Project Management Final

Lags

The logical relationship between the start and finish of one activity and the start and finish of another activity

Ladder

Overlapping of tasks

Crash

Shortening project tasks

Finish to start lag

Most common type of sequencing, shown on the line joining the models, added during forward pass, subtracted during backward pass

Finish to Finish lag

Two activities share a similar completion point

Start to start lag

Logic must be maintained by both forward and backward pass

Start to finish lag

Least common type of lag relationship, successor’s finish dependent on predecessor’s start

Getting a project back on schedule

Review project lag times and evaluate how to best fill the lag time with productive work, review sequential activities for laddering

Project Crashing

Crashing involves the reduction of the length of a project task

Principle methods of crashing a project

Changing resources, changing the scope, changing the sequencing

Brook’s law

Adding resources to ongoing activities will only delay them further

Overtime

Overtime will only work up until a certain extent

Parallel processing

Activities that were designed to be sequential, high risk of reducing quality of the output

Scope reduction

Needs careful resetting of client and stakeholder expectation

Crash costs

Negotiated based on your relationships with your team members and stakeholders

Crash costs per period

(Crash cost - Normal cost) / (Normal time - Crash time)

Fast tracking

Parallel processing activities or overlapping them

Schedule crashing

Obtaining the greatest amount of schedule compression for the least incremental cost

Parkinson’s law

Work expands to fit the allotted time

Waterfall model

Conceptualization, Planning, Execution, termination

Agile project management

Places a premium on flexibility and evolving customer requirements throughout the development process

Scrum

Recognizes mistakes of assuming once initial project conceptualization and planning are completed, project will be executed to original specifications

Sprint

One iteration of the agile planning and execution cycle

Time box

The length of any particular sprint, fixed in advance, during the scrum meeting

User stories

Short explanation of the end user that captures what they do or what they need from the project under development

Scrum master

Person on the project team responsible for moving the project forward between iterations

Product backlog

A prioritized list of everything that might be needed in completed product and source of requirements for any changes

Sprint backlog

The set of product backlog items selected for the sprint, plus a plan for delivering the sprint goal

Burndown chart

Remaining work in the sprint backlog

Product owner

person representing the stakeholders and serving as the voice of the customer

Development team

Organizational unit responsible for delivering the product at the end of the iteration

Work backlog

Evolving, prioritized queue of business and technical functionality that needs to be developed into a system

Critical Chain

The longest path through a project schedule with resource conflicts resolved

Capacity

Determined by the most constrained resource or department

Why are projects late?

Task duration estimation, the student syndrome, parkinson’s law, multi-tasking, no early finishes

How safety is added to project activities

1. Individuals activities overestimated

2. Project manager safety margin

3. Anticipating expected cuts from management

Parkinson’s law

Work expands to fit the allotted time

Focused project cycle time reduction

select the critical chain, challenge the assumptions along the critical chain, change the network to reflect new assumptions, level the road

Critical Chain no multi-tasking

Assigning employees more than one task to do at the same time

Central time buffers

Buffers protect the entire project, not individual tasks, buffers are essential elements of the schedule

Executive decision support

CCPM provides leaders real-time information on project status allowing them to focus their attention and resources

Determinants of project success

Budget, client acceptance, schedule and performance

Cost estimating

developing an approximation of costs of the resources needed to complete project activities

Cost budgeting

Aggregating the estimated costs of individuals activities or work packages to establish a cost baseline

Cost control

Influencing the factors that create costs variances and controlling changes to the project budget

Project control cycle

1. Setting a goal

2. Measuring progress

3. Comparing actual with planned

4. Taking action and recycling the process

Cost control requirements

Measure cumulative resources consumed, Measure status and accomplishments

Issues in tracking expenses

Vendor invoices, Materials and travel expenses

Schedule variance

Provides a comparison between planned and actual performance but does not include actual costs

Cost management system

Should be implemented right at the beginning of the life cycle of the project

Cost control implies good cost management of:

Project cash flow, direct labor costing, overhead rate costing, others such as incentives, penalties and profit sharing

Management reserve

Provision in the project management plan to mitigate cost and or schedule risk

Funded contract change

Change order

Undistributed budget

Budget associated with contract changes where time constraints prevent the necessary planning to incorporate the change into the performance budget

Unallocated budget

Contract tasks that have not been identified or authorized

Milestone analysis

Events or stages of the project that represent a significant accomplishment

Earned value management

A management methodology for integrating scope, schedule and resources and for objectively measuring project performance and progress

Steps in earned value management

1. Clearly define each activity

2. Create usage schedules

3. Develop a time-phased budget

4. Total the actual costs

5. Calculate both the cost variance and schedule variance

TERMS

Planned value, earned value, actual cost, budget at completion, estimate at completion, estimate to complete, variance at completion

Cost variance

Compares deviations only from the budget and does not provide a measure of comparison between work scheduled and work accomplished

0/100 rule

Project activity has a value of 0 dollars until the activity is finished

Variance threshold reports

Occur only when the variances exceed the upper and lower boundaries of the project variances envelope

Project driven organization

Intervals reported weekly

Non project driven organization

Intervals reported monthly

Progress reporting questions

1. Where are we today?

2. Where will we end up?

3. What are the present and future risks?

4. Variance analysis

Variance analysis

Are there any special problems that need to be addressed and what can management do to help

Reserves

A provision in the project management plan to mitigate cost and or schedule risk

Critical success factors

project mission, top management support, project plans, client consultation, personnel, technical tasks, client acceptance, monitoring, communications, troubleshooting

Extinction

Project is complete

Addition

Project is institutionalized as part of the parent organization

Integration

Project resources are integrated back into organization structure

Starvation

Project kept on file but funding removed

Technological changes

Do not continue to develop on the windows 98 platform

Organizational changes

your company has been acquired by another company that already has a different software package than the one your implementing

Strategic priority shifts

internet purchasing has become more important than your project to improve point of sale

Legal changes

Obamacare impacts the in-company health care project you were working on

Market changes

Microsoft bought out a packaged software that does the same thing your project is developing

Two types of claims

Ex-gratia claims, Default by the project company

Project termination issues

emotional: staff and client, intellectual: internal and external

BOT

Build operate and transfer

Why are closeouts difficult

Project sign off can be a de-motivator, constraints cause shortcuts on the back end, low priority activities, lessons learned analysis seen as bookkeeping, unique view of projects