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Project Management Achieving Competitive Advantage 5th Edition Jeffrey K. Pinto - Solutions
11.23. You are required to manage resources to accommodate the company’s current project portfolio.One resource area, comprising Carol, Kathy, and Tom, is responsible for all program debugging as new projects are completed. Four projects have activities that need to be completed. How would you
11.19 Consider the project portfolio problem shown in Figure
11.18 Assume the network in Figure 11.22 with resource conflicts.How would you redraw the network using a critical chain to eliminate the resource conflicts? Where should feeder buffers be applied? Why?
11.17 Reconfigure the network in Figure 11.21 using the critical chain approach. Remember to reconfigure the activities to late start where appropriate. What is the original critical path? What is the original project duration? How much feeder buffer should be applied to the noncritical paths?What
b. How much slack is available in the noncritical path?
a. What is the critical path?
11.16 Consider the following activities and their durations.The original project schedule, using early activity starts, is shown in Figure 11.20. Reconfigure the network using critical chain project scheduling.
11.14 What is a drum resource? Why is the concept important to understand to better control resource requirements for project portfolios?
11.13 What key steps are necessary to employ CCPM as a method for controlling a firm’s portfolio of projects?
11.12 What are the steps that CCPM employs to resolve resource conflicts on a project? How does the concept of activity late starts aid this approach?
11.10 Distinguish between project buffers and feeder buffers.What is each buffer type used to accomplish?
11.8 What would be the difficulties in using Extreme Programming(XP) to develop projects? What types of projects would be best suited to employing XP?
11.7 Why is a focus on project features and user stories important when developing requirements?
11.6 How are the duties of the Scrum Master like a project manager?How do they differ?
11.5 What are the advantages and disadvantages of Agile PM?
11.4 What are the advantages and disadvantages of the waterfall planning model for project development?
11.3 Why are traditional project planning methods insufficient when project deliverables are subject to changing requirements or continuous input from the project client?
11.1 What are the practical implications internally (in terms of team motivation) and externally (for the customer) of making overly optimistic project delivery promises?
3. Are there some clear milestones we can identify along the precedence diagram?
2. Is our logic correct for identifying preceding and subsequent activities?
1. Have we identified opportunities to create parallel paths, or are we placing too many activities directly in a serial path?
10.33. Leads and lags are evaluated and, if necessary, modified as part of which process?a. Scope developmentb. Duration estimatingc. Analogous cost estimatingd. Schedule development
10.32. Schedule constraints would usually include all of the following EXCEPT:a. Lead times and lag timesb. Key eventsc. Major milestonesd. Imposed dates
d. Go to top management to adjudicate the disagreement
c. The critical path is the shortest path through the network, so having more than one is not a significant problem.
b. Your coworker is correct: a project can have only one critical path. You need to return to the network and determine where you erred in developing the network logic and diagram.
10.25. Dummy variables are used in what kind of network diagramming method?a. AONb. Gantt chartsc. AOAd. OBS
2. Suppose you were the site supervisor for this project.How would you advise Joe to proceed? Before deciding whether or not to crash the project, what questions should you consider and how should you evaluate your options?
1. What are some of the issues that weigh in favor of and against crashing the project?
e. If there were no penalty payments accruing to the project, would it make sense to crash any project activities?Show your work.
d. Assume that a project penalty clause kicks in after 19 weeks. The penalty charged is $5,000 per week. When the penalty charges are added, what does the total project cost curve look like? Develop a table listing the costs accruing on a per-week basis.
c. Suppose project overhead costs accrued at a fixed rate of $500 per week. Chart the decline in direct costs over the project life relative to the increase in overhead expenses.
b. What is the project’s critical path? After four iterations involving crashing project activities, what has the critical path shrunk to? (Assume all noncritical paths are ≤a fully crashed critical path)
a project manager was faced with the following information.Activities on the critical path are highlighted with an asterisk:Normal Crashed Activity Cost Duration Extra Cost Duration A $5,000 4 weeks $4,000 3 weeks B* 10,000 5 weeks 3,000 4 weeks C 3,500 2 weeks 3,500 1 week Normal Crashed Activity
d. What will the cost of the fully crashed project be?B CD F EA G Project Activities and Costs (Normal vs. Crashed)Normal Crashed Activity Duration Cost(in U.S.dollars) Duration Cost(in U.S.dollars)A 4 days 1,000 3 days 2,000 B 6 days 1,800 3 days 3,000 C 4 days 2,500 3 days 4,000 D 9 days 2,700 6
c. What is the expected duration of the project once it has been fully crashed?
10.17 Suppose you are considering crashing a project. The project’s network is as follows, along with a table identifying its critical activities and the crash costs for all tasks.
a. Calculate the per day costs for crashing each activity.
10.16 You are considering the decision of whether or not to crash your project. After asking your operations manager to conduct an analysis, you have determined the“precrash” and “postcrash” activity durations and costs, shown in the following table (assume all activities are on the
10.15 Consider a project with the following information. Construct the project activity network using AOA methodology and label each node and arrow appropriately. Identify all dummy activities required to complete the network.Activity Duration Predecessors A 3 —B 5 A C 7 A D 3 B, C E 5 B F 4 D G
c. Suppose you now added a start-to-start relationship between activities F and G to the new Gantt chart.How does this additional relationship change the expected completion date for the project?
b. For activity F, add a lag of 3 days to its predecessor relationship with activity D. By adding the 3-day lag to F, what is the new expected duration for the project?
a. Assume that activities B and C are linked with a“Finish to Finish” relationship. Does that change the expected completion date for the project?
10.14 Reconfigure the Gantt chart in Problem 10.13 to include some different predecessor relationships. Optional: Solve this problem with Microsoft Project.
10.13 Develop a Gantt chart for the following activities. Identify all paths through the network. What is the critical path?Optional: Solve this problem with Microsoft Project. How does clicking on “Tracking Gantt” view demonstrate the critical path?Activity Expected Duration Predecessors A 2
10.12 Develop the network activity chart and identify the critical path for a project based on the following information.Redraw the activity network as a Gantt chart. What is the expected duration of the project?Activity Expected Duration Predecessors A 5 days —B 6 days A C 2 days A D 4 days A E
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?
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.
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
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.
9.24 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?
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.
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).
9.9 What is the time estimate of an activity in which the optimistic time is 5 days, the likely time is 8 days, and the pessimistic time is 14 days? Show your work.
9.8 What is the time estimate of an activity in which the optimistic estimate is 4 days, pessimistic is 12 days, and most likely is 5 days? Show your work.
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
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.
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.
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.
3. The course must be open enough to allow for spectator grandstands, TV towers, concession areas, and the free movement of thousands of attendees.
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.
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