QM 6655 Midterm Study Guide 2026/2027 | Chapters 1–7 Questions & Answers | Project Management, WBS, Scheduling, Estimating & Risk

This QM 6655 Midterm Study Guide for the 2026/2027 academic year provides a comprehensive 37-page review of Chapters 1–7 of Project Management: The Managerial Process, 7th Edition, with questions, answers, definitions, concepts, and illustrations designed for midterm exam preparation. The opening chapters establish the foundations of project management, including project characteristics, programs and program management, the project life cycle, defining, planning, executing and closing stages, the triple bottom line, strategic management, SWOT analysis, SMART objectives, and the relationship between organizational strategy and project implementation. The study guide provides detailed coverage of project selection and portfolio management, including project priority systems, implementation gaps, project sponsors, portfolio management, compliance, operational and strategic projects, financial and non-financial selection criteria, payback analysis, net present value (NPV), checklist models, and multi-weighted scoring models. It also distinguishes bread-and-butter projects, pearls, oysters and white elephants while explaining how senior management evaluates projects according to strategic value, commercial payoff and risk. Organizational approaches to managing projects receive extensive attention. Students review functional organizations, dedicated/projectized teams and matrix structures, including weak, balanced and strong matrices. The material compares their advantages and disadvantages in terms of project focus, resource utilization, functional expertise, integration, speed, organizational conflict, authority and post-project transition. Related concepts include organizational politics, projectitis, organizational culture, project offices, project sponsors, PMP certification and the organizational considerations used when selecting an appropriate project-management structure. Another major section focuses on project scope and planning, covering project objectives, deliverables, milestones, technical requirements, limits and exclusions, project charters, scope creep and the cost-time-scope trade-off. The guide explains the priority matrix, Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), work packages, Organizational Breakdown Structure (OBS), cost accounts, WBS dictionaries, Process Breakdown Structures, responsibility matrices and project communication plans. These concepts help students understand how project scope is translated into manageable work units with clearly assigned responsibilities, budgets, schedules and monitoring points. The guide also thoroughly reviews project time and cost estimation, including top-down and bottom-up estimating, planning horizons, work-package estimates, consensus, ratio, apportionment, function-point and learning-curve methods, as well as template, parametric, range and phase estimating. Students can review direct costs, direct project overhead, general and administrative overhead, reference class forecasting and common reasons project estimates require refinement, such as resource constraints, scope changes, unforeseen events and overly optimistic estimates. The final chapters concentrate on project scheduling, network analysis and risk management. Topics include project networks, critical paths, early and late start/finish times, forward and backward passes, merge and burst activities, parallel activities, free and total slack, sensitivity, laddering, lags, hammock activities and concurrent engineering. Risk-management coverage includes risk identification, assessment, response development and control; Risk Breakdown Structures (RBS); risk profiles; scenario analysis; risk severity matrices; Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA); PERT; contingency planning; budget and management reserves; time buffers; and risk registers. The guide also distinguishes responses to threats—mitigate, avoid, transfer and accept—from opportunity strategies such as exploit, share, enhance and accept. Overall, this resource is particularly valuable for students who need a structured review of the managerial and quantitative concepts commonly tested in an introductory or intermediate project-management midterm. Because the material explicitly covers Chapters 1–7 of Project Management: The Managerial Process, 7th Edition, it can support both conceptual memorization and application of project selection, organizational design, WBS, estimating, scheduling, critical-path and risk-management principles. The uploaded document identifies the course code as QM 6655 and the academic period as 2026/2027, but it does not identify a university, so a specific institution should not be added without supporting information. Relevant Students: QM 6655 students, project management students, business administration students, MBA students, management students, operations management students, business analytics students, graduate business students, project managers preparing for academic examinations, students using Project Management The Managerial Process 7th Edition, students preparing for project management midterms Keywords: QM 6655 midterm, QM 6655 study guide, QM 6655 midterm , QM 6655 questions and answers, project management midterm, Project Management The Managerial Process 7th Edition, chapters 1 7 project management, project management study guide, project life cycle, strategic management, SWOT analysis, SMART objectives, project portfolio management, project selection, net present value, NPV project selection, project organizational structures, functional organization, projectized organization, matrix organization, project scope, scope creep, project charter, work breakdown structure, WBS, organizational breakdown structure, OBS, work packages, responsibility matrix, project estimating, top down estimating, bottom up estimating, project cost estimation, project network, critical path method, CPM, forward pass, backward pass, project slack, project scheduling, risk management, risk breakdown structure, risk severity matrix, FMEA, PERT, contingency planning, risk register, project management exam preparation