Please wait while we create your MIYO...

Project Management: from Simple to Complex, v. 1.0

by Russell Darnall and John M. Preston

Table of Contents

Study Aids:

Click the Study Aids tab at the bottom of the book to access your Study Aids (usually practice quizzes and flash cards).

Study Pass:

Study Pass is our latest digital product that lets you take notes, highlight important sections of the text using different colors, create "tags" or labels to filter your notes and highlights, and print so you can study offline. Study Pass also includes interactive study aids, such as flash cards and quizzes.

Highlighting and Taking Notes:

If you've purchased the All Access Pass or Study Pass, in the online reader, click and drag your mouse to highlight text. When you do a small button appears – simply click on it! From there, you can select a highlight color, add notes, add tags, or any combination.

Printing:

If you've purchased the All Access Pass, you can print each chapter by clicking on the Downloads tab. If you have Study Pass, click on the print icon within Study View to print out your notes and highlighted sections.

Search:

To search, use the text box at the bottom of the book. Click a search result to be taken to that chapter or section of the book (note you may need to scroll down to get to the result).


View Full Student FAQs

2.5 Exercises

Exercises at the end of the chapter are designed to strengthen your understanding and retention of the information recently acquired in the chapter.

Essay Questions

Write several paragraphs to provide more in-depth analysis and consideration when answering the following questions.

  1. Compare the attributes used by the Darnall-Preston Complexity Index and those used by Youker. Which attributes are used in both typologies? Which attributes are not in common? If you chose to add one attribute to either typology what would it be? Explain your answer.
  2. Complex systems. A complex system adapts to changes in its external and internal characteristics. Describe a project with which you are familiar that has experienced changes in its external or internal characteristics during the life of the project and describe how the project manager and the management team changed their behavior to adapt to the new situation or how they failed to adapt and the result of that failure.

Discussion

The exercises in this section are designed to promote exchange of information among students in the classroom or in an online discussion. The exercises are more open ended, which means that what you find might be completely different from what your classmates find, and you can all benefit by sharing what you have learned.

  1. Institutional memory. One of the responsibilities of a project manager is to keep a history of past projects to create an organizational knowledge base. Do you think using the DPCI™ as a basis for organizing those past projects would be useful? How would you go about creating a storage and retrieval system that uses the DPCI?
  2. Environmental impact. Describe a project that might have an impact on the environment and the steps the project manager might have to take. Describe the score you would give this attribute if you were using the DPCI.
Close Search Results
Study Aids
Downloads

Need Help?

Talk to a Flat World Knowledge Rep today:

Monday - Friday 9am - 5pm Eastern
We are closed Monday May 27th Memorial Day