Chapters 5-9 T/F

Scope management is the function controlling a project in terms of its goals and objectives during the execution phase.

The statement of work is a detailed narrative description of the work required for a project.

A comprehensive statement of work includes an estimate of time and costs, resource requirements, and the scope of the work to be performed.

Until a project has gone through work breakdown structure, it is impossible to determine the relationships among the constituent activities.

The scope baseline is a document that provides a summary description of each reporting relationship along with a schedule for meetings and reports.

A work package may be composed of one or more subdeliverables.

A work package may consist of more than one milestone.

Work authorization functions as the formal "It's OK to begin work," on the project.

The terms lump-sum contract and turnkey contract are interchangeable.

A lump-sum contract requires the customer to pay for the full delivered price of the project before any work is done.

Team building and conflict management skills are two of the most important people skills that project managers can cultivate.

The first step in assembling a project team is to talk to potential team members.

If preferred project team members are not available, the project manager should notify top management of the consequences.

Project managers are best able to promote a sense of enthusiasm within the project team when they create an environment that is challenging, supportive, and personally rewarding.

High turnover among project team members is a key element of success since new team members will bring fresh perspectives and ideas to the group.

Project team productivity is at its peak during the norming phase of group development.

The punctuated equilibrium model suggests that groups spend the majority of their time in stasis.

Cross-functional cooperation directly influences both the actual implementation of the project and the team members' assessment that the project experience was worthwhile.

In general, a superordinate goal is a replacement goal for the goals of all functional groups involved in the project.

Accessibility is the perception of the project team members that they are physically located in such a way that it is easy for them to interact.

The risk is highest in the earliest phase of the project life cycle.

Opportunity emerges from favorable project circumstances and risk from unfavorable events.

As risk decreases in the project life cycle, opportunity increases

Risks can be quantified by multiplying the likelihood a failure will occur by the severity of the failure.

Technical risk is the probability that the project will not perform to the required standards or produce substandard products or have excessive operating cost consumption.

The probability that the investments made to fund the front-end activities will be lost due to project abandonment is financing risk.

One approach to risk mitigation is simply to accept it.

Risk cannot be transferred because ultimately your own project will suffer the consequences if the event occurs.

Contingency reserves require a construction company to hold back some funds in an account just in case something happens that increases the overall project cost.

The highest dollar value of reserves is typically task contingency.

Direct costs are those clearly assigned to the aspect of the project that generated the cost.

Material is an example of a cost that is recurring, variable and direct.

An expedited cost is one that does not vary with respect to their usage.

The term expedited cost has the same meaning as crashing cost in the project management milieu.

An order of magnitude estimate is usually more accurate than a ballpark estimate.

Comparative estimates are more accurate than definitive estimates when applied to the same project.

A learning rate of 90% means that for every doubling of output, the time required by the activity falls by 10%.

Function point analysis is a system for estimating the size of software projects based on the number of lines of code a typical programmer can write in a day.

A common reason for cost overruns in a project is a low initial estimate of project cost.

There is a tendency for different departments or functions to compete for scarce resources in a zero-sum game when bottom-up budgeting is used to develop a project budget.

Preceding activities are those that must occur before others can be done.

A backward pass is performed when it is necessary to undo some work that has been performed in order to complete it properly.

A merge activity has two or more immediate predecessors.

Float is always measured in exactly the same way as slack.

The PERT technique assumes that durations are more deterministic.

Burst activities are those with two or more successor activities.

You must know the mean of an activity in order to determine its standard deviation.

In assigning a value for the most pessimistic (b) duration, the project manager should estimate the duration of the activity to have a 99% likelihood that it will take b or less amount of time.

The late start time should be calculated using a forward pass through the network.

Negative float exists when a project's critical path has been completed more quickly than anticipated.