Chapter Questions
Give an example of a situation in which project management is needed.
Explain the purpose of project organization.
What are the three phases involved in the management of a large project?
What are some of the questions that can be answered with PERT and CPM?
What is a project and why is it important is to understand the project environment?
What is the use of Gantt charts in project management?
What is the difference between an activity-on-arrow (AOA) network and an activity-on-node (AON) network? Which is primarily used in this chapter?
What are the ethical dilemmas that project managers faced with when dealing with projects?
While numerous trade-offs may be required during the life cycle of a project, the trade-offs between cost, time and performance are considered essential. Please discuss.
Describe how expected activity times and variances can be computed in a PERT network.
Define earliest start, earliest finish, latest finish, and latest start times.
Students are sometimes confused by the concept of critical path, and want to believe that it is the shortest path through a network. Convincingly explain why this is not so.
What are dummy activities? Why are they used in activity-onarrow (AOA) project networks?
What are the three time estimates used with PERT?
Would a project manager ever consider crashing a noncritical activity in a project network? Explain convincingly.
How is the variance of the total project computed in PERT?
Describe the meaning of slack, and discuss how it can be determined.
How can we determine the probability that a project will be completed by a certain date? What assumptions are made in this computation?
Compare and contrast the Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) with the Critical Path Method (CPM).
What is the difference between the waterfall approach and agile project management?