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Project Management Achieving Competitive Advantage 5th Edition Jeffrey K. Pinto - Solutions
c. What would happen if activities B and D each took 5 extra days to complete instead of the expected duration?How would the critical path change?
b. What is the critical path? Which activities have slack time?
a. Draw the network as a Gantt chart.
10.11 Given the following information, answer the questions about this project:Activity Expected Duration Predecessors A 4 days —B 9 days A C 11 days A D 5 days B E 3 days B F 7 days C G 3 days D, F H 2 days E, G I 1 day H
10.10 Develop a Gantt chart with the following information.What is the expected duration of the project? What is the critical path?Activity Expected Duration Predecessors A 12 None B 8 None C 5 None D 10 A and B E 10 C and D F 5 A and B
10.9 Identify and discuss some of the problems or dangers in using project networks. Under what circumstances can they be beneficial, and when can they be dangerous?
10.8 Explain the concept of a dummy variable. Why is this concept employed in AOA notation? Why is there no need to use dummy variables in an AON network?
10.7 What are some of the advantages in the use of AOA notation as opposed to AON? Under what circumstances does it seem better to apply AON methodology in network development?
10.6 In crashing a project, we routinely focus on those activities that lie on the critical path, not activities with slack time.Explain why this is the case.
10.5 Under what circumstances might you wish to crash a project?
10.3 What are the advantages in the use of Gantt charts over PERT diagrams? In what ways might PERT diagrams be advantageous?
10.2 The advantage of Gantt charts lies in their linkage to the project schedule baseline. Explain this concept.
10.1 Give examples of circumstances in which a project would employ lag relationships between activities using:a. Finish to Startb. Finish to Finishc. Start to Startd. Start to Finish
b. Assuming that only activities A, C, and E are part of the critical path, which activities should be crashed first?
a. What is the cost per day to crash each of the activities?
b. Refer back to Figure 10.24. Using the critical path from this activity network, consider A – C – D – F – H as the critical path and assume all other paths are less than a fully crashed A – C – D – F – H. Prioritize the candidates for crashing. How does the activity network change
a. Which activities are the most likely candidates for crashing(i.e., which are the most cost-effective to crash)?
b. What are the gains versus the losses in accelerating this activity? For example, does the project have excessive late penalties that would make crashing cheaper relative to late delivery?Alternatively, is there a huge potential payoff in being first to market with the project?
a. What costs are associated with accelerating other project activities? It may be that activity X’s unit cost of $10,000 per week is a genuine bargain. Suppose, for example, that an alternative activity would cost the project $25,000 for each week’s acceleration.
4. The contractual situation provides even more incentive to avoid schedule slippage. The company may realize that it will be responsible for paying more in late delivery penalties than the cost of crashing the activities
3. The project has slipped considerably behind schedule. You may determine that the only way to regain the original milestones is to crash all remaining activities.
2. Market needs change and the project is in demand earlier than anticipated. Suppose, for example, your company discovered that the secret project you were working on was also being developed by a rival firm. Because market share and strategic benefits will come to the first firm to introduce the
1. The initial schedule may be too aggressive. Under this circumstance, we may schedule the project with a series of activity durations so condensed that they make the crashing process inevitable.
5. Easy to create—Gantt charts, because they are intuitive, are among the easiest scheduling devices for project teams to develop. The key is having a clear understanding of the length of activities (their duration), the overall precedence network, the date the project is expected to begin, and
4. Identifying resource needs—Laying the whole project out on a schedule baseline permits the project team to begin scheduling resources well before they are needed, making resource planning easier.
3. Updating and control—Gantt charts allow project teams to readily access project information activity by activity. Suppose, for example, that a project activity is late by 4 days. It is possible on a Gantt chart to update the overall network by factoring in the new time and seeing a revised
2. Schedule baseline network—The Gantt chart is linked to real-time information, so that all project activities have more than just ES, EF, LS, LF, and float attached to them. They also have the dates when they are expected to be started and completed, just as they can be laid out in conjunction
1. Comprehension—Gantt charts work as a precedence diagram for the overall project by linking together all activities. The Gantt chart is laid out along a horizontal time line so that viewers can quickly identify the current date and see what activities should have been completed, which should be
10.5 Understand some of the important controversies in the use of project networks
10.4 Develop activity networks using Activity-on-Arrow techniques.
10.3 Recognize alternative means to accelerate projects, including their benefits and drawbacks.
10.2 Construct and comprehend Gantt charts.
10.1 Apply lag relationships to project activities.
9.26 Key in a search with the prompt “projects in ” in which you select a country of interest (e.g., “projects in Finland”).Many of the projects generated by such a search are government-sponsored initiatives. Discuss the role of proper scheduling and planning for one such project you find
9.25 Key in “project scheduling” for a search of the Web. Hundreds of thousands of hits are generated from such a search.Examine a cross section of the hits. What are some of the common themes found on these Web sites?
9.24 Go to www.infogoal.com/pmc/pmcart.htm and examine some of the archived articles and white papers on project planning and scheduling. Select one article and synthesize the main points. What are the messages the article is intending to convey?
9.23 Go to http://management.about.com/lr/project_time_ management/174690/1/ and click on “Project Management”on the left side of the screen. When you consider several of the articles on time management in projects, what sense do you get that project scheduling is as much about personal time
4. If you were the project manager for moving the Capen House, what are some of the scheduling challenges you might anticipate with this project based upon your network diagram? How would you ensure project success?
3. Identify concurrent, merge, and burst activities and explain the impact of convergences upon the project planning process.
2. Construct an AON network diagram for the activities required to complete the Capen House move.Be sure to visualize the interdependencies of the work tasks and to follow network diagramming conventions.
1. Based on the work described by Frank Roark in his radio interview, construct a list of project work activities with IDs, descriptions, and predecessor tasks.
f. Suppose you wanted to have 99% confidence in the project finishing on time. How many additional weeks would your project team need to negotiate for in order to gain this 99% likelihood?
d. Identify the burst activities and the merge activities.e. Given the activity variances, what is the likelihood of the project finishing on week 24?
c. Identify the critical path. What are the alternative paths, and how much slack time is associated with each noncritical path?
b. Calculate the activity slacks. What is the total project length? Make sure you fully label all nodes in the network.
a. Calculate the expected activity times (round to nearest integer).
b. Now, assume that activity E has taken 10 days past its anticipated duration to complete. What happens to the project’s schedule? Has the duration changed? Is there a new critical path? Show your conclusions
Using the information from the following table, create an AON network activity diagram:a. Calculate each activity TE (rounding to the nearest integer), the total duration of the project, its early start, early finish, late start, and late finish times, and the slack for each activity. Finally, show
8. Shorten tasks that cost the least to speed up. “Speeding up” tasks in a project is another way of saying the activities are being crashed. We will cover the process of crashing project activities in more detail in Chapter 10. The option of crashing project activities is one that must be
7. Shorten easiest tasks. The logic here is that the learning curve for a project activity can make it easier to adjust an activity’s duration downward. From a cost and budgeting perspective, we saw in Chapter 8 that learning curve methodology does result in lower costs for project activities.
6. Shorten longest tasks. The argument for shortening long tasks has to do with relative shrinkage;it is less likely that shortening longer activities will lead to schedule problems for the overall project network because longer duration tasks can more easily absorb cuts without having an impact on
5. Shorten early tasks. Early tasks in a project are sometimes shortened before later tasks because they are usually more precise than later ones. There is greater uncertainty in a schedule for activities set to occur at some point in the future. Many project managers see that there is likely to be
4. Shorten the duration of critical path tasks. This option must be explored carefully. The underlying issue here must be to first examine the assumptions that guided the original activity duration estimates for the project. Was beta distribution used reasonably?
3. Overlap sequential tasks. Laddering is a good method for overlapping sequential activities.Rather than developing a long string of serial tasks, laddering identifies subpoints within the activities where project team members can begin to perform concurrent operations.
2. Re-plan serial paths to be in parallel. In some circumstances, a project may be excessively loaded with serial activities that could just as easily be moved to parallel or concurrent paths in the network. Group brainstorming can help determine alternative methods for pulling serial activities
1. Eliminate tasks on the critical path. It may be the case that some of the tasks that are found on the critical path can be eliminated if they are not necessary or can be moved to noncritical paths with extra slack that will accommodate them.
5. The site must offer thousands of hotel rooms, easy access to airports, and a road network that makes entry and exit from the course grounds convenient
4. The geographical location plays an important role. The USGA likes to move the Open to different sites around the country.
3. The course must be open enough to allow for spectator grandstands, TV towers, concession areas, and the free movement of thousands of attendees.
2. There must be enough land around the course to support media compounds, tents, admission entrances, and spectator parking and transportation.
1. First and foremost, the golf course must be of excellent quality and challenging design. It must be a serious test for the world’s best golfers.
9.5 Construct the critical path for a project schedule network using forward and backward passes, determine project slack, and calculate the probability of finishing on time.
9.4 Perform activity duration estimation based on the use of probabilistic estimating techniques.
9.3 Develop an activity network using Activity-on-Node (AON) technique.
9.2 Understand and apply key scheduling terminology.
9.1 Understand the importance of project scheduling techniques.
8.40. d—Cost management involves data collection, cost accounting processes, and cost control
8.39. b—The project’s cost baseline includes the original planned budget plus all approved changes.
8.38. c—The project cost estimates cannot be undertaken until the WBS is completed, but it then forms the basis for subsequent project budgeting.
8.37. a—Deliverables do not need to be produced before the budget has been created.
8.36. c—The project life-cycle teaches us that project expenditures are highest during the execution phase.
8.35. b—Susan is using a top-down method in which she, as the senior manager, is providing the project budget estimate.
8.34. d—The process of asking senior project managers for their best estimates of project costs is part of the cost estimation process.
8.33. c—The overrun of $450 would be referred to as a positive variance to the budget.
8.32. a—The cost of using a site building varies to the degree it is used and is charged as a direct cost to the project.
8.31. b—A computer purchase would be an example of a direct cost for the project.
8.30 Go to www.stickyminds.com/articles.asp and click on“Stickyminds.com Original Articles.” Search for and click on the article by Karl Wiegers, “Estimation Safety Tips.”In the article (found as a pdf link to the site), the author offers tips on making estimates that are accurate and
4. Consider the problems with the Rio Olympics sites that quickly occurred following completion of the 2016 Summer games. Access the internet to find evidence of the current state of the Sochi Olympic site. How is it being used and what are the current problems and opportunities for Sochi?8.27 Go
3. When a project has a “hard gate,” like being ready on time, how does that affect normal success criteria?Is it fair to judge a project with a critical completion date by normal project success standards?Why or why not?
2. Project success is defined as adherence to budget, schedule, functionality (performance), and client satisfaction. Under these criteria, cite evidence that suggests the Sochi Olympics project was a success and/or failure
1. Consider the following statement: “Governmentfunded projects intended to serve as ‘prestige projects,’ such as the Sochi Olympics, should not be judged on the basis of cost.” Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Why?
How bad was the corruption? As journalist Brett Forrest noted, “The Sochi Internal Affairs department has conducted numerous investigations into Olympstroy[the Russian Olympic organizing commission] and filed criminal complaints, alleging that the Olympic agency and its contractors operated a
5. Kickbacks and graft were rumored to be rampant during the years of development, with insiders getting “sweetheart” deals from the government and cronyism running rampant.
This oversight caused an embankment near Olympic Park to collapse repeatedly due to constant flooding, each time having to be rebuilt.Likewise, construction of the ski jump was budgeted for $40 million. However, because of the complex terrain, the placement had to be adjusted many times. It was
4. Projects needed to be rebuilt several times due to difficulties with terrain or resource management.For example, state planners did not account for streams that ran beneath the location of the venues.
3. Fears of terrorism and other disruptions led to an unprecedented level of security around the Sochi site. For example, troops from Russia’s Interior Ministry cordoned off the Olympic area to a depth of nearly 20 kilometers to enforce a safezone around the Games. The costs of heightened
2. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, had the goal of developing Sochi as a world-class ski resort to attract winter tourism to the country. Thus, he was a highly visible spectator throughout the project’s development, offering suggestions and criticisms of the work being done. Rework on
2. Develop an argument in support of megadam construction. Develop an argument against these development projects.
1. Given the history of large cost overruns associated with megadam construction, why do you believe they are so popular, especially in the developing world?
8.23 Suppose that you are assigning costs to a major project to be undertaken this year by your firm, DynoSoft Applications.One coding process involves many labor-hours, but highly redundant work. You anticipate a total of 200,000 labor-hours to complete the first iteration of the coding and a
8.22 Problem 8.21 identified how long it should take to complete the fifth oil-drilling platform that Natural Resources plans to purchase. How long should all five oil-drilling rigs take to complete?
8.21 It took MegaTech, Inc., 100,000 labor-hours to produce the first of several oil-drilling rigs for Antarctic exploration.Your company, Natural Resources, Inc., has agreed to purchase the fifth (steady state) oil-drilling rig from MegaTech’s manufacturing yard. Assume that MegaTech experiences
11.20 Go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRMDCRPGYBE for a brief overview of Critical Chain Project Management.What does the presenter suggest are the benefits and biggest challenges of implementing CCPM?
3. How could the drum buffer concepts from Critical Chain Portfolio Management be applied to this problem?
2. How is multitasking contributing to systemic delays in project development at Ramstein?
1. Applying Goldratt’s ideas of critical resources, what is the system constraint within the Special Projects Division that is causing bottlenecks and delaying the projects?
4. Using the terms “Scrum,” “Sprint,” and “User stories,”create an alternative development cycle for a hypothetical software development process at Northwest Regional Hospital.
3. Why are “user stories” and system “features” critical components of an effective IT software development process?
2. How would an Agile methodology correct some of these problems? What new development cycle would you propose?
1. Why does the classic waterfall project planning model fail in this situation? What is it about the IT department’s processes that leads to their finished systems being rejected constantly?
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