1) Referring to Drucker (2006), which of the following describes a GOOD action plan?

a.    Provides a statement of intentions, leaving some room for adjustments during the execution of the plan

b.    Has fixed tasks in order to anticipate and plan for all the actions that need to be done

c.     Strict in terms of time, anticipating the duration of each task and therefore the total time spent within the project

d.    Continuously checks against initial expectations, but always adjusting the target result as the plan is executed

2.    In which of the following situations would it be most beneficial to use a Work Breakdown Structure to illustrate the activities involved in a project?

a.    A visual breakdown of the project scope

b.   Identifying all task durations and allocating project resource

c.    Team collaboration would not be helpful at such an early stage of the project

d.   Highlighting project risks, helping to plan for alternative scenarios

3.    When planning a festival, the program cannot be printed before the key artists are committed. Which precedence relationship best describes the relationship between "get artists' commitment" and "print program"?

a.    Start-to-Start

b.   Start-to-Finish

c.    Finish-to-Finish

d.   Finish-to-Start

4.    What is the main goal of crashing a project activity?

a.    To eliminate the emergence of a new critical path

b.   To create less slack in the project

c.    To create less risk associated with the project

d.   To increase the duration of project activities

5.    In managing noncritical tasks, the advantage of "as soon as possible" strategy is that:

a.    It delays the project

b.   It reduces costs

c.    It avoids delays

d.   It provides time cushion and reduces risk

6.    The backward pass is used to determine the Latest Start Time (LST) and Latest Finish Time (LFT) of tasks. The LFT of a task is the _____ of the LST of all succeeding tasks.

a.    Sum

b.   Average

c.    Minimum

d.   Maximum

Answer:

1. B - Has fixed tasks in order to anticipate and plan for all the actions that need to be done
2. A - A visual breakdown of the project scope
3. D - Finish-to-Start
4. B - To create less slack in the project
5. C - It avoid delays
6. C - Minimum

Step-by-step explanation

1. According to Decker, a good action plan should have a fixed or atleast the best estimate for all tasks, in order to anticipate what needs to be done but it should also be flexible as the plan is executed and new pieces of information arise
2. A work breakdown structure (WBS) can help define the scope of a project by taking the scope statement and subdividing the major project deliverables into smaller, manageable packages of activities.
3. "When planning a festival, the program cannot be printed before the key artists are committed." In other words, if "get artists' commitment" task is finished, then "printing the program" task can start, hence, the FS relationship best describes the given statement.
4. The main goal of project crashing is actually to shorten the duration of a project by reducing the time of one or more tasks  while also keeping costs at a minimum. A result of project crashing can be a change to the critical path and the emergence of a new, different critical path. Therefore, the best answer to this question is letter B. Now how does creating less slack in the project shorten the duration of a project? By addressing productivity issues being experienced by the current resources and trying to find ways of increasing their efficiency, we can achieve the maximum decrease in schedule for minimum additional cost.
5. Even though non-critical tasks can take longer to complete than is planned without affecting the total project duration, utilizing the 'as soon as possible' strategy can still avoid these delays. This is a simple type of scheduling and does not care for the number of resources required rather consider starting the activity as soon as the previous activity finishes.
6. To calculate LS and LF, we do a backward pass through the network from right to left. Task LFT = EST of the first dependent task. (Example: LFT of Task 1 = EST of Task 3), Task LST = (LFT - Task duration).