Technical dependencies are often harder to see on a Gantt chart than on a PERT/CPM
network.
The process of line balancing is when individual production lines are made to generate
the required amount of product with a little excess capacity as possible.
When making trade-offs on a project, the project manager needs to be aware that profit
for the firm is always the most important of the project’s goals.
Calculating the Tracking Signal can not only reveal if estimates are biased, it can also
tell how severe the bias is.
A common mistake is to focus too much on results and not enough on the intensity of
activity.
A big advantage of AON networks is that they are easier to draw.
A budget is a plan for allocating resources.
The comparative benefits method is considered a nonnumeric project selection method.
Defining resource needs is not necessary on small projects.
Poor up-front planning is a fundamental reason for project failure.
It is common practice to select the project manager prior to the project being selected.
Project budget is nothing more than the project plan, based on the WBS, expressed in
monetary terms.
Traditional organizational budgets are task-oriented, rather than activity-oriented.
Control systems that make use of all five components of project control are called
cybernetic control systems.
An important use of data analysis is to identify who to properly blame for poor project
performance.
While general managers have their authority limited to specific areas in the overall
organization, project managers have authority over any activity required by the project.
The variance of the normal time can be quite different from the variance of the crash
time.
Random errors will tend to cancel out.
A project that is selected because it is necessary for continued operations exemplifies a
sacred cow.
Milestones cannot be identified on a Gantt Chart.
A representative of senior management should be invited to the project launch meeting.
The general audit is usually performed by a person or team with special technical skills.
A disadvantage of empowerment is the lack of timely feedback.
A primary purpose of forming projects is to assign the responsibility for accomplishing
some organizational task to a specific person or small group.
Budget cuts are usually disastrous to an exponential life-cycle project.
While the design structure matrix can help identify potential rework situations, typically
nothing can be done to avoid them.
The tasks of project planning, project budgeting, and project scheduling are largely
separable from one another.
Conflict occurs mainly at the beginning of the project.
The percentage of an activity’s budget actually spent by a given date is typically a good
indicator of the percent of that activity’s completion.
It is considered good management to crash the least costly activities before the more
costly ones.
The movement from left to right through the network beginning with the start node that
calculates the LS and LF for each activity is known as “FORWARD PASS”
The project budget acts as a project control.
When using financial methods for selecting projects, the payback period is the simplest
and best method to use.
It is common to have more than one boss in a matrix organization.
Since the PM has position power there is no need for them to have credibility
The job of managing work across multiple groups is called integration management.