1. Exhibit 18.2 on page 365 lists a number of impediments to project success. How might you minimize or eliminate these impediments?
2. The calculations in PERT allow you to determine the probability that a project will be completed. Suppose you calculate that the probability a project will be completed by a target deadline is only 0.25.
What steps might you take if you were the project manager? Would your decisions be different if the probability was calculated as 0.75? Would you be willing to take a 25% risk of failing to complete the project on time?
3. Crashing in the Critical Path Method assumes that the cost of crashing an activity is linearly proportional to the amount of time the activity is crashed; that is, the rate of cost increase is constant (see Exhibit 18.12 on page 374).
Is this a reasonable assumption? Why or why not? How might the concepts of economies and diseconomies of scale help to address this issue?