Project Management Assessment (Model Paper)

Practical Situations

1. Let us assume that you have been assigned a construction project (e.g. Villas) with absolutely no
relaxation time (strict deadlines), limited budget, and minimal resources. From your perspective as a
project manager, what would be the ideal approach. Justify your answer.

2. Why do companies consistently emphasis on the need for organizational absorptive capacity for
successful completion of the project? Justify your answer with appropriate example(s).

3. Explain stage gate model with advantages and disadvantages of stage gate model. What are the
possible four decisions from the gate and describe the significance of each decision?

Exercise 1:

A professor is planning an informal gathering for 100 or so of his closest friends. The project breaks
down as follows:

Activity Time Predecessor

Call planner 12 -
Book caterer 10 -
Hire quartet 9 Call planner
Schedule cleaning crew 15 Call planner
Stock wine cellar 7 Book caterer
Hire valets 8 Schedule cleaning crew, Stock wine cellar
Schedule butler overtime 13 Hire quartet, Hire valets

a) Estimate the fastest completion time of the project and indicate the critical activities.

b) List the non-critical activities? What would be impact of such noncritical activities on the project?

b) Explain the practical implication(s) based on the slack time for the Stock wine cellar activity.

e) What is the early start time for the Hire valets activity? What can be inferred from this early start
time?

Exercise 2:

The following table provides the information necessary to construct a project network and project
crash data:

Normal Crash Total Cost

Normal
Activity Time Time with Pred 1 Pred 2
Cost
(weeks) (weeks) Crashing
A 12 7 3000 5000
B 8 5 2000 3500 A
C 4 3 4000 7000 A
D 12 9 50000 71000 B C
E 4 1 500 1100 B C
 F 4 1 500 1100 E
G 4 3 15000 22000 D

a) Construct the project network.

b) Company is requesting you to crash the network to 30 weeks and calculate the associated cost.

c) Company is requesting you to crash the network to 22 weeks and calculate the associated cost.

d) What would be the minimum crashing time and the associated cost.

d) Based on the above answers, as a Project Manager, what would be your recommendations to the
company?

Exercise 3:

The following table provides the information necessary to construct a project network and project
crash data:

Normal Activity Crash Time Normal Cost Crash Cost

Activity Predecessor
Time (Weeks) (Weeks) (INR) (INR)
A 16 8 2000 4400
B 14 9 1000 1800
C A 8 6 500 700
D A 5 4 600 1300
E B 4 2 1500 3000
F B 6 4 800 1600
G C 10 7 3000 4500
H D, E 15 10 5000 8000

a) Construct the project network.

b) Manually crash the network to 28 weeks and the associated cost.

c) what would be the minimum crashing time and the associated cost.

d) Based on the above answers, as a Project Manager, what would be your recommendations to the
company?