Project Managment

Question 1

What is a project?

Answer 1

temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result

Question 2

What are some examples of ethical dilemmas?

Answer 2

cutting corners, hiding errors or problems, lies in status reports, using substandard materials or methods, etc.

Question 3

How can you avoid ethical dilemmas in your staff?

Answer 3

model ethical behavior, set clear expectations, good training methods, personally oversee operations, don’t “kill the messenger,” set realistic goals and timelines, etc.

Question 4

What are the four phases of the project life cycle?

Answer 4

defining, planning, execution, and closing/termination

Question 5

What happens in the defining stage of the project life cycle?

Answer 5

Outcomes - clarify the project’s purpose/goals/objectives/required outcomes
Wbs - develop a work breakdown structure
Timeline - estimate task durations
Resources - identify resource requirements
Feasibility - evaluate feasibility
Decision - decide whether to continue, modify, or terminate the project
Support - obtain stakeholders’ signs-off

Question 6

What happens in the planning phase of the project life cycle?

Answer 6

The purpose is to organize the project’s deliverables and resources within realistic and specific timeframes

R&R - assign resources and responsibilities to the WBS
Contingency plan - protect a project from things going wrong, planning for bad outcomes

Question 7

What does an operations manager do?

Answer 7

An OM manages a function as well as people within an organization of people.

Question 8

What does it mean to manage a function?

Answer 8

It means to be responsible for the operation meeting its performance measures such as production, quantity, quality, cost, labor use, etc. It means to be responsible for troubleshooting and correcting problems. It means to be responsible for determining improvement actions and implementing them to improve the operation’s performance.

Question 9

What is the primary function/department involved in operations? What others are there?

Answer 9

The primary one is production (defined as the set of activities that produces the goods and/or services that an organization offers and that create value by transforming inputs into outputs), but others like product development, human resources, supply chain/purchasing, process engineering, and more can all be included as well

Question 10

What do performance measures do? Give some examples of performance measures.

Answer 10

Performance measures define what is important for the function to achieve for the success of the organization and assess how well the function is performing.
A couple of examples would be productivity, quality, cost, cycle time, safety, customer satisfaction, etc.

Question 11

What is productivity? What is the formula for productivity?

Answer 11

A measure of the effective use of resources.
Output/Input
Units Produced/Input Used

Question 12

How might one increase productivity (as far as the formula AND specific examples)?

Answer 12

Increase output/production:
- increasing production with automation
- increasing production amount by reducing scrapped product
Decrease input/materials used
- reducing prices
- reducing labor with automation
- reducing energy costs with efficient equipment and practices
- decreasing labor by reorganizing the production operation or workflow

Question 13

When might it be difficult to increase productivity and/or adequately measure the changes being made?

Answer 13

In the service industry

• labor intensive (teaching, counseling)
• individually-focused (psychological counseling)
• intelligence product (legal, medicine)
• difficult to automate (hair cut)

Question 14

What are the two ways to protect a project? Give specific examples of what these may look like.

Answer 14

Preventing problems and having action plans in case they do happen

• assemble a diverse decision-making team with a wide array of perspectives
• brainstorm ALL possible risks/failures/etc., estimate the probability of each one happening, prioritize those with the most important risk values, and manage them using cost-effective approaches

Question 15

What happens in the execution phase of the project life cycle?

Answer 15

• motivate the team
• manage communication
• manage the project team
• monitor project performance measures
• solve problems, revise plans as needed

Question 16

What happens in the closing phase of the life cycle?

Answer 16

• celebrate!
• thank everyone
• evaluate everything, document it, and learn from it

Question 17

What is a GANTT chart?

Answer 17

Boxes/bars showing duration and schedule of each activity

- sometimes shows precedents and who is responsible for each task

Question 18

What does a PERT chart show?

Answer 18

sequence, connection, and duration of each activity

Question 19

What is brainstorming?

Answer 19

what happens when a group works together to generate ideas and alternative solutions

• judgment phase is separate from the collection phase
• as creative as possible
• if possible, span across time (multiple in one day) to give people time to simmer

Question 20

What are the brainstorming guidelines?

Answer 20

• well-defined, clearly stated, understood, and agreed-upon topic
• assign someone to write down all ideas as they occur
• everyone participates, and ideas are collected until there seemingly are no more
• suspend judgment
• every idea is accepted and recorded
• encourage everyone to build on the ideas of others
• encourage odd and out-of-the-box ideas
• give people time away to simmer and then come back for more

Question 21

The quality of decisions depends on what three things?

Answer 21

• quality of our definition of needed outcomes
• quality of our evaluation of available alternatives and solutions
• quality of our understanding of the probabilities, risks, outcomes, and consequences of those alternatives and solutions

Question 22

What are the steps involved in the formal (numerical) decision-making process?

Answer 22

1 - clearly define the problem/decision to be made
2 - develop specific and measurable objectives
3 - classify objectives into musts and wants
4 - assign weights to the wants
5 - generate alternatives
6 - screen alternatives through the musts
7 - evaluate remaining alternatives against the wants
8 - evaluate top alternatives in terms of their FECRA (feasibility, effectiveness, costs, risks, and adverse consequences)
9 - select best alternative
10 - plan the solution (including potential problem analysis and contingency planning)
11 - implement the solution
12 - evaluate the solution

Question 23

What is FECRA? What are the questions one should ask oneself in the process?

Answer 23

Feasibility
- Can it be implemented?
- What is the probability of success?
Effectiveness
- How well does the alternative resolve the problem situation?
Costs
- What will be the alternative’s costs (financial and nonfinancial) to the organization?
Risks
- What can potentially go wrong?
- What is the likelihood of each of those things occurring?
- What is the consequence of each occurring?
Adverse consequences
- What is the probability of each adverse consequence occurring and how serious a detriment would each one be?

Question 24

What are the “other” group decision-making methods?

Answer 24

consensus DM and multi-voting

Question 25

What is the purpose of consensus decision-making?

Answer 25

NOT to reach an objectively optimal decision

IT IS for the group to reach a decision that everyone in the group will support

Question 26

What are the guidelines of consensus decision-making?

Answer 26

• Write the decision that needs to be made and the criteria to make it clearly so everyone can see
• Make sure everyone feels heard
• Listen well
• Do not assume it becomes a win-lose situation if there happens to be a stalemate. Think creatively about the next-best option for both
• Do not change your mind simply to avoid conflict
• Avoid conflict-reducing techniques such as majority vote, averaging, coin toss, or bargaining. When dissenting members finally agree, do not feel they have to be rewarded or accommodated by getting their own way with something later.
• Differences of opinion are natural and accepted. Seek them out, value them, and try to involve everyone in the decision process.

Question 27

What is the purpose of multi-voting?

Answer 27

To reduce a long list of items, often generated through brainstorming, to a manageable size.

Question 28

What is the method of multi-voting?

Answer 28

• Decide on the criteria that are most important to the final decision and use that when voting.
• Assign each participant at least 1/3 as many votes as there are things to prioritize.
• Have everyone vote and distribute their votes as they like.
• Remove those items receiving few votes.
• Repeat with the remaining items as necessary.
• NEVER multi-vote down to one item.
• Reduce down to roughly 3-5 items.