1.

Intro
3 Explain the differences between project and general management.
6 Select a sector of interest. For this sector, identify the likely pressures on project managers and the
implications for them as a result of these.
7 Find examples of projects that fit into each of the categories of project – first-timers, as . . . but . . . s,
and painting by numbers. Briefly discuss how the category would influence how you would expect to manage the
particular project.
8 Consider the definitions of ‘project’ provided by each of the professional bodies. What are the similarities and
differences?
9 Does it matter what we call a project?
10 ‘A project manager should not have other managerial responsibilities.’ Discuss. 2014 before

2. Structure and framework

4 Why is it necessary to define the complexity of a project?
5 Identify the likely complexity of the following projects:
● the development of a new office block;
● the development of a new office complex where a
radical new design is proposed;
● a project to put a new telescope in space by the
European Space Agency;
● implementing a robotised assembly line in a
manufacturing company.
6 Why is it necessary to consider the continuous improvement of the processes by which projects are
carried out?
7 Identify the criteria for success or failure of the projects that you discussed in question 1 and
question 2.
8 Show how developing a new product, for example a new range of vehicle engines, could benefit through
the analysis of previous development projects.

3. Projects and Organization

2 What are the impacts at a project level of poor strategy processes?
3 What is coherence and why is it worth pursuing?
4 What is the role of strategy in project management?
5 Do a web search and identify the mission statements of some organisations that you know. Would you
recognise that mission statement from the experience that you have of that organisation?
6 What is the difference between programme and portfolio management?
7 Why is an aggregate project plan beneficial for an organisation that pursues a number of projects at the sam
time?
8 Investigate the potential for EPM – what problems is it claimed to solve for an organisation?
9 Compile a list of project roles based on one of the project management standards (PMI, APM or PRINCE 2
2009). Which is the most important role in your view for the success of a project?
10 What are the costs and benefits to an organisation of having a PMO?

4. Stakeholders, strategy and success

2 What are the implications for a project manager of not having any clear prioritisation of objectives in terms of
time, cost and quality?
3 What are the implications for a project manager of being told that the cost of the project was the most important
objective for them to achieve?
4 Time, cost and quality measured at project completion have been widely used as performance measures for
projects. When might this be useful and how is this a limited approach?
5 How would the use of the balanced scorecard approach to project performance management help a project be
‘successful’?
6 Identify the stakeholders for a new masters course in programme and project management. Suggest some key
questions that might be asked to make sure that a comprehensive list is achieved.
7 A couple have decided to get married. Being professional project managers, they decide to analyse the
stakeholders in the ‘wedding project’ and to work out any conflicts in advance. List the stakeholders, and provide
an interest/influence matrix to determine the strategy for managing the stakeholders in this project.
8 In the launch of a particular product, two key stakeholder groups were identified – the customers and the
marketing department of the firm launching the product. As the project manager for this project, identify what the
requirements and likely measures are for these two groups and any problems you might face managing these
two groups.
9 If a project should be assessed on its long-term performance (beyond the end of the project itself), but project
managers have only short-term appointments (usually only up to the end of the project), how should the
performance of project managers be measured? Jan 17
10 What is the purpose of a benefits map? If it showed that a project was not, in fact, contributing to
organisational benefits, what would you do?

5. Initial Planning
1 Why would creativity be essential in a personal project, such as an assignment or dissertation? How might this
be incorporated into your plan of work?
2 Why should the plan be viewed as a value-adding activity?
3 Identify the costs and potential negative effects of the misuse of plans.
4 Why is getting scope ‘sign-off’ so important?
5 To whom does the project manager have to ‘sell’ a proposal?
6 When is it important for the brief to be highly precise and when should it be left as loose as possible?
7 Why is it important to know the customer for a proposal document?
8 What is the benefit to be gained from mapping a process before proceeding with the detailed planning?
9 From a project with which you are familiar, how might providing gates and gate criteria have helped in its
management?
10 Should the activities in a project be run sequentially or concurrently? Choose a project and analyse the
options for the outline plan.

6. Time Planning
1 You have been put in charge of organising a group trip to visit a company in Japan which has expertise that
you and your group are interested in finding out more about. Identify the constituent activities, their sequence
and estimate the times that each of the activities will take. Show how you have used forward and backward
scheduling to achieve this. Display your plan using a bar chart or similar method.
2 Discuss why graphical techniques for displaying plans are superior to verbal statements.
3 Describe what is meant by ‘precedence’ and illustrate your answer with an appropriate example.
4 Show the dissertation case example (Figure 6.15) as an activity-on-node diagram.
5 Show the information given in Table 6.4 about a project activity as an activity-on-node diagram. From your
diagram identify the total project duration.
(b) Show which activities you feel could be run alongside others (in parallel, rather than sequentially). Redraw the
network diagram and calculate the new project duration and the critical path.
(c) What further benefits may arise from using parallel activities, rather than sequential?
(d) Assuming that the completion time is critical, identify which activities you would suggest should be the focus
for management attention.
6 Table 6.5 considers the development of a short course in project management. From the information, construct
the network diagram.
(a) Determine the ESTs, the LSTs, the project duration and the critical path activities.
(b) Show the slack for each activity.
(c) What further factors should be considered in order to give a better view of the realistic timescale for the
organisation of the course?
7 Why might the critical path change during a project? What happens if it does?
8 What aspects of complexity are assisted by the use of computer-aided project planning and which are not?
9 Using MS Project software, prepare a Gantt chart and critical path network for the example projects in Tables
6.4 and 6.5.
10 What are the benefits and limitations of using software to help with presenting plans?

7. Rethinking time planning, critical chain approach

1 Why is there a need for a new consideration – such as through TOC/critical chain approach?
2 What are the constraints in projects? How would you recognise them?
3 Carry out estimating on some tasks that you do regularly – the trip to work or place of study, for
instance. Compare your estimates with the times you actually take. What do you notice about your estimates?
4 What is the evidence for student syndrome? How might you encourage people to move away from such
behaviour?
5 Why might it be necessary to shorten some activities, even if someone has given you an estimate for their
time?
6 Where should buffers be placed? Using an example of a personal project, show how the use of a buffer would
help.
7 How would you deal with the argument that ‘our project is too short to be including buffers in it’?
8 If this is such a good idea how come every project organisation is not using it?
9 What happens to a constraining resource when it is required by more than one project at any one
time? Which project should it be working on?
10 If one project has a large buffer remaining, but another has depleted its buffer, what action could be taken to
help the project with the least buffer?

8. Cost and benefit

1 Identify the different roles that cost, price and profit can play in determining project costs.
2 In costing proposals, discuss the differences between top-down and ground-up approaches.
3 Describe the major elements of cost in a proposal to:
 (a) implement a new computer system for the administration of a college or university
(b) construct a new theme park
(c) introduce a new range of non-paracetamol headache tablets.
4 Identify the benefits and potential disadvantages of a budget system.
5 ‘Evans the Steam’ has set up a new business and secured a contract to build 32 locomotives
for mountain railways, which are being reopened as tourist attractions. The order is to be fulfilled in two batches
of 16. The first locomotive takes 30 days to assemble with seven people working full time on it. The daily rate for
a locomotive fitter is £80 and the overheads are estimated to be 50 per cent on top of the labour rate. Evans is
confident that an 80 per cent learning curve is possible. The first batch has been priced with a labour estimate o
£16 000 per locomotive and the last 16 with a labour cost of £10000. Comment on the pricing of the labour
content and show whether the rates per locomotive are sufficient to cover the likely actual costs.
6 Draw up a table of potential costing methods, and show where each might be appropriate, giving examples.
7 Evaluate, using discounting techniques, which option, lease or buy, is most financially beneficial in the scenario
given in Table 8.5. You should consider the discount rate to be 10 per cent and the period of consideration to b
five years.
8 The purchase of new office furniture for a boardroom has caused conflict between two factions within
company. One faction argues that the company should buy modern furniture, which will cost £12 000, and can
be scrapped (replaced with zero salvage costs) in six years’ time. The other favours the purchase of antique
furniture which costs £30 000, but can be sold for £30 000 in six years’ time. The modern furniture will cost £500
in maintenance and the antique £1000. You have been asked to arbitrate the decision and resolve the conflict
using financial methods (calculate the net present value of each scheme, using the company discount rate of 12
per cent).
9 Discuss the three main pricing strategies and indicate which one you feel provides the greatest benefits to
customers and which to suppliers. Jan 17
10 Holyrood (again). How did this project go so massively over its original budget? A cost over-run of 10 per
cent, for instance, suggests that natural variation was present – it is not unreasonable. A cost over-run in excess
of 900 per cent indicates some more fundamental issues with the whole costing process. Suggest where the
process might have failed in this case given the material covered in this chapter.
Topics for discussion
Table 8.5
Buy Lease
Purchase/lease cost £50000 £10000 per year
Annual operating cost £4000 £4000 per year per year
Maintenance cost £2000 Maintained by per year leasing co.
Salvage value at the end of £20000 not applicable five years

9. Stakeholder and quality

1 What is ‘quality?’
2 Select a product and a service that you have recently purchased. For each of these, what doe quality mean?
3 How well do the definitions that you applied I answering (2), apply to projects?
4 Taking a project that you are familiar with such as an assignment, what aspects of quality of the process and the
outcome would be relevant?
5 Who are the stakeholders for your assignment what are their expectations and how are you going to manage
these?
6 For the project you have identified, how in practice can you manage the perceptions of a key stakeholder of the
project? What will be the aspects of the core and peripheral product that you could consider?
7 Investigate the application of ISO 9000 in a organisation with which you are familiar. What are the implications of
the standard for that organisation? How does this application compare with the processes described in ISO 10006?
8 What is the use of a project manual and in what types of projects would you suggest that it would be most
beneficial?
9 Carry out a web search of companies to see I you can find their quality policy and any relevant quality
documentation. What do you notice about the procedural documents?
10 A firm has very poor quality performance and I contemplating what it must do next to improve it situation. Devise a
10-point plan to improve its quality performance.

10. Risk and Opportunities management

1 What is risk?
2 Why should risk be a fundamental part of the consideration of a project manager?
3 Which other stakeholders would have an interest in the level of risk that a project presents?
4 When would a quantitative approach b appropriate and when would you use a qualitative approach to risk
assessment?
5 What are the benefits and limitations of the quantitative and qualitative approaches to ris assessment?
6 Is risk assessment the same as risk management?
7 Considering the critical path alone for the project in Table 10.9, calculate the activity variances and th total variance
of the critical path. From this, calculate the standard deviation. Determine the probability o the project being
completed within the following times:
(a) 30 days.
(b) 40 days.
(c) 42 days.
8 A construction project requires five major pieces o work to be completed which are independent. Thes five paths
have variances as given in Table 10.10 Determine the probability that the project will b completed within:
(a) 18 weeks.
(b) 16 weeks.
(c) 13 weeks.
9 You are in charge of a new product launch. This will be a formal press launch, where the product I introduced by
your managing director and the press and major customers have the opportunity to se the product for the first time
The formalities are to be preceded by a buffet Before hiring the catering service it is necessary t identify the guest list
and invite them to determine numbers. Because of tied arrangements between certain venues and the caterers, you
will have t select the venue, then select the caterers. The launch publicity materials will need to be designed, an
artwork carried out before brochures can be printed These must be available on the day. The promotional boards to
be placed around the launch room should be constructed once the publicity materials have been designed. No
artwork is required for these A sound system is required and must be hired once the venue has been identified.
Topics for discussion
11. Project organization: structure and teams
1 Why is the functional organisation prevalent I modern business?
2 What are the disadvantages of the functional organisation?
3 Briefly list the other ways in which an organisation may be structured.
4 Why is the subject of organisational structure s important?
5 Why is the ‘pure project’ organisation a useful structure? Jan 17
6 Why do organisations use the matrix structure?
7 Briefly describe the three basic types of matrix organisation.
8 Why should project managers concern themselves with the way the groups they are working with interact?
9 How might a knowledge of the lifecycle of team help the project manager?
10 Using Belbin’s character profiles indicate which of these you feel best applies to you. You may like to apply this to
a group in which you are working by then analysing each other’s characteristics.

12. Management and leadership

1 Differentiate between the tasks of leading and managing a project.
2 What are the influences from within an organisation on the role that a project manager takes?
3 Why might the study of time management b fundamental to a project manager?
4 Using Table 12.1 examine your ow time-management performance over the period of one or two days. How does
this relate to the goals that you have set yourself?
5 From your analysis in (4), show what strategies you are going to use to keep yourself on track to the targets you
have set for yourself.
6 Compare the work of the major thinkers o motivation. What influence has each had o modern management?
7 Why is it reasonable to think that as managers our action can have an effect on a project outcome?
8 Why do people need to have a clear promotion path in their jobs? What other motivators would you provide for
people?
9 Show how the emergence of humanism changed the way in which people are treated within organisations.
10 How might a project manager differentiate between management paradigms that may prove beneficial and those
that are going to be of no benefit?

13. Control
1 What is control in the context of project management?
2 Why is making progress visible so important?
3 How do measures of conformance and performance differ?
4 Carry out an internet search for examples o earned value being used in practice. What are the limitations of this
technique?
5 What are the potential advantages of the Last Planner approach to project control? Are all members of a project
team likely to be so happy with such micro-level planning and control? If not, what would you do about this?
6 Why is configuration management and change control so important to the project manager?
7 Should all projects have control systems? Jan 17
10 How do you feel about the statement, ‘Being I control is good. Being controlled is not so good. Consider this in the
context of a career as a project manager. Before 2014
 14. Supply chain issues
1 Consider the way that you make purchases for yourself. How do you decide from whom to buy Are there examples
of your personal purchasing where you have frequented a particular business and formed a partnership-type
relationship?
2 Why is the process for procurement so involved Figure 14.2 contains significant bureaucracy that surely does not
help the objective of getting the project completed. Suggest why these processes are in place and how they might be
simplified.
3 Why the trend to outsourcing? Suggest how this might or might not be beneficial to a project organisation.
4 Surely it would be better for project manager simply to deal directly with suppliers? Under what circumstances
would such an arrangement b beneficial and when would it be inappropriate?
5 You have been offered tickets to your favourite entertainment event of the year by a major potential supplier. The
offer includes full corporate hospitality treatment Should you accept this offer?
6 What are the likely trade-off issues in the purchasing decision, and how would you resolve these?
7 How is the Internet changing the role of the purchasing function? Carry out a search of software vendors and
investigate the kinds of features that are being offered here. What are the possible benefits fo project managers of
these?
8 What is the responsibility of organisations to their suppliers? How might it extend beyond just paying the bill?
9 Review the document NAO (2006), Delivering Benefits Through IT-enabled Change and the role of ‘the intelligent
client’ described there (available from www.nao.gov.uk). How is this moving further on from partnership?
10 Are PPP/PFI arrangements successful for government? How do these compare, for instance with the
arrangements BAA had with their supplier in the construction of T5 at Heathrow (Project Management in Practice, this
chapter)?

15. Problem solving and decision making

1 Discuss the statement made by Price in the introduction to this chapter that ‘Man is risk-addicted animal’.
2 How might the tools outlined in this chapter reduce the risk in decision-making?
3 Show the advantages of having preprogramed actions:
(a) as part of a health and safety policy – for example, in the event of a fire
(b) in the handling of client enquiries
(c) for the installation of new work procedures.
4 Show the effect of time on problem-solving an give practical examples of each of the different timescales.
5 What is the role of ‘brainstorming’ and how might it be used to greatest effect?
6 What are the major inputs to the decision-making process and how might these be best harnessed t ensure that the
decision-making process is effective?
7 What are the basic forms of systems model Give an example of each and their role in a project environment.
8 As a project manager in a development activity for a new range of computer software, discuss ho uncertainty may
be handled.
9 You are the coordinator of a moderately complex project. The following problems have arisen during the execution
phase of previous projects with the resulting delays as shown. Use an appropriate technique to show which of the
problems you would focus your attention on and show the results of your analysis graphically.
Problem Delay (days)
A Late delivery from suppliers 36
B Last-minute redesign of assembly due to customer change o specification 7
C Suppliers fail to meet the quality levels required in goods supplied 41
D Schedule did not leave enough time for testing 5
E Components did not fit together when assembled 6
F Customer rejected initial trial system 12
G Engineer left team during the project 16
H Office move was scheduled for during the completion phase 5 J Hauliers’ firm sacked by customer due to dispute
over delivery times 3
10 Select a problem with which you have been involved and use the Ishikawa/fishbone diagram t structure the
causes of the problem. Indicate what you feel to be the biggest causal factor.

16. Project completion and review

1 Why is there a tendency for individual rather than group projects in particular to spend ‘90 per cent o their time 90
per cent complete’.
2 Show the activities that must be completed during the final phases of a project.
3 Why might compiling project documentation b considered such a burden to the team, yet be s essential?
4 What issues must be considered when deciding how far post-delivery service should extend (such as providing free
consultancy with new IT systems)?
5 What are the likely benefits that will be realise from reviews at different times? Jan 18
6 Construct an audit questionnaire of management performance, which could be given to members of a project team.
Test this on someone who has manage you. What areas would you suggest for improvement?
7 Distinguish between audits and reviews.
8 What are the criteria that should be taken into consideration when selecting an auditor/reviewer?
9 Considering the very varied nature of the different audits and reviews that can be carried out, is it likely that these
can be done at one time by one person?
10 Discuss the role of review in the process o continuous improvement and why this is vital for the survival of
organisations.

17. Improving
1 How might an organisation recognise their level of performance and plot a way forward?
2 Why are the best ‘better at getting better?’ Are there any limitations to this?
3 Identify the role that benchmarking can play in improving project performance in organisations. What are the
potential drawbacks? Before 2014
4 Are the principles of ‘lean’ truly applicable to project management? What are the limitations likely to be? Jan 15
5 Carry out a review of the organisational change literature. Identify the overlaps with that on project management
and, in particular, section 17.3.
6 What are the personal applications of the work that you have covered on project management? Draw up a list of
five areas of personal change that you would want to make following on from this material.
7 Identify an overlap with another management discipline – such as marketing, finance, operations, HRM – and
consider how this material has direct relevance to project management. What are the aspects of each of the subjects
that overlap that could be developed?
8 Evaluate the agile approach to project management. What are the likely benefits and drawbacks of this approach
and what evidence can you find to support these.
9 What is ‘extreme programming’ and what might it mean for project managers?
10 Consider an organisation with which you are familiar. Evaluate its current project management maturity and
suggest a route for improvement.