Question

1. What is a task? What is an event? What is a milestone?

2. What specific information do you need to create a work breakdown structure?

3. Explain the differences between a Gantt chart and a PERT/CPM chart.

4. Why is the critical path important? Why would a task be on the critical path?

5. Why is it important to deliver effective project reports and communications?

Answer 1

1. A task, or activity, is any work that has a beginning and an end, and require the use of company resources including people, time, or money. Examples of activities involve conducting a series of interviews, designing a report, selecting software, waiting for the delivery of equipment, or training users. Activities are basic units of work that the project manager plans, monitors, and tracks. An event, or milestone, is a reference point that marks a major occurrence and is used to monitor progress and manage the project. Every activity has two events one represents the beginning of the task, and the other marks the end of the task.

2. A work breakdown structure (WBS) involves breaking a project down into a series of smaller tasks. Before creating work breakdown structures, you should understand the two primary chart types: Gantt charts and PERT/CPM charts. A work breakdown structure must clearly identify each task and include an estimated duration. In addition to tasks, every project has events, or milestones.

3.  A PERT chart illustrates individual activities and shows graphically the dependence between the activities. Its strength is in showing the critical path and potential slack activities. Its format is a set of linked boxes.

PERT charts are network diagrams that use boxes to represent tasks and arrows to present dependencies between tasks. The boxes are laid out from left to right, but there is no fixed Y-axis with dates. The first box, or root, is centered vertically on the left side, and the subsequent tasks can be drawn anywhere along the Y-axis. Arrows can point to the right, up or down, but never to the left.

Gantt charts are bar graphs. The X-axis contains dates and the Y-axis lists separate tasks. On each line of the Y-axis, the chart depicts a bar positioned to extend from the task’s start date to its end date. Tasks are listed in the start-date order.

4. The critical path is so important because if that dates set on the critical path aren’t met it can push back the whole assignments schedules. If even one thing is a delayed everything gets thrown into disarray.

5. It is important to share information especially when it concerns the progress being made on a project and where it stands. Communication is always vital in big operations. Everyone is voice ideas of what they think works and what they think doesn’t work, along with reducing redundancies that may occur from multiple people working on the same project at different locations or tempo