Strayer University

BUS 430

TRUE/FALSE

1)Because the preparation of annual reports is done on a repeating basis, project management techniques are not appropriate.

2. Project management objectives revolved around on-time and budget performance.

3. A statement of work would be developed in the "Organize" step of the project life cycle.

4. Project managers need to be specialists, not generalists.

5. In most organizations, projects cut across organizational boundaries, making it difficult to implement projects exclusively within functional departments.

6. In a matrix organization, functional managers may be reluctant to provide the resources and employees, and the employees assigned to projects may relegate a project to a lower priority than their daily functional job.

7. Strong leadership is an impediment to project management success because of the team-based nature of most projects.

8. Immediate predecessors are activities that must be completed immediately before an activity may start.

9. With the Activity-On-Node (AON) network, the nodes define the precedence relationships and the arcs define the work activities.

10. Activity times must be estimated from historical data of similar work tasks to provide realism for a project.

11. The critical path is the sequence of activities that takes the longest time.                                 
12. To compute the critical path, we assign all nodes in the network an earliest starting time of zero.

13. The early start time for an activity is computed by finding the largest early finish time of all immediate predecessors.

14. All activities on the critical path have a zero slack time.

15. A Gantt chart is a useful tool for allocating limited resources among project activities.

16. A slack of (-2) means the project is ahead of schedule by two time periods.

17. Crashing refers to the process of shortening selected activity times in order to reduce the overall project completion time.

18. The Critical Path Method (CPM) allows for an evaluation of uncertainty in project completion times.

19. Using a beta probability distribution to characterize uncertain activity times is practical because it allows managers to use judgmental estimates to identify the distribution.

20. When the beta probability distribution is used to characterize uncertain activity times, the distribution of the project completion time will also have a beta probability distribution.

21. When finding the earliest finish (EF) time for an activity with two or more predecessor activities, the largest EF among the predecessor activities is used to calculate the EF for that activity.

22. The slack for an activity is equal to its latest finish time minus its earliest start time.

23. We should not crash activities on the critical path.

MULTIPLE CHOICE

1. The county government has decided to redo the street you live on and plans to block the street off which causes you and your neighbor's considerable inconvenience. The project has three parallel paths defined as follows: (i) path A-B-C-H to install street lights and electrical wiring that takes 16 days, (ii) path A-D-E-H to install sidewalks with handicap capabilities that takes 22 days, and (iii) path A-F-G-H to repave the street including storm drains that takes 30 days. Which one of the following statements is true?
   1. The expected duration of the project is 30 + 22 + 16 = 68 days.
   2. Path A-B-C-H is the critical path.
   3. Path A-D-E-H has the most slack time.
   4. Path A-F-G-H is the critical path.

2. A project has three paths. A-B-C has a length of 25 days. A-D-C has a length of 15 days. Finally, A-E- C has a length of 20 days. Which one of the following statements is true?
   1. A-D-C is the critical path.
   2. A-B-C has the most slack.
   3. The expected duration of this project is 25 days.
   4. The expected duration of this project is 25 + 15 + 20 = 60 days.

3. Which of the following is not considered a project?
   1. Writing and implementing a computer program
   2. Introducing a new product
   3. Production of soft drinks
   4. Building a bridge

4. Which of the following is not a stage in the project life cycle?
   1. Define
   2. Organize
   3. Improve
   4. Close

5. In which stage in the project life cycle would critical path calculations be performed?
   1. Define
   2. Plan
   3. Organize
   4. Control

6. In which stage in the project life cycle would crashing likely be performed?
   1. Define
   2. Plan
   3. Organize
   4. Control

7. In which stage in the project life cycle would a Gantt chart be used?
   1. Define
   2. Plan
   3. Organize
   4. Control

8. A type of organization which "loans" resources to projects while still maintaining control over them is called
   1. Pure project structure
   2. Pure functional structure
   3. Matrix structure
   4. Product structure

9. A type of organization that can result in inefficiencies because of duplication of resources across the organization is called
   1. Pure project structure
   2. Pure functional structure
   3. Matrix structure

1. 4. Product structure

10. Which step in the project management process would involve determining time estimates for activities?
    1. Project definition
    2. Resource planning
    3. Project scheduling
    4. Project control

11. Which step in the project management process would involve developing alternative plans in anticipation of problems that might arise?
    1. Project definition
    2. Resource planning
    3. Project scheduling
    4. Project control

12. Which of the following is not an assumption of the critical path method?
    1. Activities are independent of one another
    2. Activity time estimates are stable
    3. Activity times are characterized by a beta probability distribution
    4. Once an activity is started it continues uninterrupted until completion

13. Which is incorrect regarding the critical path?
    1. Shortest time to complete a project
    2. Longest time to complete a project
    3. Project path with 0 slack
    4. Delays in activities will delay the project

14. Slack in an activity is computed as
    1. ES - LS
    2. EF - LF

1. 3. LS - ES
   4. LS - EF

15. Which of the following is incorrect regarding time/cost trade-offs?
    1. The relationship between time and cost is proportional
    2. Some activities cannot be crashed
    3. The minimum cost can be found by crashing all activities as much as possible
    4. Crashing priority is based on the amount of uncertainty in activity times

16. Which statement is true regarding activities not on the critical path?
    1. Usually cannot be delayed
    2. Have less slack than activities on the critical path
    3. Can delay a project if they are highly variable
    4. Are used to crash project completion times

17. Which of the following is least related to Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)?
    1. Beta distribution
    2. Variance
    3. Most probable time
    4. Crashing

SHORT ANSWER

1. Define a project. Give some non-manufacturing or non-construction examples.

2. Explain the stages of the project life cycle.

3. Explain the role of the project managers and some principles for success.

4. Describe how a project fits into each of the three common organizational structures.

5. Describe the four major steps in the project-planning process.

6. Define critical path and explain how it is identified once a project schedule is calculated

7. Explain the purpose of Gantt charts.

8. Explain the three time estimates used to characterize uncertainty of activity times in the Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) procedure.

9. List at least six principal factors (contributors) to project success.

PROBLEM

1. The network below represents a project being analyzed by the Critical Path Method.

1. 1. What activity must be on the critical path, regardless of activity durations?
   2. What is the duration of path A-B-E-H-J?
   3. What is the critical path of this network?
   4. What is the length of the critical path?
2. The following network shows all the major activities on the circles (nodes). Each node contains time estimates in weeks.

Complete the following table.

3. The following network shows the activities on the circles or nodes. Time estimates are in weeks.

Complete the following table:

4. Consider the project network and data shown below:

1. 1. Determine the critical path and the project completion time.
   2. Determine the crash cost per week for all activities
   3. Which activities need to be crashed to reduce the project's completion time by 4 weeks? How much does this cost?

5. Consider the project network and data shown below:

1. 1. Determine the critical path.
   2. If management wants the project done in one less month, which activity should they crash?

6. Data regarding the activities for a project are presented below. The times are in weeks. The critical path for this project is A - D - H - I - J - K.

1. 1. Determine the standard deviation of the critical path.
   2. Determine the probability of completing the project in 38 weeks or less.
   3. What is the probability of completing the project in 32 weeks or less?

7. An electrical contracting company has been awarded a government contract to install lighting fixtures on a major highway. They want to use a horizontal bar chart to plan the schedule for the contract with work to begin on January 1 and assuming four weeks per month. The company has established the following project activities, their precedence relationships, and their estimated normal times:

1. 1. 

      When does activity d begin?
   2. When does activity f end?

8. The production engineering group at the Singapore plant of a computer company has been put in charge of production for a new printer model. The printer will be built via an assembly line. The plant manager must design the assembly line for the printer. He has been advised that the assembly line must be ready in four weeks for a test run. He has decided to use CPM and has identified these activities, determined their precedence relationships, and estimated normal times:

1. 1. How many paths are there in the network?
   2. What is the duration of path b-d-e-g-i in days?
   3. What is the earliest finish (EF) time for activity “e”?
   4. What is the slack in days for activity "d"?
   5. What is the critical path?
   6. What is the duration of the critical path in days?

9. A manufacturing company is planning to use PERT to setup a project for a new production line. For this project, they have established the following activities, precedence relationships, and time estimates in days:

1. 1. What is the expected duration for activity b?
   2. What is the variance of activity d?
   3. How many paths are there in the network?
   4. What is the earliest finish (EF) time for activity e?
   5. What is the slack in days for activity c?
   6. What is the critical path?
   7. What is the duration of the critical path in days?
   8. What is the standard deviation of the critical path?
   1. What is the probability of completing the project within 50 days?

10. A company wants to develop a project using PERT to modify one of their products which has poor sales. They have determined the following activities, precedence relationships and time estimates in days for the project:

1. 1. What is the expected duration for activity a?
   2. What is the variance for activity d?
   3. How many paths are there in the network?
   4. What is the earliest start (ES) time for activity e?
   5. What is the slack in days for activity b?
   6. What is the critical path?
   7. What is the duration of the critical path in days?
   8. What is the standard deviation of the critical path?
   1. What is the probability that the project will take longer than 28 weeks to complete?

11. A company has a PERT project with path b-d-e-g-i that has these activity time estimates in days:

1. 1. What is the expected duration for activity "e"?
   2. What is the variance for activity "b"?
   3. What is the standard deviation of the path?

12. A company has used PERT for a project and wants to minimize the probability of overrunning a contract deadline of 30 weeks. Three paths of concern in the PERT network have these mean durations and variances in weeks:

1. 1. What is the Z-score for path 1?
   2. What is the probability of path 2 overrunning the deadline?

13. A company has developed a project using CPM but is interested in accelerating it if possible. The project has the following activities, durations (in weeks), costs, and precedence relationships:

1. 1. How many paths are in the network?
   2. What is the earliest finish (EF) time for activity f?
   3. What is the slack in weeks for activity "c"?
   4. What is the critical path?
   5. What is the duration of the critical path in weeks?
   6. What activity should be crashed first to accelerate the project?
   7. What is the final duration of the fully crashed project?
   8. What is the total crashing cost for the project?

14. A manufacturing company wants to accelerate a project it has underway for a new product in order to beat their competitors to market. They used CPM to develop the project which has the following activities, durations (in weeks), costs (in dollars), and precedence relationships:

1. 1. How many paths are in the network?
   2. What is the latest finish (LF) time for activity g?
   3. What is the slack in weeks for activity c?
   4. What is the critical path for this project?
   5. What is the duration of the critical path in weeks?
   6. What activity should be crashed first in order to accelerate the project?
   7. What is the final project duration in weeks assuming it is crashed as far as possible?
   8. What is total cost to crash the project as far as possible?

15. You are in charge of the "advertising program" for the Boston Red Sox baseball team during their spring training in Fort Myers, Florida. You have defined the advertising program as a project with the following characteristics. The goal is to fill all stadium seats during the spring training season.

1. 1. What is the earliest completion time for this project?
   2. What is the largest amount of slack that any activity has in this project?
   3. If activity C is delayed three weeks, what is the revised earliest project completion time?
   4. For the original CPM problem, what is the minimum number of activities that would have to be crashed in order to reduce the project's earliest completion time by two weeks assuming all activity crash costs per week are the same and all activities can be crashed?

16. You are responsible for managing an advertising and promotion project with the following activities (times are given in weeks).

1. 1. What is the critical path and expected completion time for this project?