Discuss the behavioral aspects of projects in terms of project personnel and the project manager.
A project manager has to effectively manage the project and
team. Therefore, project managers must
be able to motivate their members. Without
motivation, the project can lose focus and/or get off track and then it could
crash. Project managers need to have
good leadership skills to make sure everyone is focus on the same goals. They must implement changes when needed.
Project personnel must be able to work in a team. They should understand the goals of the
project manager. Communication with each
team member and project manager is a vital skill when dealing with project
management. Each project personnel must
understand their role in the project.
Discuss the nature and importance of a work breakdown
structure in project management.
What a work breakdown structure is basically a hierarchical listing of what must be done during the project. It breaks down the activities into main groups then into sub groups from the main groups. The importance of a work breakdown structure is underscored by the fact that the activity list that results serves as the focal point for planning and doing the project.
Give a general description of PERT/CPM techniques.
Pert (Program evaluation and review technique) and CPM (Critical path method) are two of the most widely used techniques for planning and coordinating large-scale projects.
Although PERT and CPM were developed independently, they have a great deal in common. Moreover, many of the initial difference between them have disappeared as users borrowed certain features from the one technique for use with the other. For practical purposes, the two techniques now are the same; the comments and procedures described will apply to CPM analysis as well as to PERT analysis of projects.
Construct simple network diagrams
Examples are shown on page 737, figure 17.4
List the kinds of
information that a PERT or CPM analysis can provide
4.
An indication of how long any activity can be delayed
without delaying the project.
Analyze networks with
deterministic times
Figure 17.5 – AOA Diagram – page 740
To begin, start off by figuring out the following:
1.
The length of each path
2.
The critical path
3.
The expected length of the project
4.
The amount of slack time for each path
1.
As shown in the following table, the path lengths are
18 weeks, 20 weeks and 14 weeks.
2.
Path 1-2-5-6 is the longest path (20 weeks), so it is
the critical path.
3.
The expected length of the project is equal to the
length of the critical path (i.e. 20 weeks)
4.
We find the slack for each path by subtracting its
length from the length of the critical path, as shown in the last column of the
table.
Analyze networks with
probabilistic times
Example 5 – page 748
To begin, start off by figuring out the following:
Compute the expected time for each activity and the expected
duration for each path.
Identify the critical path.
Compute the variance of each activity and the variance and
standard deviation of each path.
Describe activity
“crashing” and solve typical problems.
Activities on the critical path are potential candidates for
crashing, because shortening noncritical activities would not have an impact on
total project duration. Crashing
activities reduce indirect project costs and increase direct costs; the optimum
amount of crashing results in minimizing the sum of these two types of costs.
If you are trying to solve the problem that requires an
optimal time-cost solution, then by determining which activities are on the
critical path, its length and the length of the other path is the first
step. Then rank the critical path
activities in order of lowest crashing cost, and determine the number of days
each can be crashed.