CHAPTER 3 Flashcards
The management of projects involves three phases:
Planning
Scheduling
Controlling
This phase includes goal setting, defining the project, and team organization.
Planning
This phase relates people, money, and supplies to specific activities and
relates activities to each other
Scheduling
—Here the firm monitors resources, costs, quality, and budgets. It also revises
or changes plans and shifts resources to meet time and cost demands.
Controlling
An organization formed to ensure that programs (projects) receive
the proper management and attention
Project organization
Defines a project by dividing it into more and more
detailed components.
Work breakdown structure (WBS)
Planning charts used to schedule resources and allocate time.
Project scheduling serves several purposes:
Gantt chart
Project scheduling serves several purposes:
- It shows the relationship of each activity to others and to the whole project.
- It identifies the precedence relationships among activities.
- It encourages the setting of realistic time and cost estimates for each activity.
- It helps make better use of people, money, and material resources by identifying critical
bottlenecks in the project.
Computerized programs produce a broad variety of PERT/CPM reports, including
(1) detailed cost breakdowns for each task
(2) total program labor curves
(3) cost distribution tables
(4) functional cost and hour summaries
(5) raw material and expenditure
forecasts
(6) variance reports
(7) time analysis reports
(8) work status reports.
A project management technique that
employs three time estimates for each activity.
Program evaluation and review technique (PERT
The computed longest time path(s) through a network.
PERT and CPM both follow six basic steps
Critical path
A network diagram in which nodes designate activities.
A network diagram in which arrows designate activities.
Activity-on-arrow (AOA)
In an AOA network, the nodes represent the starting and finishing times of an activity and are also called
events
An activity having no time that is inserted into a network to maintain
the logic of the network.
Dummy activity
A process that helps determine a project schedule.
Critical path analysis
Earliest time at which an activity can start, assuming that all predecessors have been completed
Earliest start (ES)
Earliest time at which an activity can be finished
Earliest finish (EF)
Latest time at which an activity can start, without delaying the completion time of the entire project
Latest start (LS)
Latest time by which an activity has to finish so as to not delay the
completion time of the entire project
Latest finish (LF)
A process that identifies all the early start and early finish times.
Forward pass
A process that identifies all the early start and early finish times.
Forward pass
FORWARD PASS FORMULA
ES = Max {EF of all immediate predecessors}
EF = ES + Activity time
A process that identifies all the late start and late finish times
Backward pass
Backward pass FORMULA
LF = Min {LS of all immediate following activities}
LS = LF – Activity time
Free time for an activity.
Slack time
Slack time FORMULA
Slack = LS − ES or Slack = LF − EF
activities with zero slack are called
critical activities
The “best” activity completion time that could be obtained in a
PERT network.
Optimistic time
The “worst” activity time that could be expected in a
PERT network
Pessimistic time
—The most probable time to complete an activity in a
PERT network.
Most likely time
Shortening activity time in a network to reduce time on the critical path so total completion time is reduced.
Crashing
Crashing FORMULA
Crash cost per period = (Crash cost – Normal cost) /
(Normal time – Crash time)
As with every technique for problem solving, PERT and CPM have a number of advantages
as well as several limitations.
A CRITIQUE OF
PERT AND CPM
Microsoft Project, the most popular example of specialized project management software,
is extremely useful in drawing project networks, identifying the project schedule, and managing project costs and other resources. True or false?
True
