Deck 6: Managing Process Improvement Projects

Question 1

Projects should be evaluated against standards and by methods established at their completion,including procedures for monitoring,collecting,storing,and evaluating the history of the project.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

All of the following are important outputs of project scheduling,EXCEPT:

A)Identification of slack times for all activities and paths
B)Earliest and latest time each activity can be completed
C)Networks and paths
D)Identification of critical activities

Answer 2

C

Question 3

Any path that if delayed will delay the completion of the entire project is known as a:

A)Significant path
B)Critical path
C)Central path
D)Network path

Answer 3

B

Question 4

Which of the following is NOT an example of a project?

A)Constructing highways,bridges,tunnels and dams
B)Managing research and development (R&D)activities such as the development of the atomic bomb
C)Building MP3 players for massive distribution
D)Running political or advertising campaigns,war or fire-fighting operations

Question 5

Which of the following terms provides the basis for the project schedule,often formatted as a project Gantt chart?

A)Critical path
B)Work breakdown structure
C)Float
D)Earned value

Question 6

Among the reasons for the growth in project operations we find:

A)People have more leisure time to follow and participate in projects
B)More sophisticated technology has increased public awareness of project operations
C)More customization for suppliers makes it important to meet their needs
D)Both A and B

Question 7

The project life cycle typically has a stretched-s or an exponential form.

Question 8

An optimal procedure for organizations to accept projects is to specify a return on investment (ROI)and fund only projects that meet this criterion.

Question 9

The amount of flexibility the project manager has in terms of starting and completing an activity is referred to as its:

A)Slack
B)Float
C)Flex
D)Both A and B

Question 10

Which of the following project categories typically seeks the development of a new generation of outputs?

A)Derivative projects
B)Breakthrough projects
C)Platform projects
D)R&D projects

Question 11

An event is a series of connected activities from the start to the finish of the project.

Question 12

The amount of flexibility the project manager has in terms of starting and completing an activity is referred to as its slack.

Question 13

Which of the following project categories might lead to the other project categories?

A)Derivative projects
B)Breakthrough projects
C)Platform projects
D)R&D projects

Question 14

According to Goldratt,to complete a project on time,the highest priority should be given to the:

A)Critical buffer
B)Feeding chain
C)Project buffer
D)Critical chain

Question 15

When workers receive approval for a task based on inflated time estimate,they may perceive that they now have plenty of time to complete the task and therefore delay starting the task.What has this concept been called?

A)Student syndrome
B)Inflation syndrome
C)Time-shift
D)Goldratt delay

Question 16

The amount of time a project manager estimates it will take to complete the activity under ideal conditions is known as:

A)Pessimistic time
B)Optimistic time
C)Likeliest time
D)Utopian time

Question 17

Which of the following statement(s)concerning probabilities of completion is/are incorrect?

A)Using the variance of each activity,we can compute the likelihood of completing the project in a given time period.
B)The probability of completing a path is found by calculating the standard normal deviate of the desired completion time less the expected completion time.
C)The distribution of a path's completion time will be approximately normally distributed if the path has a large number of activities on it.
D)The individual activity completion times must be normally distributed

Question 18

The set of all project activities graphically interrelated through precedence relationships is known as a/an:

A)Activity
B)Event
C)Network
D)Path

Question 19

Duration of critical path - path duration = __________?

A)Latest finish time
B)Critical time
C)Path slack
D)Latest start time

Question 20

Project charters should contain some level of information regarding which of the following elements:

A)Business case,goals,or scope
B)Overview,general approach,schedules or milestones
C)Work breakdown structure and path dependencies
D)Both A and B

Question 21

Three phenomena that tend to bias the expected completion time of projects are inflated time estimates,activity time variability with path interdependencies,and resource dependence.

Question 22

Using CPM,when activity times are not known with certainty,we still can determine how long it will actually take to complete the project.

Question 23

The optimistic time is the amount of time the project will take under the worst-case scenario.

Question 24

The amount of _____ _____ needed to protect a particular path in a project is less than the sum of the _____ _____ required to protect the individual activities making up the path.

Question 25

When a project cost,schedule,or time variance is significant,the project manager must identify (or at least try to do so)an __________ cause for the variance so that the proper remedy can be used to keep it from recurring.

Question 26

The amount of safety time needed to protect a particular path in a project is less than the sum of the safety times required to protect the individual activities making up the path.

Question 27

Favorable variances do not require corrective action or further investigation; only unfavorable variances in performance.

Question 28

The objective of feeding buffers is to ensure that non-critical chains are completed so that they do not delay tasks on the critical chain.

Question 29

Both PERT and CPM are based on variations of the __________ chart?