Project Management Chapter 5 Key terms

Bottom-up approach

Creating a WBS by having team members identify as many specific tasks related to the project as possible and then grouping them into higher-level categories

approach

Creating a WBS by starting with the largest items of the project and breaking them into subordinate items

Analogy approach

Creating a WBS by using a similar project's WBS as a starting point

Requirement

A condition or capability that must be met by the project or that must be present in the product, service, or result to satisfy an agreement or other formally imposed specification

Work breakdown structure (WBS)

A deliverable-oriented grouping of the work involved in a project that defines its total scope

Project scope statement

A document that includes at least a description of the project, including its overall objectives and justification, detailed descriptions of all project deliverables, and the characteristics and requirements of products and services produced as part of the project

WBS dictionary

A document that includes detailed information about each WBS item

requirement management plan

A plan that describes how project requirements will be analyzed, documented, and managed

Use case modeling

A process for identifying and modeling business events, who initiated them, and how the system should respond to them

Deliverable

A product, such as a report or segment of software code, produced as part of a project

Requirements traceability matrix (RTM)

A table that lists requirements, their various attributes, and the status of the requirements to ensure that all are addressed • scope — All the work involved in creating the products of the project and the processes used to create them

Work package

A task at the lowest level of the WBS

In the _____approach for constructing a WBS, you use a similar project's WBS as a starting point.

Analogy A method for constructing a WBS is the analogy approach. In the analogy approach, you use a similar project's WBS as a starting point.

Generating ideas by comparing specific project practices or product characteristics to those of other projects or products inside or outside the performing organization is known as _____.

Benchmarking Benchmarking, or generating ideas by comparing specific project practices or product characteristics to those of other projects or products inside or outside the performing organization, can be used to collect requirements.

Subdividing the project deliverables into smaller pieces is known as _____.

Decomposition

Prototyping

Developing a working replica of the system or some aspect of it to help define user requirements

The tasks in a WBS must be developed as a sequential list of steps.

False A concern when creating a WBS is how to organize it to provide the basis for the project schedule. You should focus on what work needs to be done and how it will be done, not when it will be done. In other words, the tasks do not have to be developed as a sequential list of steps.

Project scope statements must include the project boundaries, constraints, and assumptions.

False Project scope statements should include at least a product scope description, product user acceptance criteria, and detailed information on all project deliverables. It is also helpful to document other scope-related information, such as the project boundaries, constraints, and assumptions.

Scope validation

Formal acceptance of the completed project deliverables

Benchmarking

Generating ideas by comparing specific project practices or product characteristics to those of other projects or products inside or outside the performing organization

Decomposition

Subdividing project deliverables into smaller pieces

Scope baseline

The approved project scope statement and its associated WBS and WBS dictionary

Variance

The difference between planned and actual performance

Project scope management

The processes involved in defining and controlling what work is or is not included in a project

Scope creep

The tendency for project scope to keep getting bigger

Mind mapping allows people to write and even draw pictures of ideas in a nonlinear format.

True Instead of writing down tasks in a list or immediately trying to create a structure for tasks, mind mapping allows people to write and even draw pictures of ideas in a nonlinear format. This more visual, less structured approach to defining and then grouping tasks can unlock creativity among individuals and increase participation and morale among teams.

Many organizations provide different guidelines and templates for developing WBSs.

True Many organizations provide guidelines and templates for developing WBSs, as well as examples of WBSs from past projects. Microsoft Project 2010 comes with several templates,and more are available on Microsoft's Web site and other sites.

Joing application design (JAD)

Using highly organized and intensive workshops to bring together project stakeholders—the sponsor, users, business analysts, programmers, and so on—to jointly define and design information systems

A(n) ____ is a task at the lowest level of the WBS.

Work package A work package is a task at the lowest level of the WBS.