What are three methods of duration estimation for project activities and what are the advantages and disadvantages of each method?
What will be an ideal response?
The text presents three alternative ways to estimate times, including past experience, expert opinion, and mathematical derivation. Past experience is easily leveraged but it assumes that the circumstances are the same and that what worked in the past will work tomorrow. Expert opinion calls upon past project managers or subject matter experts to get accurate information on activity estimates. Experts should have knowledge about how to perform an activity and how long it should take, but if they are not used to performing the work, their estimates may be too low. Mathematical derivation offers an objective alternative to activity estimation by calling for optimistic, most likely, and pessimistic estimates of each activity. The gain in objectivity may be offset by the pain of developing three time estimates for each activity instead of just one.
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Molson beer is produced in Canada. Coors is manufactured in the United States. A merger of the two breweries would give each brand access to a significantly larger market. To effectively reach both markets, the merged company would need to coordinate its promotion mix so as to produce a consistent, unified, and customer-focused message. In other words, the brewery would need to use which of the following?
a. integrated marketing communications b. creative selling c. transactional communications d. coordinational promotion
The method that relies on analyzing physical relationships between cost drivers and costs is ________
A) conference B) quantitative C) account analysis D) regression analysis E) industrial engineering