Information Technology Project Management

UNIT 2

1. A project has been defined to contain the following list of activities along with their required times for completion.

1. Draw a network diagram for the activities.
2. Calculate the earliest expected completion time.
3. Show the critical path.
4. What would happen if activity 6 were revised to take 6 weeks instead of 1 week?

2. Construct a Gantt chart for the project defined in Problem 1

UNIT 5

6. Consider, as an example, buying a network of PCs for a department at your workplace, or alternatively, consider outfitting a laboratory of PCs for students at a university. For your example, estimate the one-time and recurring costs outlined in Table 5.4. (page 326)

8. Assuming monetary benefits of an information system at $85,000 per year, one-time costs of $75,000, recurring costs of $35,000 per year, a discount rate of 12 percent, and a 5-year time horizon, calculate the net present value (NPV) of the system’s costs and benefits. Also calculate the overall return on investment (ROI) of the project and then present a break-even analysis (BEA). At what point does break-even occur?

12. For the situation you chose in Exercise 6, either buying a network of PCs for a department at your workplace or outfitting a laboratory of PCs for students at a university, conduct a multicriteria analysis that contrasts at least three alternative configurations with at least three different requirements and three different constraint criteria.

UNIT 7

1. Define resources. Discuss the differences be
2. Compare and contrast four techniques for estimating resources.
3. What is a critical path? What is the difference between the critical path method and the critical chain method?
4. What are buffers? Define and discuss the differences between the two types of buffers presented.

UNIT 11

1. Note that one of the management processes in the executing process group is associated with procurement. Why is procurement such a major part of execution?

2. Why is managing project knowledge so important to project plan execution? What can project managers do to facilitate knowledge management?

4. Suppose you are the project manager for the following project: First, draw a network diagram for the project. Determine the critical path and slack times for all of the tasks. This completes your plan for the project schedule. During project execution, you become aware of the need to change the duration of Task 4 to five days. Meanwhile, Task 3 has been finished one day early, so it only took one day to do. What, if any, effects do these changes have on your project? What would have happened if you had not been monitoring the status of the project?

UNIT 12

1. Define project control.
2. Discuss the different types of project control philosophies with respect to the kinds of projects that might be appropriate for each type.
3. List and briefly describe the various levers that can be used to exert control over a project.
4. Define project closure.
5. Describe what is involved in project handover.