pm Flashcards
which are the possible definitions of project managment?
1) a TEMPORARY endeavor undertaken to create a UNIQUE product, service, or result
(US Project Management Institute)
2) UNIQUE process, undertaken to achieve an objective consisting of a set of coordinated and controlled activities with start and finish dates, conforming to specific requirements,
including the constraints of time, cost and resources
(British Standards Institute)
3) TEMPORARY management environment, usually undertaken in phases, created for the purpose of delivering one or more business outputs or outcomes
(British Standards Institute)
Where are the projects?
projects are everywhere, in every business functions, sectors and geographical areas. but eveyone is different in size and type and they are not managed all in the same way
which are the trend of PM in the last years?
more and more attention is payed to PM and it is becoming a serious discipline with professional associations such as APM and PMI. The growth of pmi memberships in the last years demonstrates the growth of interest in PM.
which are the main reasons that can lead to the failure of a project?
Projects are different from routine activities since they are unique and specific. The main reasons that can lead to their failures are:
1) overshoot the deadline: is the project on time?
2) go over budget: is the project on or under buget?
3) not fully meet the specifications: does the project meet the agreed-upon specifications to the satisfaction of the stakeholders?
Look in the slides to see some project’s failures. Projects often go wrong or simply not as expected.
which is the typical model of projects?
it s the waterfall model which cames from engineering. the lifecycle phases are common to many types of projects but the waterfall model is not helpul for every projects (ex. software projects)
which is the working definition of project?
A problem with a desired end-result scheduled for completion, requiring
unique and non-routine activities
which is the difference between activities, work packages and programme?
Activities: set of tasks comprising a project
Work Packages: division of tasks
Programme: a substantial, long-range objective that is broken down into a set of projects
which is the working definition of project management?
The science and art of solving the problem within predetermined time and
resource parameters
Shouldering just enough risk to escape with your career intact!!!
which is the aim of the module?
- To understand the scope and variety of project types
- To understand key variables in project management
–To learn methods, techniques and approaches which are important in successfully managing projects (to meet objectives in a wide range of contexts)
we’ll also discover:
- theories and models
- success factors and sources of risk
- principles and assumptions
- application of standards and techniques
how can the project manager identifies the activities of a project?
- use of past projects
- team brainstorming sessions
- think through the sequence of work to be done
- decompose the project’s goal
which are the definitions of WBS?
1)A hierarchical decomposition of the entire work that should be completed to
achieve the project’s objectives. It is most effective when each element of the structure includes the elements of scope, schedule and costs, and as such is essential to ensuring integrated accountability and control over project work.
2) Way in which a project may be divided by level into discrete groups for programming, cost planning and control purposes (BS)
3) A deliverable oriented grouping of project elements that organisesand defines the total scope of the project-Each descending level represents an increasingly detailed definition of the project work
(US Project Management Institute)
the WBS is the backbone of project planning and control
which is the purpose of the WBS?
To sub-divide the scope of work into manageable work packages which can be estimated, planned, and assigned to a responsible person or department for completion
(The breakdown should group similar work together)
which are some of the possible structures of the wbs?
- Product-based structure
- organisation- based structure
- cost- based structure
- contract- based structure
- location- based structure
- transport- based structure
which are the goal and uses of wbs?
- develop the master project plan
- estimate resources requirements
- develop project organisation
- facilitates other management processes
- provide mechanism for project control both at general level and individual packages level
- assigniging responsabilities
which are the steps that we have to do after completing the WBS? which is the standard process for scheduling?
the first thing that we have to do is to list and briefly describe all this activities. this allow us to understand better their relations and dependencies which in turn will enable us to draw the table of predecessors.
After that we have to convert the project action plan in an operating timetables by sequencing the activities based on them dependencies and schedules the activity (time) and at the end schedules the resources.
Scheduling is fundamental for monitoring and controlling the project.
The standard process of scheduling is:
1. List activities (from the Work Breakdown Structure)
2. Arrange activities considering precedence and relationships
3. Develop network diagram
which are the possibles scheduling representations?
- Cascading sequence of activities: Gantt Chart
- Network of activities: Activity of Node and Activity on Arc
What are the advantages and disadvantages of Gantt Chart?
Advantages:
- Easy to understand
-Easy to show progress and status
-Easy to maintain
-Most popular view to communicate project status to client and/or senior management
Disadvantages:
-Not always easy to see precedence & relationships (difficult to follow complex projects); in particular when the project is complex i.e the number of activities is high
which are the advantages and disadavantages of network (cpm/pert)?
Advantages:
- Allows visualisation of task relationships much better than Giantt Chart, for example if you want to see the relationships of one activity you can go directly to it and observe the arrow to and from her.
- Facilitates calculation of critical path
- Clarifies impact of decisions on downstream activities
Disadvantages:
- it seems more Complex respect to Giantt Chart, it is not easy to comprehend it at a glance
- Charts don’t readily depict durations, dates, progress: That’s means also that it is more difficult to track the progress of the project
what are the benefits of successful scheduling? (they are 5)
- Illustrates interdependence of all tasks
- Determines critical activities/critical path
- Identifies times when resources must be available
- Facilitates communication throughout the project
- Affects client expectations through the establishment of activities, milestones, and completion dates
what is a milestone in the scheduling?
it is a key moments in the project, e.g. completion of a phase.
Technically a milestone is not an activity, so it has no duration or resource.
However, there is a common tendency to treat them as approval points (but should put an ‘approval’ activity into the schedule)
what is the duration of the project?
we have to think the project as a set of paths, the duration of the project is the minimum duration of the project i.e the duration of the longest path. of course things can go worse and the project can last more
what are the differences between activity/task; event, milestone, network, path and critical?
- Activity / Task: A specific task that is required by the project, and takes time to complete.
- Event: An identifiable start, end or mid state; for example Milestones are events.
- Network: Arrangement of all activities, in their logical sequence. It defines the precedence relationships.
- Path: A series of connected activities (or intermediate events) between any two events in a network
- Critical: Activities, events, or paths, which if delayed, will delay the completion of the project.
what are the factors to evaluate a schedules?
1) Duration of the project
2) Risk of schedule overrun
3) Use of resources: Continuous use of a resource is better than having a resource come on to the project and then leave several times
4) Cost of the schedule
5) Psychology: Early wins
what are the methods to analyse the network?
2 foundations methods:
- CPM and PERT both developed in 1950s
1 modern method: Monte Carlo Simulation
important: in the network when you calculate the days of each activities the first activity has to start from day 0 and not day 1.
important: in the network when you calculate the days of each activities the first activity has to start from day 0 and not day 1.
what are the earliest time and finish and the latest start and finish? how is calculated the float/slack and what is it?
the earliest start and finish are the days in which the activity start and finish if it starts as soon as its predecessors finish. the latest start and finsih are the latest days in which it can start and finishes without delaying the duration of the project. of course since the latter is determined by the critical path the activities on the critical path will have the same earliest start and latest start and the same earliest finish and latest finish.
the float is a measure of flexibility or inherent surplus time in any activity’s scheduling: it’s the surplus time that one activity has before to influence the duration of the project.
the float/slack is calculated as the LST- EST or LFT - EFT (THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO CALCULATE THE FLOAT OF THE ACTIVITIES, USE THIS!!!)
list some of the characteristics of the networks?
- The arrangement of the activities (and, in some cases, events) in the network defines the project and the activity precedence relationships
- Networks are drawn starting on the left and proceeding to the right; arrowheads placed on the arcs are used to indicate the direction of flow; that is, to show the proper precedences
- Before an event can be realised–that is, achieved –all activities that immediately precede it must be completed; these are called its predecessors
- An event represents an instant in time when each and every predecessor activity has been finished
- A project’s critical path is the sequence of critical activities (and critical events) that
connects the project’s start event to its finish event and which cannot be delayed without delaying the project
in the exercise what are the activity that has to be closely monitored when the text ask for this.
They are the activities which are part of a path which is near, in term of duration, to the critical path. In other words, they are the activities which has the smallest amount of float.
what are the near-critical activities?
the ones which have a smaller amount of float
what is the normal duration of an activity or project? what does it mean crashing? which are the cost of crashing? when is the crash done?
the normal duration is the most likely duration.
Crashing means to Expedite an activity, by applying additional resources (IT COST MONEY):
- Specialised or additional equipment
- More people(e.g. borrowed staff, temps)
- More hours(e.g. overtime, weekends)
ex. expedite the duration of digging an hole by putting more people (however there is a saturation level when the people are too many and can t stay all in the hole).
crashing can lead to quality -related problems (for example because you hire tempoarary work to reduce the duration which are not expert of the project and of the situation as the initial ones).
Potential cost areas:
- Additional equipment/material
-Extra labour
-Reduced morale, from excessive hours/shifts
-Lower quality, from the pressure of time, inexperienced and tired staff
-Negative effects on other projects
it can be done at the outset if the client care more about reducing duration than increasing the cost or in the meanwhile if some time’s problems occur.
it is impossible to crash an activity to 0 days (activities need time)
what can you do to anlyse all the possible crashing and their cost?
you can draw a graph with the cost of the project on the vertical axes and duration on the horizontal and draw all the points corresponding to the initial situation and the subsequent crashings. the slope is calculated by dividing (crash cost- normal cost) by (crash duration - normal duration). since the numerator is positive and the denominator is negative the slope will be negative.
which activities should be crashed first?
there are 2 basic principles:
- focus on critical path since usually is not helpful to shorten non.critical activities because they don’ directly affect the duration of the project (exception: when a scarse resource is needed elsewhere e.g in another project
- choose the least expensive activity to crash in the critical path and continue with the second least and so on. when you considere the cost you need to consider the unit cost per day/week and not the total cost of crashing (be careful of the maximum crahing possible and to consider if the partial crashing is allowed or not).
Every time that you crash draw the new network and check if the critical path is the same, it is changed or there are more than one critical path.
how do we decide how many times allocate to any activity and how do we copy with its uncertainty?
using data by past projects and from estimates and making some assumptions we can try to estimate the shortest possible time of an activity, the most likely one (the mode of the distribution, not the average) and the longest one. but which one we should incorporate in our anlalysis? we can’t use the longest because it’s really inefficent and it would push the workers to work slowly and neither the shortest since taking that, evry single small delay would lead to a reschedule of all activities and resources. to deal with this uncertainty (which is very different by activity to activity) there are 2 methods: PERT and Montecarlo Simulation. PERT (developed by MIT in 50’) uses a formula to calculate the expected time of each activity to incorporate in our analysis (this formula account in major part the most likely time but adjust also the duration for the extreme values) and another formula (actually we can use 3 formulas depending on the confidence level that we want to use) to calculate the variance (a measure of statistical dispersion of the distribution) of each activities which represents its uncertainty (activity with 0 variance have no uncertainty). the TE and Variance of a path is the sum of the TE and Variances of all the activities in that path.
why the variance is important?
because it tell to us to what extend we have to be confident in time expected.
what is the probability of completing a path before the time expected of the path?
50% since it s the mean of the distribution of time required to the path.
with the pert analyses how can we calculate the probability of finishing a path in D days?
we have to calculate Z as (D - u)/ radice della varianza del path and then use the table to convert Z in a probability. to calculate the opposite probability you can do 1- that probability.
how can we calculate the probability that the project finish in D days?
in reality we shoulld consider all the probability of the paths but typically we follow a semplicistic approach focusing only of the probability of critical path. this is more wrong as the other paths are closer to the critical one based on the duration.
