Week Twelve - Project Management

Weekly Questions - Project Management




1.Explain the triple constraint and its importance in project management.

The triple constraint is important in project management as all projects are limited by these three interdependent constraints. A project manager must make intelligent trade-offs between time, cost and scope.

The triple constraint is the framework for evaluating the competing demands of cost, time and scope. The relationship between these variables means that if one of the three factors changes, at least one other factor is likely to be affected. For example, increasing the scope of a project may result in an increase in time and/or cost. 

2.Describe the two primary diagrams most frequently used in project planning

PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) chart is a graphical network model that depicts a project's tasks and the relationships between those tasks. PERT charts frequently display a project's critical path; the critical path is a path from the start to the finish that passes through all the tasks that are critical to completing the project in the shortest amount of time.

Gantt chart is a simple bar chart that depicts project tasks against a calendar, with tasks listed vertically and the project's time frame listed horizontally.

3.Identify the three primary areas a project manager must focus on managing to ensure success

To ensure success a project manager much focus on three primary areas, which are: 

• communications
• managing people
• change 

4.Outline 2 reasons why projects fail and two reasons why projects succeed
Two reasons why projects fail:

• Poor planning: a failure to properly plan can be detrimental to the success of a project. Good planning uses tools such as a project plan, Gnatt charts and PERT charts.
• Scope creep: the project grows beyond its intended size resulting in time delays and increased costs.

Two reasons why projects succeed:

• Change management: A project managers ability to anticipate and react appropriately to change will better position a project for success.
• Communication: good communication is essential for the success of a project. A project manager should distribute timely, accurate and meaningful information regarding project objectives that involve time, cost and scope and quality, and the status of each.

Week Eleven - Weekly Questions

Customer Relationship Management & Business Intelligence

1.What is your understanding of CRM?


Customer Relationship Management involves the managing of all aspects of customer interactions with an organisation with the intention of increasing good customers and increasing profitability-it costs less to retain loyal customers than find new ones. CRM has become an integral component of modern business.

2.Compare operational and analytical customer relationship management.

Operational CRM supports traditional transactional processing for day-to-day front-office operations or systems that deal directly with the customers.Analytical CRM on the other hand, supports back-office operations and strategic analysis and includes all systems that do not deal directly with the customers.

3.Describe and differentiate the CRM technologies used by marketing departments and sales departments

The Customer Relationship Management technologies used by marketing departments are campaign management and opportunity management. Campaign and opportunity management includes information such as costs, target audience and return on investment.

The CRM technologies used by sales departments essentially allows for the streamlining of the sales process. CRM technologies in this department are used to coordinate the sales process, by helping salespeople organise their jobs, calendars, contacts, appointments, meetings and multimedia presentations. 

4.How could a sales department use operational CRM technologies?

A sales department can use CRM technologies for a number of things which include:

• List generators, e.g. to find information a particular customers in a particular demographic.
• Campaign management.
• To know when and what to up-sell and cross-sell.

5.Describe business intelligence and its value to businesses

Business intelligence refers to technologies that provide access to data for strategic decision making. It is a long-term tool that supports decision making. It is valuable to a business as it allows managers to find patterns and trends, and better respond to change in the dynamic business environment. 

6.Explain the problem associated with business intelligence. Describe the solution to this business problem.

The problem with business intelligence is that although businesses are data rich, their information is poor. The solution to this business problem is the use of business intelligence because it allows for better decision making to take place and also reduces latency. 

7.What are two possible outcomes a company could get from using data mining?

The benefits a business could get from data mining are:

• Better use of resources.
• More sales through being able to better market products based on the intelligence gained by data mining.