Time & Cost Management Flashcards

A project manager calculates the Schedule Variance (SV) as -$15,000. What does this indicate?

Answer: The project is behind schedule

A negative SV (EV - PV) means the project has earned less value than planned, indicating it is behind schedule.

Which scheduling technique uses three time estimates — optimistic, pessimistic, and most likely — to calculate activity durations?

Answer: Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)

PERT uses weighted average of optimistic, most likely, and pessimistic estimates to calculate expected duration.

What is the Budget at Completion (BAC) used for in Earned Value Management?

Answer: Representing the total planned value of the project

BAC is the total authorized budget for the project and represents the sum of all planned values.

A project team is using fast tracking to recover schedule time. Which risk does this primarily introduce?

Answer: Increased rework due to parallel activities

Fast tracking overlaps sequential activities in parallel, which can increase rework if upstream deliverables change.

Which type of dependency between activities is defined as 'Activity B cannot start until Activity A finishes'?

Answer: Finish-to-Start (FS)

Finish-to-Start is the most common dependency, requiring the predecessor to finish before the successor can start.

When a project's Cost Performance Index (CPI) is 0.85, what does this mean?

Answer: The project is getting $0.85 of value for every $1 spent

A CPI of 0.85 means only $0.85 of planned value is being earned for every dollar actually spent.

Which cost estimating technique uses actual costs from previous similar projects as the basis for estimating the current project?

Answer: Analogous Estimating

Analogous estimating uses historical data from similar past projects and is considered a top-down estimating approach.