1. When making an estimate for the time and cost to execute a project, should the time and cost required to develop the planning, monitoring, and controlling systems be included as well? Should the actions required to monitor and control a project be included in the project's action plan or WBS?
2. The chapter includes an example of a firm where the PM dispensed with all the planning formality because no one ever looked at it anyway. What did the PM think the purpose of such planning was in this firm? What should the firm do in the future to correct this problem?
3. In such fields as psychology and sociology, verbal characterizations are frequently used to show the amount of some factor. How might one set up such a measure for a project management characteristic such as the "energy" of the project team?
4. How might one measure team morale?
5. How can the PM circumvent the problem that the monitoring system can only report on activities that have passed, thus telling the PM what has already gone wrong but not what will go wrong in the future?
6. How might using electronic media to report project information lead to problems with control?
7. Explain how the earned value chart captures all three objectives of a project: performance, cost, and schedule.
8. Why isn't there an earned value reporting convention that allows progress on a task to be credited when the task is half completed? Wouldn't this be more accurate than giving credit only when the task is fully completed?
9. When would spending and schedule variances be more informative than ratios? When would ratios be better?
10. How should a PM reconcile the dual purposes of control: conserving resources and regulating results through the use of resources?
11. Identify situations where each of the following control tools might be useful: earned value charts, benchmarking, critical ratios, control charts, variance analysis, trend projections.
12. How might the existence of a change control system affect the behavior of a client, or a project team member, who desires to make a change in the project?
13. "In order to manage for overall project success, control must be exercised at the detailed work level for each aspect of project performance or no significant change will occur." Does this mean that the PM should micromanage the project? If not, what does it mean?
14. Select a hypothetical project (e.g. designing and building a Web site, installing a new machine in an assembly line, or conducting a major inspection and repair of a passenger aircraft), and briefly describe an example of how each of the following types of control data might be used for project control:
(a) Frequency counts
(b) Raw numbers
(c) Subjective numeric ratings
(d) Indicator and surrogate measures
15. Of all the rules for conducting meetings, the most difficult to enforce is the injunction against the weekly (or daily) standard project progress report (the "show and tell" meeting). Why is this, and under what circumstances do you think such meetings are justified?
16. If your project management software calculates earned value, or any other standard item to be reported, differently than the Project Management Institute suggests, should you deal with this matter in management reports? If so, how?
17. Logically, when using earned value data in the critical ratio formula, should the "budgeted" cost be the planned value or the earned value? What problems occur with each choice?