Project Management

Question 1

The four constraints of a project are: time, cost, scope and quality. What are the elements of a project plan used to plan and manage these 4 constraints?

Answer 1

schedule, budget, product backlog and change control procedures, quality plan

Question 2

A milestone is a significant event during a project used to measure progress. A milestone is usually scheduled, but it doesn’t have to be.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

Why is it necessary to identify the dependencies between project tasks?

Answer 3

To calculate the critical path through the schedule
&
To create schedules. Task dependencies limit the times when tasks can be scheduled.

Question 4

Four analysts attend a design review meeting lasting 2 hours. One analyst didn’t make any meaningful contributes during the review. What was the duration of the meeting? How much effort was expended during the meeting? (Assume the standard definition of the term effort used when planning a project.)

Answer 4

2 hours; 8 hours

It doesn’t even matter if the analyst not making any comments did or didn’t prepare. He or she participated which represents 2 hours of effort. You can expend effort without getting results.

Question 5

The slack time for all of the tasks on the critical path is zero.

Answer 5

True

Question 6

There can be only one critical path in the schedule.

Answer 6

False

Question 7

It is possible to calculate the critical path for a project knowing only the tasks, their dependencies and their duration estimates.

Answer 7

True

Question 8

It is possible to calculate the critical path for a project knowing only the tasks, their dependencies and their effort estimates.

Answer 8

False

Question 9

You can plan and schedule work at different levels of detail. What are the advantages of planning detailed tasks rather than broad objectives?

Answer 9

More control over the project (more tasks means more opportunities for feedback and course corrections that can be made sooner)

Better estimates of overall effort

More likely to meet deadlines because schedule slips are identified sooner

Question 10

Which of the following are you least likely to find in a project charter?

  Goals and objectives 
  Rough schedule and budget estimates 
  Project success criteria 
  Detailed requirements
  Constraints and assumptions 
  Major risks and obstacles to success

Answer 10

Detailed Requirements

Question 11

Which of the following best describes the purpose of the project charter?

Answer 11

To define the expected project outcome

Question 12

You need at least a rough schedule in order to do resource leveling.

Answer 12

True

Question 13

Resource leveling is the practice of staffing with individuals at a similar skill level to make scheduling easier. (If individuals are at the same skill level they can be moved from one task to another without reestimating the time needed to complete the task.)

Answer 13

False

Staffing a project with individuals at the same skill level might make resource leveling easier, but resource leveling is not a staffing issue. Resource leveling is a process for leveling out the hills and valleys in a schedule (i.e. moving tasks around in the schedule and reassigning tasks so that work effort is evenly distributed among days and equitably among individuals) Note, resource leveling may also be needed to resolve conflicts for resources.

Question 14

Example of resource leveling

Answer 14

A family planning a vacation makes an initial schedule of activities. Upon review they decide to move around a few of the planned activities in the schedule in order to better balance the number and duration of activities planned for each day.

Question 15

In which of the following life cycle models are you more likely to find predictive planning?
  Waterfall 
  Spiral 
  Evolutionary Prototyping 
  Code and fix

Answer 15

Waterfall

Question 16

Exploratory projects with high uncertainty are best suited to what type of planning?

Answer 16

Adaptive

Question 17

The release plan is likely to change over the course of the project.

Answer 17

True

Question 18

Except under extraordinary circumstances, an iteration plan is fixed for the duration of the iteration.

Answer 18

True

Question 19

A project with well-understood and stable requirements is best suited to what type of planning?

Answer 19

Predictive

Question 20

In general, the contents of a release plan comes from ______ analysis of the work and the contents of an iteration plan comes from ________ analysis of the work.

Answer 20

Top-down, Bottom-up

Question 21

In the context of a software project, the term “going dark” refers to the situation where a developer stops participating on a project. He or she stops going to meetings and stops writing code.

Answer 21

False. Going dark is where a developer continues to write code but doesn’t check it in or make it available for review.

Question 22

Larry and Mindy are assigned separate but equally difficult tasks (for example, both are asked to write a module that turns out to be 100 lines of code). Mindy completes her task by working 6 hours over 2 days. Larry completes his task by working 8 hours over 2 days. What can you say about this situation?

Answer 22

Both tasks took the same duration

Answering this question correctly depends on sorting out three separate concepts: effort, duration and productivity. Productivity is output per unit of input. Mindy’s productivity is 1/6 of a module per hour. Larry’s productivity is 1/8 of a module per hour. Effort estimates assume a certain productivity. The actual effort is the total amount of time spent working on the task. Two people working on separate but equally difficult tasks can spend unequal amounts of effort.