Answer Happy

Extract: Management of slack time "In practice, project managers carefully manage slack on sensitive resource-limited projects. If possible, they will add slack at the end of the project by committing to a completion date that goes beyond the schedule date. For example, the plans say the project should be completed on April 1, although the official completion date is 1 May. Other managers take a more aggressive approach to managing slack within the schedule. They use an early start schedule and prohibit use of slack on any activity or work package to be used unless authorised by the project manager. Progress by percent complete and by remaining time is carefully monitored. Activities that are beating estimated completion times are reported so that succeeding activities can start earlier and time is not wasted. The overall intent is to create and save slack as a time buffer to complete the project early or to cover delay problems that may creep up on critical activities or paths." Source: Pearson, Larson and Gray (2013) Answer ALL the questions in this section. Question 1 (30 Marks) The above extract refers to resource-limited projects. Elucidate (using relevant diagrams) the differences between a project that has a fixed delivery day and one that has a fixed limit on resource usage.