Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme, Sixth Edition

Discussion Questions

1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of holding a JPPS session onsite versus offsite?
2. Your planning session seems to have reached an impasse. The planning team is divided between two ways to approach a particularly difficult part of the project. Approximately two-thirds of the team members want to use a well-tested and well-understood approach. The remaining third (of which you are a member) wants to use a new approach that holds the promise of significantly reducing the time to complete this part of the project. You are the project manager and feel very strongly about using the new approach. Should you impose your authority as project manager and take the new approach, or should you go with the majority? What is the basis for your decision? Be specific. Is there anything else you might do to resolve the impasse?
3. Why is building the WBS by walking around the workspace or the e-mail space a ticket to failure?
4. The WBS identifies all of the work that must be done to complete the project. What would you do if the answer to a question posed as part of the work determines which of the two alternatives mentioned in question #2 you should pursue?
5. Under what conditions might you choose to decompose an activity that meets all of the six completeness criteria? Give specific examples.
6. Can you think of any activities that would not meet all six completeness criteria, yet need not be further decomposed? Give specific examples.
7. You have used the three-point method to ...