Chapter Exercises

In these exercises, you will be presented with a scenario of a project for a fictitious company. You will then be asked a series of questions about the project.

Exercise 1

Marcy is the project manager for the All Boots Company. Her project is to lead a team to develop a web-based application that allows customers to visit the corporate web site and search for boots based on several factors such as size , style, color , heel, and toe of the boot. Throughout the project, Marcy has periodically tested the cumulative work to see how the project is progressing. With just a few days to spare, the application developers report that the project is complete and the web site ready for users.

Of course, Marcy wants to experience the application before management and others see the results. Marcy opens the web site and successfully completes a few searches. She then discovers that she cannot search for a combination of factors such as a red boot in a size 10.

Please answer the following questions to complete the exercise:

1. What should Marcy do first to rectify the problem?

2. What could Marcy have done earlier in the project to avoid this problem?

3. What should Marcy do if the developers report that the work can be done but it may take two weeks to complete her request?

4. What can Marcy tell management about the project?

Exercise 2

Robert is the project manager for Margo s Jams and Jellies. The project he has been managing is a rollout of new laptops and operating systems to 720 office workers throughout North America. His plan calls for the laptops to be shipped to his central office in Tampa, Florida, where his team would configure the PCs and then drop ship them to each of the sites throughout the country.

The project itself is designed for tiered delivery of the workstations and addresses just one of the seven North American sites at a time. Unfortunately, the manufacturer of the laptops has been very late in shipping them to Robert. In fact, the rollout has been successfully deployed at only one site in the company, and the project is to end in one week.

Suddenly, a huge delivery from the manufacturer arrives at Robert s office and he now has 480 laptops; his team needs to verify the hardware, push the approved disk image to the PC, pack, and drop ship the laptops to each of the remaining cities.

1. What should Robert do first?

2. What should Robert tell management?

3. Is there anything that Robert could have done earlier in the project to avoid this situation?

4. What are the steps you would take to complete this project?