You are the PM managing a project in which, during project execution, some tasks actually take longer than planned, some go over the planned budget, and the occasional task takes less time than planned. What's more, some of each of these changed tasks are on the critical path and some are not. Due to astute monitoring, you, as PM, have noticed these changes from the plan.

Now, answer the following questions:

a) What would have happened if you had not been monitoring the status of the project?

b) Suppose that it is crucial that the project complete on time at all costs (e.g., a Mars mission launch window, which, if delayed, will cause the rocket to miss Mars entirely, and for which there is not another launch window for the next 3 years). However, with such a critical project, suppose that changes in actual performance occurred which greatly affected the duration of the project. What could you do about it?

c) Would taking these remedial actions depend on when you detected the changes? That is, do they require knowing in advance that there is going to be a slippage or speed-up of a task, or not?

d) What else should you do during project execution if such changes made a large change in project duration if there was nothing you could do to remediate it?

e) What else should you do during project execution if such changes made a large change in project duration if you could successfully remediate it?