ISDS CH 3 Flashcards
3 phases of project management
1) planning
2) scheduling
3) controllin
planning:
includes goal setting, defining the project and team organizations
scheduling:
relates people, money, and supplies to specific activities and relates activities to each other
controlling:
here the firm monitors resources, costs, quality and budgets. revises/ changes plans and shifts resources to meet time and cost demands
project organization:
formed to ensure that programs (projects) receive project management and attention
project organization is most helpful when
1) work tasks can be defined with a specific goal and deadline
2) job is unique/ somewhat unfamiliar to the existing org
3) work contains complex interrelated tasks requiring specialized skills
4) project is temporary but critical to the org
5) project cuts across org lines
project manager receive high visibility in a firm and are responsible for making sure that
1) all necessary activities are finished in proper sequence and on time
2) project comes in with in budget
3) project meets its quality goals
4) people assigned to the project receive the motivation, direction and information needed to do their job
ethical issues faced in project management
1) offers of gifts from contractors
2) pressure to alter status reports to mask the reality of delays
3) false reports for charges of time and exp
4) pressures to compromise quality to meet bonuses or avoid penalties related to schedules
work breakdown structure (WBS):
hierarchical description of a project into more and more detailed components
project scheduling:
involves sequencing and allocating time to all project activities
Gantt charts:
planning charts used to schedule resources and allocate time
project scheduling serves several purposes
1) shows relationship of each activity to others and to the whole project
2) identifies the precedence relationships among activities
3) encourages the setting of realistic time and cost estimates for each activities
4) helps make better use of people, money, and material resources
programs produce a variety if reports
1) detailed cost breakdowns
2) labor requirements
3) cost and hour summaries
4) raw material and expenditure forecasts
5) variance reports
6) time analysis
7) work status reports
waterfall projects:
projects that progress smoothly in a step by step manner until completed
agile projects:
ill-defined projects requiring collaboration and constant feedback to adjust to project unknown
Program evaluation and review training technique (PERT):
project management technique that employees 3 times estimate for each activity
Critical Path method (CPM)
a project management technique that uses only 1 time per activity
PERT and CPM follow 6 basic steps
1) define the project and prepare the work breakdown structure
2) develop the relationships among the activities; decide which activities must precede and which must follow others
3) draw the network connecting all the activites
4) assign time and or cost estimates to each activity
5) compute the longest time path through the network (critical path)
6) use the network to help plan, schedule, monitor, and control the project
2 approaches for drawing a project network
1) activity on node
2) activity on arrow
activity on node:
a network diagram in which nodes designate activities
activity on arrow:
a network diagram in which arrows designate activities
critical path analysis:
process that helps determine a project schedule
forward pass:
process that identifies all the early times (ES and EF)
backward pass:
identifies late state and finish times (LS and LF)
earliest start time:
before an activity can start, all its immediate predecessors must be finished; if an activity has only a single immediate predecessor, its ES equals EF of the predecessor; if an activity has multiple immediate predecessors, its ES is the max of all EF values of its predecessors
earliest start time formula:
ES= Max (EF of all immediate predecessors)
earliest finish time rule:
EF of an activity is the sum of an activity is the sum of its earliest start time (ES) and its activity time
Earliest finish time formula:
EF= ES + activity time
Latest finish time rule:
If an activity is an immediate predecessor for just a single activity, its LF equals the LS of the activity that immediately follows it; if an activity is an immediate predecessors to more than one activity, its LF is the minimum of all LS values of all activities that immediately follow it
Latest finish time formula:
LF= min (LS of all immediate following activities)
Latest start time rule:
LS of an activity is the difference of its latest finish time and its activity time
slack time:
free time for an activity (also referred to as free float or free slack)
slack formula:
slack = LS-ES or LF- EF
critical activities:
activities with 0 slack and said to be on critical path
critical path is a continued path through the project network that
starts at the 1st activity in the project; terminates at the last activity in the project; includes only critical activities
total slack:
when 2 plus noncritical activities appear successfully in a path
most likely (m):
the most probably time to complete an activity in PERT
pessimistic time (b):
worst activity time that could be expected in a PERT network; to compute the dispersion/ variance of activity completion time
PERT makes 2 more assumptions
1) total project completion time follow a normal probability distribution
2) activity times are statistically independent
when managing a project, it is not uncommon for a project manager to be faced with either (or both) of following situation
1) the project is behind schedule
2) the scheduled project completion time has been moved forward
crashing:
shortening activity time in a network to decrease time on the critical path so total completion time is reduced
when choosing an activity to crash and by how much we need to ensure the following
amount by which an activity is crashed is permissible; taken together, the shortened activity durations will enable us to finish the project by the due date; the total cost of crashing is as small as possible
advantage of PERT and CPM
1) useful when scheduling and controlling large projects
2) straight forward concept and not mathematically complex
3) graphical networks help highlight relationships among project activities
4) critical path and slack time analyses help pinpoint activities that need to be closely watched
5) project doc and graphs point out who is responsible for various activities
6) applicable to a wide variety of projects
7) useful in monitoring not only schedules but costs as well
liabilities of PERT and CRM
1) project activities have to be clearly defined, independent, and stable in their relationships
2) precedence relationships must be specified and networked together
3) time est tend to be subjective and are subject to fudging by managers who fear the dangers of being overly optimistic or not pessimistic enough
4) there is the inherent danger of placing too much emphasis on the longest, or critical
