Chapter 16 CD – PERT/CPM Models for Project Management
True / False Questions
1. Projects involve routine activities that are performed repeatedly.
2. Project managers must often function in an environment that is beset with uncertainties.
3. Although PERT and CPM were originally developed for somewhat different types of
projects, they are now nearly identical in terms of analysis and procedures.
4. The project network diagram describes sequential relationships among major activities in a
project.
5. In an Activity-On-Node project network, the nodes are used to separate an activity from
each of its immediate predecessors.
6. An immediate predecessor of an activity must be completed before that activity can begin.
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29. A normal distribution is usually used to describe the form of the probability distribution of
activity durations in the PERT three-estimate approach.
30. If the variance of an activity duration is equal to 1 then all the durations are the same.
31. A manager has decided that an activity has a pessimistic estimate of 15 days, a most-likely
estimate of 6 days, and an optimistic estimate of 3 days. The expected duration of this activity
is 6 days.
32. The mean critical path is the path through the project network that would be the critical
path if the duration of each activity equals its mean.
33. The standard deviation of the critical path is equal to the sum of the standard deviations of
all the activities on the critical path.
34. In order to determine the probability of timely project completion, it is sometimes
necessary to take into account paths other than the critical path.
35. When calculating the probability that a project will finish by a certain time, the
approximation that is obtained is usually lower than the true probability.
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36. The CPM method provides an excellent procedure for evaluating time-cost tradeoffs.
37. Crashing cannot be accomplished by using different materials than originally planned.
38. Only activities on the critical path are initial candidates for crashing.
39. Crashing an activity will always reduce the duration of a project.
40. PERT/Cost is a systematic procedure to help a project manager bid on a project.
41. A common assumption when using PERT/Cost is that the costs are incurred at a constant
rate throughout the duration of an activity.
42. PERT/Cost can be used to monitor budget overruns.
43. A project manager does not need to monitor each individual activity, just the overall
project when looking at budget costs.
