ISQS 4350 Project Management

SOLUTIONS TO PRACTICE Exam II

Question / Answer /
Question
/
Answer
/
Question
/
Answer
1 / B / 31 / C / 61 / B
2 / A / 32 / A / 62 / C
3 / B / 33 / A / 63 / D
4 / D / 34 / C / 64 / E
5 / A / 35 / C / 65 / D
6 / C / 36 / B / 66 / D
7 / B / 37 / C / 67 / B
8 / D / 38 / A / 68 / A
9 / D / 39 / D / 69 / D
10 / A / 40 / B / 70 / A
11 / D / 41 / D / 71 / A
12 / B / 42 / C / 72 / A
13 / A / 43 / C / 73 / A
14 / A / 44 / B / 74 / B
15 / C / 45 / B / 75 / E
16 / D / 46 / B / 76 / C
17 / C / 47 / C / 77 / D
18 / B / 48 / B / 78 / B
19 / A / 49 / B / 79 / D
20 / C / 50 / C / 80 / A
21 / C / 51 / D / 81 / A
22 / B / 52 / B
23 / D / 53 / D
24 / C / 54 / A
25 / A / 55 / B
26 / C / 56 / C
27 / D / 57 / B
28 / C / 58 / D
29 / B / 59 / B
30 / D / 60 / A

ANSWERS TO DISCUSSION PROBLEMS (30 pts)

(5) Briefly describe five information technology project types. {See Table 4.1 in your notes}

Enterprise Resource Planning—the replacement of legacy financial accounting systems with modern client/server systems

Client/server changeover projects—a transition project that takes the customer from mainframe to client/server

Re-engineering projects—IT professionals are intimately involved with the re-engineering of business processes and the redesign of supporting IT applications

Rapid Application Development Projects—customers need solutions now. Methodology starts at the design phase, usually and does construction, testing, installation and cut-over, uses the evolutionary model

Component Configuration Projects—IT components are integrated, tested, installed

Conversion Projects—a project which takes a customer from an old system to a new one systematically

Maintenance Projects—perhaps the most pervasive of all IT project types, involves modification of another developer’s code, could use the waterfall or spiral methodologies

Component Integration Projects—integrating and testing a collection of commercial off-the-packages to create a functioning system solution

Development Projects—the most commonplace of all IT project types and the one we are most trained for, may use either the waterfall, spiral, or evolutionary models.

MINIMUM PRECEDENTCOST/DAY

ACT. DURATION DUR ACTIVITY

A32-$400

B55A$200

C32A$200

D118B$300

E 75B,C$100

F 43C$400

G 97D,E,F$100

(5) Crash the PERT chart above assuming you have $1500 to spend and that activities cannot be shorter than their minimum duration. Note that activity A can only be crashed 1 day, while activity B can not be crashed at all. Try to achieve the greatest reduction in project duration for the least amount spent.

Path LengthCrash GCrash DCrash A

2 days3 days1 day

A-B-D-G28262322

A-C-E-G22202019

A-B-E-G24222221

A-C-F-G19191918

Crash A for 1 day costing $400, D for 3 days costing $900, and G for two days costing $200. In total, a six-day reduction costing $1500 is put into place and the project duration is reduced from 28 days to 22 days.

(5) Which of the following projects would you prefer to be a project manager of? Only two outcomes are possible in conjunction with these projects: success and failure. Project A has a success probability of .8 with payoffs of $1,000,000 if a success and $-700,000 if a failure. Project B has a success probability of .7 and payoffs of $800,000 and $-300,000. Hint: What is the expected payoff of each project? If the success probability is .8, the failure probability must be??? .2

Project A: .8 (1M) + .2 (-.7M) = .66M

Project B: .7(.8M) + .3(-.4M) = .47M

Choose project A

(5) Which of the following job offers would you choose? Construct a multi-attribute tree for the problem and compute an overall grade for each job.

JOB1 has a grade of .9 for location, a grade of .6 for salary, .7 for advancement, .7 for training, .6 for work content, .7 for corporate culture, .8 for peers.

JOB2 has a grade of .7 for location, a grade of .9 for salary, .8 for advancement, .7 for training, .8 for work content, .8 for corporate culture, and .6 for peers.

The weights you’ve assigned to each attribute are .2 for location, .2 for salary, .1 for advancement, .1 for training, .2 for work content, .1 for corporate culture, .1 for peers.

.2 .2 .1 .1 .2 .1 .1

location salary advancement training work content culture peers

.9 .6 .7 .7 .6 .7 .8

.7 .9 .8 .7 .8 .8 .6

location salary advancement training work content culture peers

.18 .12 .07 .07 .12 .07 .08 = .71

.14 .18 .08 .07 .16 .08 .06 = .77

Choose job 2