Discussion Questions

1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of holding a JPPS session onsite versus offsite?
2. Your planning session seems to have reached an impasse. The planning team is divided between two ways to approach a particularly difficult part of the project. Approximately two-thirds of the team members want to use a well-tested and well-understood approach. The remaining third (of which you are a member) wants to use a new approach that holds the promise of significantly reducing the time to complete this part of the project. You are the project manager and feel very strongly about using the new approach. Should you impose your authority as project manager and take the new approach, or should you go with the majority? What is the basis for your decision? Be specific. Is there anything else you might do to resolve the impasse?
3. Why is building the WBS by walking around the workspace or the e-mail space a ticket to failure?
4. The WBS identifies all of the work that must be done to complete the project. What would you do if the answer to a question posed as part of the work determines which of the two alternatives mentioned in question #2 you should pursue?
5. Under what conditions might you choose to decompose an activity that meets all of the six completeness criteria? Give specific examples.
6. Can you think of any activities that would not meet all six completeness criteria, yet need not be further decomposed? Give specific examples.
7. You have used the three-point method to estimate the duration of a task that you know will be critical to the project. The estimate produces a very large difference between the optimistic and pessimistic estimates. What actions might you take, if any, regarding this task?
8. Discuss a project on which you've worked where time was the major factor in determining the success or failure of the project. What did you do about cost considerations? Did the sponsor(s) agree with the added cost? Was the project successful?
9. Prepare a simple budget showing an order of magnitude estimate, a budget estimate, and a definitive estimate. What did you have to do to bring each successive budget closer to the final working budget?
10. The project network diagram has been constructed, and the project completion date is beyond the management-imposed deadline. You have compressed the schedule as much as possible by introducing parallel work through changes from FS to SS dependencies, and you still do not meet the schedule deadline. What would you do? (Hint: Use the scope triangle discussed in Chapter 1.)
11. Even though all of your tasks have met the WBS completion criteria, what scheduling problems might prompt you to further decompose one or more of them, and how will that resolve the problems?
12. You are the project manager of a project to develop a new system for the company. You have two options for a resource to work on a specific programming task for your project. The task is not on the critical path, but it is somewhat complex. Your options are as follows:
    1. (a) One choice is Harry. He is the most skilled programmer in the company and is therefore in constant demand. As a result, he is usually assigned to several projects at the same time. He is available to your project on a half-time basis. He currently has commitments to two other projects for the remaining half of his time.
    2. (b) Your other choice is actually a team of two programmers, both of whom have average skills. They are recent hires into the company and have never worked together before. You have two alternatives and are free to choose whichever one you want. First, you could pick one of these programmers to work half-time on your project. Second, they could each be assigned to your project quarter-time. Regardless of which choice you make, this would be the only project they would be working on. The remainder of their time will be spent in training on company processes and systems, and orientation to company policies and practices.

    You have three alternatives from which to choose. Identify and evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each alternative. What are the risks associated with each alternative? How might you mitigate those risks? Which choice would you make and why? Are there conditions under which one choice would be preferred over the other? Be specific.