Deck 18: Project Management

Question 1

Which of the following stages of the project life cycle entails the scheduling of activities

A) The defining stage
B) The planning stage
C) The organizing stage
D) The controlling stage

Answer 1

The planning stage

Question 2

Which of the following is an example of a project that belongs to the functional area of accounting and finance

A) Market research study
B) Planning a firm's initial public offering
C) Annual performance and compensation review
D) Installing a revenue management system

Answer 2

Planning a firm's initial public offering

Question 3

Project managers do not need technical expertise.

Answer 3

False

Question 4

In the project management life cycle, the__________involves collecting and assessing status reports, managing changes to baselines, and responding to circumstances that can negatively impact the project participants.

A) closing stage
B) planning stage
C) organizing stage
D) controlling stage

Question 5

__________refers to reducing the total time to complete the project to meet a revised due date.

A) Benchmarking
B) Crashing a project
C) Project resource leveling
D) Activity sequencing

Question 6

The district magistrate of a city has decided to reconstruct the most frequented street of the city. He plans to block the street for the duration of the work, which will cause considerable inconvenience to the people of the city. The project has three parallel paths defined as the following:
Path A-B-C-H will take 16 days.
Path A-D-E-H will take 22 days.
Path A-F-G-H will take 30 days.
In the given scenario, which of the following statements is true

A) The expected duration of the project is 68 days.
B) Activities B, D, and F have an earliest starting time of 0.
C) Path A-D-E-H has the largest slack time.
D) Path A-F-G-H is the critical path.

Question 7

The Critical Path Method (CPM) allows us to investigate the effects of uncertainty of activity times on the project completion time.

Question 8

The Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) was developed as a means of scheduling and controlling projects with constant activity times.

Question 9

Which of the following is an assumption made by the critical path method (CPM)

A) The activity time estimates are accurate and stable.
B) Activities are dependent on each other, without clearly defined start and finish times.
C) Activities are interrupted many times before completion.
D) The project network defines a tentative work sequence that can be changed anytime during the project.

Question 10

In the context of the Critical Path Method (CPM), latest start (LS) and latest finish (LF) times are computed by making a backward pass through the network, beginning with the ending project activity or activities.

Question 11

A pure project organizational structure eliminates the duplication of resources across the organization.

Question 12

In the context of the Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT), which of the following is true of the beta probability distribution approach

A) It allows managers to identify the best case, worst case, and most likely case for activity times.
B) It describes the inherent similarity in the optimistic, most probable, and pessimistic time estimates.
C) It is rigid in characterizing the distribution of times.
D) It forces activity times to a symmetric normal probability distribution.

Question 13

Following is the Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) network used to execute a marketing campaign at TeaTime Inc. Calculate the variance for the project.

A) 2.5 weeks
B) 3.0 weeks
C) 3.5 weeks
D) 4.0 weeks

Question 14

The only way the project completion time can be reduced is by crashing activities on the critical path.

Question 15

Which of the following is true of a typical functional organization

A) It eliminates duplication of resources.
B) It makes communication across the organization easier and smooth.
C) A project cuts across organizational boundaries in a typical functional organization.
D) Team members are assigned exclusively to projects in a typical functional organization.

Question 16

Which of the following is true of crashing a project

A) It involves the removal of resources from selected project activities to reduce costs.
B) It increases the total cost of the project.
C) It increases the total time taken to complete the project.
D) It is a trade-off between project revenue and additional input costs.

Question 17

A__________is a temporary and often customized initiative that consists of many smaller tasks and activities that must be coordinated and completed to finish the entire initiative on time and within budget.

A) resource plan
B) schedule
C) project
D) product-process matrix

Question 18

The activities, their respective immediate predecessors, and activity times for a particular project are given in the table below. Determine the earliest completion time for this project using a Gantt chart.

A) 14 weeks
B) 16 weeks
C) 18 weeks
D) 20 weeks

Question 19

The earliest time that an activity can be completed is equal to the latest time it can begin minus the time to perform the activity.

Question 20

In the context of the Critical Path Method (CPM), the slack time (ST) for an activity is computed as:

A) the latest start (LS) time minus the earliest finish (EF) time.
B) the latest finish (LF) time minus the earliest start (ES) time.
C) the latest start (LS) time minus the earliest start (ES) time.
D) the earliest finish (EF) time minus the latest start (LS) time.

Question 21

Implementing a new computer-aided design system is an example of a project in the functional area of _____.

A) engineering
B) operations
C) logistics
D) marketing

Question 22

In the context of projects,__________are discrete tasks that consume resources and time.

A) value chains
B) activities
C) processes
D) schedules

Question 23

Rose is in charge of advertising a new product launched by her company. She has defined the advertising for this product as an individual project that consists of seven activities. Following are the characteristics of these activities: Calculate the earliest completion time for the project using a Gantt chart.

A) 10 weeks
B) 11 weeks
C) 12 weeks
D) 13 weeks

Question 24

Which of the following is true of the Critical Path Method (CPM)

A) It allows us to investigate the effects of uncertainty of activity times on project completion times.
B) It uses the variance in the critical path activities to evaluate the risks associated with project completion times.
C) It assumes that activities are independent of one another, with clearly defined start and finish dates.
D) It accounts for the interruptions that may affect an activity between the start and the finish times.

Question 25

If an activity can be completed in 10 weeks at a cost of $3,200 instead of the normal time of 12 weeks at a cost of $2,400, then the crash cost per week for the given activity is _____.

A) $200
B) $400
C) $600
D) $800

Question 26

In the context of project management,__________a project involves releasing and reassigning people.

A) closing
B) organizing
C) defining
D) planning