You should EMAIL me homeworks, alex at theparticle dot com. Start email subject with "CISC 7530X HW#". Homeworks without the subject line risk being deleted and not counted.

CISC 7530X HW# 1 (due by 2nd class;): Answer below questions:

1. What is a project, and how does it differ from other activities within an organization?
2. Explain 5 major activities that a project manager does.

CISC 7530X HW# 2 (due by 3rd class;): Answer below questions:

1. What's the difference between PLC and SDLC?
2. What's the difference between Scrum and Agile? What parts of Scrum are complete opposite of Agile?

CISC 7530X HW# 3: Answer below questions:

1. What are some dangers in using proxy measures for MOV? Give a few examples.
2. Your peer proposes ``Number of satisfied customers'' as a MOV. Would that make a good MOV? (after all, increasing number of satisfied customers is good, no?). How would you fix it?

CISC 7530X HW# 4: Answer below questions:

1. XYZ Corp manages investments of all kinds, such as stocks, bonds, real estate, art work, etc. Throughout the years, they have made multiple acquisitions to expand into various domains. Each business unit operates autonomously: they get to pick their own tech stack, often brought along from an acquisition. Some units are using Excel for record keeping, because "it works and no need to fix what is not broken". Management of most business units are reluctant to change. The board is concerned about risk: there is danger that some business units are overleveraged. They need a quick and clear way to capture a snapshot of what the company is invested in, and to run risk models on that data.

   Create a mock Business Case document to tackle this problem. Your document should include all the important bits, such as executive summary of the problem, alternative solutions, etc., and guestimates on expenses, and value gained, etc.

2. Case study and research: Give a few specific reasons/examples where governance failed at OpenAI in 2023, when the board fired Sam Altman.

CISC 7530X HW# 5: For below questions, suppose we have these project tasks,

• A, estimated time 5 days
• B, estimated time 2 days, depends on A,C
• C, estimated time 7 days
• D, estimated time 4 days, depends on B
• E, estimated time 3 days, depends on D
• G, estimated time 2 days, depends on B
• H, estimated time 4 days, depends on G
• I, estimated time 2 days, depends on H
• F, estiamted time 4 days, depends on E, I
• J, estimated time 5 days, depends on F

1. What's the critical path? How long is it?
2. The development of task C goes quicker than expected, and is complete within 2 days. What's the new critical path and its length?
3. Task D took 8 days to complete instead of estimated 4. What's the new critical path and its length?
4. What's the difference between risk and uncertainty?
5. Give three examples of risk.
6. Give three examples of uncertainty?

CISC 7530X HW# 6: Answer below questions:

1. Propose 3 ways of avoiding Brooks' law: "adding more people to a late project can make it later".
2. Once a project is late, and is in need of manpower, propose 3 ways of minimizing the impact of Brooks' law?

CISC 7530X HW# 7: Answer below questions:

1. List several key differences between a good manager and a good leader.
2. Describe several situations in which a good leader would act differently from a good manager.

CISC 7530X HW# 8: Answer below questions:

1. Explain why aligning technological change with an organization's strategic objectives is critical. Provide an example of a potential risk if this alignment is not achieved.
2. Who are the key stakeholders in a technological change initiative, and how can their engagement influence the success or failure of the change? Provide a specific example of how failing to engage a key stakeholder group could derail a project.
3. Describe three major risks that organizations face when implementing new technology and propose strategies to mitigate each risk.
4. Why is it important to establish clear metrics for evaluating the success of a technological change? Describe how an organization might measure success in a system upgrade project.