Project Manager Week Questions

Review Questions

Answer the following questions (use MS Project help if necessary):

1) Define effort-driven?

Effort-driven means that when you assign or remove people from a task, Project lengthens or shortens the duration of the task based on the amount of resource units assigned to it, but it doesn't change the total amount of work for the task. When you add or delete resources on an effort-driven task, work is spread around equally among resources. 

2) Under what circumstances would you turn off effort driven scheduling?

A circumstance in which I would turn off the effort driven scheduling is in complex tasks? The reason why is because it requires highly skilled resources or they could be very complex in general. So if you add more tasks it would slow down the team rather than speeding it up.

3) Use a real-world example of when you would make a task as a Fixed Duration type task?

The real world example of when I would make a task as a fixed duration type task is about painting my house. If I needed to use a painter to paint the bedroom of a house for 4 days, which would be a total of 32 hours. But the other painter broke his arm and isn’t able to complete the second bedroom so I would have to assign the same painter to the second room. I could assign the task of the painter that broke his arm as part time (50%) to a total of 16 hours.

4) What is the formula for calculating duration?

The formula for calculating duration is Duration = work/units

5) What are the eight preset work contours (hint: In the Task Usage view right click on a resource name an open the assignment information box) and what are the procedures in applying them to a resource on a task?

1.) Flat - a default contour that has an even distribution of work.

2.) Back loaded - sets the peak activity to happen at the end of the project.

3.) Front loaded – set the peak activity to happen at the beginning of the project.

4.) Double peak – sets the...