Philadelphia University Faculty of Information Technology

Department of Software Engineering

Lecturer: Dr. Samer O. Hanna Examination Key
Internal Examiner: Dr. Mohammad Taye

Software Project Management (0721331)

Final Exam’s Key

Date: Wednesday 17/06/2015 Second Semester of 2014/2015 Time: 2 hours

Question 1: (8 Marks)
Discuss the following in details:
1. Planning is an ongoing process of refinement. (2 marks)
In the early stages of a project the purpose of planning is feasibility study. After that the target
will be to draw the activity plan for ensuring resource availability. Throughout the project
monitoring and re-planning must continue to correct any drift that might prevent meeting the
targets.

2. Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) vs. Critical Path Method (CPM) (Draw a diagram to
show the difference). (2 marks)

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 3. The advantages of knowing the start and completion dates of each activity in a project through
activity planning.

4. Lagged activities (with an example)

Where there is a fixed delay between activities e.g. seven days notice has to be given to users that
a new release has been signed off and is to be installed

Question 2: (6 Marks)
This question is based on the following case study:
Brightmouth College is a higher education institute which used to be managed by local government authority but
has now become autonomous. Its payroll is still administrated by the local authority and pay slips and other output
are produced in the local authority’s computer center. The authority now charges the college for this service.
The college management are of the opinion that it would be cheaper to do payroll processing themselves.

1. Identify the objectives and sub-objectives of this project. (2 marks)

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 2. What measure of effectiveness could be used to check the success in achieving the objectives of the
project? (2 marks)
3. Identify the stakeholders of the project. (1 marks)
4. As a project manager, what will be the main decisions that you will have to take regarding this project? (1
marks)

Solution:
Objective: To carry out payroll processing at less cost while maintaining the current scope and quality of
services.
Sub-objectives:
 To transfer the payroll to the college by 1st April.
 To implement in the new system the current those facilities that exist in the current system less those
identified in the initial report as not being required.
 To carry out the implementation of the payroll processing capability within the financial constraints
identified in the initial report.

2.
 Date of implementation Was the new system being used operationally by the agreed date
 Facilities In parallel runs, were all the outputs produced by the old system and also produced by the new
system
 Costs: How did the actual costs incurred compare with the budget cost?

3.
The finance department
The personnel department
Head of departments
Staff
Site management
Software and hardware vendors

4.
• Organizing – making arrangements
• Staffing – selecting the right people for the job
• Controlling – taking action to remedy hold-ups

Question 3: (6 Marks)
Step wise is a framework that is used by software project managers to plan for a certain project;
1. Discuss in details each step in step wise. (3 marks)
2. Apply step 4 of step wise to the Brightmouth College case study in Question 2. (3 marks)

Solution:

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1.
0. Select project There must be some process by which the project to be executed was selected. Chapter
3 on project evaluation looks at this in more detail.
1. Identify project objectives It is important that at the outset the main stakeholders are all aware of the
precise objectives of the project. This has already been discussed in Chapter 1.
2. Identify project infrastructure This may not be a significant step where you are working on an in-
house project in a very familiar environment. However, where the project is being carried out for external
clients then you may need to investigate the characteristics of the environment in which the project is to
be carried out.
3. Analyse project characteristics Different types of project will need different technical and
management approaches. For example, a project to implement control software embedded in industrial
equipment will need a different set of methods than a project to implement a business information system.
A multimedia application would again need a different set of activities. (This is not to say that there could
not be considerable overlaps in the approaches).
4. Identify products and activities With software projects, it is best to start by listing the products, both
deliverable and intermediate, to be created. The activities needed to create the products can then be
identified
5. Estimate effort for activity.
6. Identify activity risks Having assessed the amount of effort and the elapsed time for a project, the
reasons why these might be vary during the actual execution of the project need to be considered. Where
there is a very high risk of additional effort/time being needed then actions to reduce this risk may be
formulated.
7. Allocate resources With software projects, these resources will mainly be staff, but could be
equipment etc.
8. Review/publicize It is no good having a plan if no one knows about it
9. Execute Plan
10. Lower level planning Not all of a project, especially when it is large, can be planned in detail at the
outset. Not all the information needed to plan the later stages will be available at the beginning: for
example software development cannot be broken down into precise sub-tasks with realistic target times
until more is known about what the overall design of the system is known.

2.

Question 4: (10 Marks)

Suppose that you are the manager of a project of building new hospitals in Amman, the required activities
of this project are as follows:

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The estimated duration of each activity in days is (A: 12, B: 9, C: 10, D: 10, E: 24, F: 10, G, 35, H: 40, I:
15, J: 4, K: 9)
1. Apply the forward pass in order to find the earliest dates in which each task. (2 marks)
2. Apply the backward pass in order to find the latest date at which each task. (2 marks)
3. Specify the critical path depending on branch 1 and 2. (1 mark)
4. Define total, free and interfering float. (3 marks)
5. Find the total, free and interfering float for each activity. (2 marks)

Solution:

4.

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- Total float = LF – ES – duration (or LS-ES or LF-EF)
It is the total number of days an activity can be delayed

- Free float = ES for following activity less EF for the current

The number of days an activity can be delayed without affecting the start of the next activity

- Interfering float = total float – free float

The number of days an activity can be delayed an affecying the next activity without affecting the project end date.

Activity Total Float Free Float Interfering float

A 2 0 2
B 0 0 0
C 2 0 2
D 0 0 0
..

Question 5: (4 Marks)
1. Discuss in details three types of links between activities in an activity network (Draw diagrams for each
link type and give examples) (2 marks)

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2. Discuss three approaches to identifying activities in a project (Draw diagrams for each approach and give
examples) (2 marks)

• Work-based: draw-up a Work Breakdown Structure listing the work items needed
• Product-based approach
– list the deliverable and intermediate products of project – product breakdown structure (PBS)
– Identify the order in which products have to be created
– work out the activities needed to create the products

• Hybrid approach

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Question 6: (6 Marks)
There are five methods that be used by project manager for cost benefit analysis;
Discuss how each method works and also discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each method and
compare it with the other methods.
Technique Advantages Disadvantages
Net profit simple 1. Does not consider that the
value of money decreases
with time.
2. Does not consider the rate
of return corresponding to
the initial investment
3. Does not consider the
payback period
Payback period simple 1. Does not consider that the
value of money decreases
with time.
2. Does not consider the rate
of return corresponding to
the initial investment

ROI simple 1. Does not consider the rate

of return corresponding to
the initial investment
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NPV Difficult to calculate