
Fabindia, a purveyor of handwoven garments and home furnishings, is one of India’s premier retail brands. It has reached that level in part by bringing its suppliers inside the tent. The private company encourages the artisans who make its wares to become shareholders. Selling suppliers a piece
Sitting on John J. Ferriola’s desk at Nucor’s headquarters in Charlotte is a greeting card. Yellow, with bright green, pink, and blue flowers, it’s from Diane Williamson, a line worker at Nucor’s plant in Darlington, S.C. Inside it says, “Thank you for caring about me and my family.” In
You are Maria Herrera and have been recently promoted to the position of director of financial analysis for a medium-size consumer goods firm. During your first few weeks on the job, you took the time to have lunch with each of your subordinates to try to get to know them better. You have 12 direct
Business had been good, even great. But by early 2008, the lighting manufacturer realized his factory in China was heading for failure. The collapse of the U.S. housing market had devastated demand for his lamps and fixtures sold at American retailers. Costs kept rising in Dongguan, the southern
Just prick the surface of Generation Xers’ feelings about life Inside large corporations, and you’ll likely discover a flood of concerns, as we found in reader responses to the BusinessWeek .compost “Ten Reasons Gen Xers Are Unhappy at Work.” This article was originally posted on Harvard
Outsourcing isn’t a word that executives in Japan like to toss around. Japan Inc. prefers to tie its fortunes to state-of-the-art factories that churn out chips, cars, and flat-screen TVs for the global market. But when Sony Chief Executive Howard Stringer announced on January 22, 2009, that he
Sometimes groups make extreme decisions—decisions that are either more risky or more conservative than they would have been if individuals acting alone had made them. One explanation for the tendency of groups to make extreme decisions is diffusion of responsibility. In a group, responsibility
You are a top manager who was recently hired by an oil field services company in Oklahoma to help it respond more quickly and proactively to potential opportunities in its market. You report to the chief operating officer (COO), who reports to the CEO, and you have been on the job for eight months.
K. Alan Russell has spent 23 years clearing bureaucratic and logistical hurdles for U.S. companies running low-cost plants in Ciudad Juárez. Never has he had to do as much hand-holding as now. Each time the Mexican city makes headlines—for kidnappings, murders, or police battles with drug
It sounds more like reality TV than a reasoned strategy. Last year, Best Buy picked four groups of salespeople in their 20s and early 30s and asked the strangers to room together for 10 weeks in a Los Angeles apartment complex. On the agenda, besides hanging out at the beach: coming up with
India’s Tata vaulted into the global spotlight a few years ago when it began making a series of high- profile acquisitions, from the four-star Pierre hotel in New York to Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus to, more recently, luxury carmaker Jaguar Land Rover. But then the world economy swooned, and the
In the personal computer business everybody knows Michael Dell, who changed the industry when he started selling computers out of his college dorm. Mark Hurd has won accolades for reviving Hewlett-Packard. But the most influential force in PCs these days may well be Gianfranco Lanci, the
Having answered the previous four questions, do you think in retrospect that you made a reasonable decision? What, if anything, might you do to improve your ability to make good decisions in the future?1. Identify the criteria you used, either consciously or unconsciously, to guide your decision
Since becoming chief executive of Procter & Gamble in 2000, A.G. Lafley has never had it tougher. Shares of the world’s biggest consumer-products company have lost a third of their value since last fall. U.S. shoppers are trading down to private-label products from premium-priced brands such as
Just six weeks after taking over as chief executive of Yahoo! from cofounder Jerry Yang, Carol Bartz has now made it quite clear who’s in charge and what demands she’ll place on her executive team. On February 26, Bartz announced an overhaul of the embattled company’s management. The new,
Amazon.com has earned a reputation for strong service by letting customers get what they want without ever talking to an employee. Sales clerks are nonexistent. Orders ship with a few mouse clicks. Packages arrive on doorsteps quickly. It all happens with monotonous regularity even as the number
David Cain loves his job. Well, most of it anyway. As an executive director for global engineering at Pfizer, Cain finds real satisfaction in assessing environmental real estate risks, managing facilities, and overseeing a multimillion-dollar budget for the pharmaceutical giant. What he doesn’t
You are a team of human resource consultants who have been hired by Carla Caruso, an entrepreneur who has started her own interior decorating business. A highly competent and creative interior decorator, Caruso established a working relationship with most of the major home builders in her
A cabal of HR renegades is taking advantage of the economic downturn to push an unorthodox notion: that the current vogue of slashing perks and pay is managerial insanity. Office land may be burning, but Richard W. Beatty, who teaches human resources strategy at Rutgers University, says the
Bosses are witnessing a lot of bizarre behavior in Officeland these days. The lumpy and rumpled are showing up all spiffy and drycleaned. Mouthy iconoclasts are newly docile. Clock-watching slackers are suddenly the last to leave. People, it seems, are performing transplants on themselves—like
You may not have heard of Phil Kent. After all, the CEO of Turner Broadcasting is a whole lot quieter than Ted Turner, the so-called Mouth of the South who remained front and center long after selling his cable empire to Time Warner in the 1990s. But Kent has emerged from Turner’s shadow and is
You are a group of managers in charge of food services for a large state university in the Midwest. Recently a survey of students, faculty, and staff was conducted to evaluate customer satisfaction with the food services provided by the university’s eight cafeterias. The results were
When 10 IBM management trainees piled into a mini bus in the Philippines for a weekend tour last October, the last thing they expected was to wind up local heroes. Yet that’s what happened in the tiny village of Carmen. After passing a water well project, they learned the effort had stalled
Managing virtually offers many benefi ts: It’s easy to accommodate differing schedules, schedule meetings on short notice, reduce travel expenses, be more ecologically friendly, and decrease unproductive travel time. It also allows for the creation of more diverse teams that bring together
Few employers spend as much time cultivating their workforce as Procter & Gamble. The consumerproducts company expects to get 400,000 applications for entry-level management positions this year. It will hire less than one-half of 1% of them, selecting only those most likely to fit the P&G culture.
Some managers do not want to become overly friendly with their subordinates because they are afraid that if they do so, their objectivity when conducting performance appraisals and making decisions about pay raises and promotions will be impaired. Some subordinates resent it when they see one or
You are Walter Michaels and have just received some disturbing feedback. You are the director of human resources for Maxi Vision Inc., a medium-size window and glass-door manufacturer. You recently initiated a 360-degree performance appraisal system for all middle and upper managers at Maxi Vision,
In the world of Facebook or Twitter, people love to hear feedback about what they’re up to. But sit them down for a performance review, and suddenly the experience becomes traumatic. Now companies are taking a page from social networking sites to make the performance evaluation process more fun
You and your three partners are engineers who minored in business at college and have decided to start a consulting business. Your goal is to provide manufacturing-process engineering and other engineering services to large and small organizations. You forecast that there will be an increased use
You are a team of managing partners of a large firm of accountants. You are responsible for auditing your firm’s information systems to determine whether they are appropriate and up-to-date. To your surprise, you find that although your organization does have an e-mail system in place and
Mark Chen supervises support staff for an Internet merchandising organization that sells furniture over the Internet. Chen has always thought that he should expand his staff. When he was about to approach his boss with such a request, the economy slowed, and other areas of the company experienced
When Riswan Khalfan, chief information officer at TD Securities, set out to improve the performance of the bank’s options-trading system last year, he couldn’t find ready-to-use technology suitable for the job. So he agreed to let his company become a test subject for a research project at IBM
You are an operations management consultant who has been called in by the management team of a start-up company that will produce flat-screen displays for personal computer manufacturers like Dell and Compaq. The flat-screen display market is highly competitive; there is considerable pressure to
In a warehouse at the headquarters of Kiva Systems in Woburn, Massachusetts, an ottoman-shaped robot slides beneath a four-shelf storage unit holding an assortment of consumer goods, lifts it, and navigates back to Mick Mountz, the start-up’s founder and chief executive. Mountz grabs a box of
Pulling off a CEO transition is never easy. DuPont’s smooth baton passing early this year underscores the importance of having a solid plan. This is not an easy time to nurture a new generation of corporate leaders. Training budgets are being slashed while a depressed housing market has made it
Go to www.net-temps.com, a website geared toward temporary employment. Imagine that you have to take a year off from college and are seeking a one-year position. Guided by your own interests, use this website to learn about your options and possible employment opportunities.Would you ever rely on a
Companies that offer lavish benefits believe there is a return on their investment. The challenge: figuring out how to calculate it.Employees don’t pay a dime for health insurance. A registered dietitian is on hand to help workers create nutrition plans. If employees require time off to handle a
Go to www.net-temps.com , a website geared toward temporary employment. Imagine that you have to take a year off from college and are seeking a one-year position. Guided by your own interests, use this website to learn about your options and possible employment opportunities.What are the potential
In fulfilling online orders, Amazon.com Inc. is all about expediency. The fewer people involved the better.But when it comes to filling higherlevel jobs, the e-commerce giant is in no rush—and it has a gantlet of people, dubbed “bar raisers,” who must sign off on would-be hires.Bar raisers
If you had the chance to choose which well-known corporation you would work for, which would it be? Now go to the website of that company and find out as much as you can about how it motivates employees. Also, using Google and other search engines, try to find articles in the news about this
You supervise a team of marketing analysts who work on different snack products in a large food products company. The marketing analysts have recently received undergraduate degrees in business or liberal arts and have been on the job between one and three years. Their responsibilities include
Go to the website of the Center for Creative Leadership ( www.ccl.org ). Spend some time browsing through the site to learn more about this organization, which specializes in leadership. Then click on “Customized Services” and then “Leadership Coaching” (both located under “Quick
You are the CEO of a medium-size company that makes window coverings similar to Hunter Douglas blinds and duettes. Your company has a real cost advantage in terms of being able to make custom window coverings at costs that are relatively low in the industry. However, the performance of your company
Kissing was a point of contention. “We had some kissing in the movie,” says Dan Lin, the producer of The Lego Movie. “It wasn’t lusty. When two minifigs kiss, there’s no tongue or anything. It’s just plastic kissing plastic, which we just thought was hilarious.”The Lego brand managers
Many consultants and organizations provide teambuilding services to organizations. Although some managers and teams have found these services to be helpful, others have found them to be a waste of time and money—another consulting fad that provides no real performance benefits. Search online for
A visit to the doctor may mean seeing someone else instead.An increasing number of practices are scrapping the traditional one on-one doctor–patient relationship. Instead, patients are receiving care from a group of health professionals who divide up responsibilities that once would have largely
You were recently hired in a boundary-spanning role for the global unit of an educational and professional publishing company. The company is headquartered in New York (where you work) and has divisions in multiple countries. Each division is responsible for translating, manufacturing, marketing,
Atos SE is a global information technology company that provides IT services to major corporations to improve, facilitate, integrate, and manage operations, information, and communication across multiple locations. Visit Atos’s website at http://atos.net/en-us/home/we-are .html and read about
You supervise support staff for an Internet merchandising organization that sells furniture over the Internet. You always thought that you needed to expand your staff, and just when you were about to approach your boss with such a request, business slowed. Thus your plan to try to add new employees
Discuss the pros and cons of using the Internet and World Wide Web for communication within and between organizations.
The conference call is one of the most familiar rituals of office life—and one of the most hated.Abuses are rife. People on the line interrupt others, zone out or multitask, forgetting to hit “mute” while talking to kids or slurping drinks.Sales executive Erica Pearce has seen teleconferences
You and your partners have decided to open a large full-service restaurant in your local community; it will be open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. to serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Each of you is investing $50,000 in the venture, and together you have secured a bank loan for $300,000 to begin
You have just been called in to help managers at Achieva, a fast-growing Internet software company that specializes in business-to-business (B2B) network software. Your job is to help Achieva solve some management problems that have arisen because of its rapid growth.Customer demand to license
There’s a trend in tech these days of trying to own as little as possible. Companies like Uber and Airbnb have become billion-dollar behemoths by employing what’s called the “platformonly” model, which involves outsourcing the messy work of owning cars and operating hotels to a network of
You and your partners have decided to open a large full-service restaurant in your local community; it will be open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. to serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Each of you is investing $50,000 in the venture, and together you have secured a bank loan for $300,000 to begin
You have just been called in to help managers at Achieva, a fast-growing Internet software company that specializes in business-to-business (B2B) network software. Your job is to help Achieva solve some management problems that have arisen because of its rapid growth.Customer demand to license
You and your partners have decided to open a large full-service restaurant in your local community; it will be open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. to serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Each of you is investing $50,000 in the venture, and together you have secured a bank loan for $300,000 to begin
Think of an organization that has provided you with work experience and the manager to whom you reported (or talk to someone who has had extensive work experience); then answer these questions:Think about the organization and its resources. Do its managers use organizational resources effectively?
Think of an organization that has provided you with work experience and the manager to whom you reported (or talk to someone who has had extensive work experience); then answer these questions:If you could give your manager one piece of advice or change one management practice in the organization,
By all appearances the Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. based in Chico, California, was considered to be an efficient and sanitary meatpacking plant. Under the control of its owner and CEO, Steven Mendell, the plant regularly passed inspections by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA). Over 200 workers
Think of an organization with which you are all familiar, such as a local restaurant, store, or bank. After choosing an organization, model it from an open-systems perspective. Identify its input, conversion, and output processes; and identify forces in the external environment that help or hurt
A top Deutsche Bank saleswoman was placed on leave last month after the German bank found what it regarded as inappropriate communication between her and Singapore’s central bank, according to a person familiar with the matter, marking a significant new twist in the yearlong global investigation
By all appearances the Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. based in Chico, California, was considered to be an efficient and sanitary meatpacking plant. Under the control of its owner and CEO, Steven Mendell, the plant regularly passed inspections by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA). Over 200 workers
Think of an organization with which you are all familiar, such as a local restaurant, store, or bank. After choosing an organization, model it from an open-systems perspective. Identify its input, conversion, and output processes; and identify forces in the external environment that help or hurt

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Contemporary Management 9th Edition Gareth Jones, Jennifer George - Solutions

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