Project Management

Chapter 14

Problems 14-8 Which of the figures presented in this chapter should program management make available to the functional managers? Explain your answer.

 

Figure 14-2 (Functional pricing flow) represents the relationship between program management and functional management.  As shown in this figure how functional managers raising pricing information such as man-hours/tasks after this information being reviewing and approved than the risen information will be release with Work breakdown structure to functional manager in order to disturbing on departments and staff/team members.

14-11 The Jones Manufacturing Company is competing for a production contract that requires that work begin in January 2003. The cost package for the proposal must be submitted by July 2002. The business bases, and therefore the overhead rates, are uncertain because Jones has the possibility of winning another contract, to be announced in September 2002. How can the impact of the announcement be included in the proposal? How would you handle a situation where another contract may not be renewed after January 2003, i.e., assume that the announcement would not be made until March?

 

The project plan and other project requirements need to be ready before releasing the contract which will be release after the supposed date. Therefore, the requirements need to be addressed to project members to notify them about the requirements they may need and will not make any delay even if contract releasing has been delayed.

14-13 During initial pricing activities, one of the functional managers discovers that the work breakdown structure requires costing data at a level that is not normally made, and will undoubtedly incur additional costs. How should you, as a program manager, respond to this situation? What are your alternatives?

 

Program manager need to alternative solutions keep project in the same track without making big changes may affect project or staff members’ activities. There are some tools help program managers to determine the best alternatives such as the meeting, the report, the review and budget and schedule controls. For this situation the solution could be program manager can meet with functional manager to discuss the required cost data that need to be add to project if the issue cannot be avoid than program manager needs to take action based on functional manager opinion and recommendation, however, this action should not excess the current project’s budget.

14-16 Should a project manager be appointed in the bidding stage of a project? If so, what authority should he have, and who is responsible for winning the contract?

 

Regardless of the point at which the project manager is appointed, his authority remains the same. The project manager's authority is strictly bound to his organization's business culture.

Generally, the project manager does not have any formal authority (unless it's a highly projectized organization): PM does not own resources (functional managers own them), PM does not own the project (the project sponsor does), and PM does not approve major change requests (the change control board or CCB does). The only authority that the project manager can have (in most organizational structures) is the informal authority, which is gained through leadership, expertise, and soft management skills.

Chapter 15

Problem 15-3 Below are several factors that can result in project delays and cost overruns. Explain how these problems can be overcome.

a.   Poorly defined milestones: milestones allow project management to much more accurately determine whether or not the project is on schedule. So, if milestones not well defined it will be hard to project manager to know if the project going as requested or not.

b.   Poor estimating techniques: That will lead to providing wrong project resources that may be less what the project needs or over than required to complete the project.

c.    A missing PERT/CPM chart: Project manager and team members can determine what task must be start first and when it should start and finish. Also, project’s period that shows when the project should be done will not be accurate.

d.   Functional managers not having a clear understanding of what has to be done: Than distributing tasks on team members will be not clear as well.

e.   Poor programming procedures and techniques: That makes confusing on project structure and tasks distribution.

f.     Changes constantly being made deep in the project’s life cycle: That will change all work that has done in the project from the beginning to present and need to make new project plan to start again.

 

15-7 Karl has decided to retains a management reserve on a $400,000 project that includes a $60,000 profit. At the completion of the project, Karl finds that the management reserve fund contains $40,000. Should Karl book the management reserve as excess profits (i.e., $100,000), or should he just book the target profit of $60,000 and let the functional managers “sandbag” on the slush fund until it is depleted?

 

Of course that will be a great just because it excess management’s expectations by providing them profits more than what that supposed to be. Therefore, It will be strongly recommended to keep working on reach the target $60,000, but announce these profits to management after being achieved.