Information Technology Project Management- Ch.1-6

Predecessor

"From" activity

Successor

"To" activity

Helpful inputs when developing a project charter

- A business case - Benefits management plan - Agreements - Enterprise environmental factors - Organizational process assets

Advice for creating a WBS and a WBS Dictionary

- A unit of work should appear in only one place - The work content is the sum of items below it - An item is the responsibility of only one person - Must be consistent with the way work actually will be performed - Project team members should be involved in development to ensure consistency and buy-in - Each item must be documented to ensure accurate understanding of the scope of work included and not included in that item - Must be a flexible tool to accomodate inevitable changes whole properly maintaining control of the work content

Main outputs of scope validation

- Accepted deliverables - Change requests - Work performance information - Project documents updates

Why federal tech projects succeed

- Adequate funding - Staff expertise - Engagement from all stakeholders

Outputs for the integrated change control process

- Approved change requests - Updated project management plan - updated project documents.

Traits of highly effective project managers

- Be a strategic business partner. - Encourage and recognize valuable contributions. - Respect and motivate stakeholders. - Be fully Vested in success. - Stress integrity and accountability. - Work in the gray/ Be able to deal with ambiguity.

Symbols on a Gantt Chart

- Black diamond: Milestone - Thick black bar: Summary tasks - Light blue bars: duration of each individual task - Arrows: relationships/dependencies - White diamond: Slipped milestone - Percentages: Percentage of work completed for task

What are some important parts of the Project Charter?

- Business case - Benefits management plan - Agreements - Enterprise environmental factors - Organizational process assets

Goals of a Project Management Office

- Collect, organize, and integrate project data for the entire organization. - Ensure that the organization's approaches for project management include accepted and validated best practices. - Audit project documentation and offer feedback on project managers' approaches and compliance with standards. - Develop and maintain templates, tools, and standards for project documents and project methodologies to be used. - Develop or coordinate training in various project management topics. - Provide a formal career path for project managers. - Provide project management consulting services. - Provide a structure or department that project managers belong to while they are assigned to a project or are between projects.

Key issues project managers need to address in global projects.

- Communications - Trust - Common Work Practices - Tools

Tools and techniques for schedule control

- Data analysis tools - Critical path method - Project management information systems - Resource optimazation - Leads and Lahs - Schedule compression (crashing/fast tracking)

Pre-Initiation Tasks

- Determine the scope, time, and cost constraints for the project. - Identify the project sponsor. - Select the project manager. - Develop a business case for a project. - Meet with the project manager to review the process and expectations for managing the project. - Determine if the project should be divided into two or more smaller projects.

Suggestions for improving User Input

- Develop a good project selection process for IT projects. - Have users on the project team. - Have regular meetings with defined agendas. - Deliver something to project users and sponsors on a regular basis. - Deliver something to project users and sponsors on a regular basis. - Do not promise to deliver what the team cannot deliver in a particular time frame. - Locate users with the developers.

Suggestions for reducing incomplete and changing requirements

- Develop and follow a requirements management process that includes procedures for determining initial requirements - Employ techniques such as prototyping, case modeling, and joint application design to understand user requirements thoroughly. - Put all requirements in writing and keep them current and readily available. - Create a requirements management database for documenting and controlling requirements. - Provide adequate testing to verify that the project's products perform as expected - Use a process for reviewing requested requirements changes from a systems perspective. - Emphasize completion dates. - Allocate resources specifically for handling change requests.

Project Integration Management Processes

- Developing the project charter. - Developing the project management plan. - Directing and managing the project work. - Managing project knowledge. - Monitoring and controlling project work. - Performing integrated change control. - Closing the project or phase.

Data Analysis Tools

- Earned Value Analysis - Iteration Burndown Charts - Performance Reviews - Trend Analysis - Variance Analysis - What-if-scenario Analysis

Suggestions for managing global projects.

- Employ greater project discipline for global projects. - Think globally but act locally to align and integrate stakeholders at all project levels. - Consider collaboration over standardization to help balance the goals and project approach. - Keep momentum going for projects. - Consider the use of newer, perhaps more innovative, tools and technology.

Tools and Techniques for the Execution Process

- Expert Judgement - Meetings - Project Management Information Systems

Tools and techniques used in defining scope

- Expert judgement - Data analysis - Decision making - Interpersonal and team skills - Product analysis

What is the difference between explicit and tacit knowledge?

- Explicit knowledge can be easily explained using words, pictures, or numbers and is easy to communicate, store, and distribute. - Unlike explicit knowledge, tacit knowledge, sometimes called informal knowledge, is difficult to express and is highly personal.

Types of dependencies between activities

- Finish-to-start - Start-to-start - Finish-to-Finish - Start-to-Finish

Common techniques for selecting projects:

- Focusing on broad organizational needs - Categorizing IT projects - Performing net present value or other final analyses - Using a weighted scoring model - Implementing a balanced scorecard.

Requirement Categories

- Functional - Service - Performance - Quality - Training

Tools and techniques for schedule development

- Gantt chart - Critical path analysis - Critical chain scheduling - PERT analysis

Requirements management plan includes

- How to plan, track, and report requirements activities - How to perform configuration management activities - How to prioritize requirements - How to use product metrics - How to trace and capture attributes of requirements

Scope management plan includes

- How to prepare a detailed project cope statement - How to create a WBS - How to maintain and approve the WBS - How to obtain formal acceptance of the completed project deliverables - How to control requests for changes to the project scope

Main objectives of Integrated Change Control

- Influencing the factors that create changes to ensure that changes are beneficial. - Determining that a change has occurred - Managing actual changes as they occur

Common programs in IT

- Infrastructure - Applications development - User Support

Ways of collecting requirements

- Interviewing stakeholders - Holding focus groups - Questionnaires/ Surveys - Observations - Prototyping and Document analysis - Context Diagrams

Project Management Plan Elements

- Introduction/ Overview of project - Project organization - Management and technical processes - Work to be performed - Schedule and budget information - References to other project planning documents

Business Case

- Introduction/Background - Business Objective - Current situation and problem/ Opportunity statement. - Critical assumptions and constraints. - Analysis of options and recommendations - Preliminary project requirements - Budget estimate and financial analysis - Schedule Estimate - Potential Risks - Exhibits

Disadvantages of Virtual Teams

- Isolating team members who may not adjust well to working in a virtual environment. - Increasing the potential for communications problems because team members cannot use body language or other nonverbal communications to understand each other and build relationships and trust. - Reducing the ability for team members to network and transfer information informally. - Increasing the dependance on technology to accomplish work.

Leadership: Theory and Practice - Leadership Styles

- Laissex-Faire - Transactional - Servant leader - Transformational - Charismatic - Interactional

Cost Management Plan includes

- Level of accuracy - Units of Measure - Organizational Procedure Links - Control Thresholds - Rules of Performance Measurement - Reporting Formats - Process Descriptions

Project Management Software Tools Categories

- Low end tools - Midrange tools - High end tools

Advantages of Virtual Teams

- Lowering costs because many virtual workers do not require office space or support beyond their home offices. - Providing more expertise and flexibility or increasing competitiveness and responsiveness by having team members across the globe working any time of day or night. - Improving the balance between work and life for team members by eliminating fixed office hours and the need to travel to work.

Types of dependencies

- Mandatory - Discretionary - External - Internal

Main Topics Agenda in a Kick-Off Meeting

- Meeting Objective - Agenda - A section for documenting action items, who they are assigned to, and when each person will complete the action. - A section to document the date and time of the next meeting.

Characteristics of Organizational Culture

- Member identity - Group Emphasis - People Focus - Unit Integration - Control - Risk Tolerance - Reward Criteria - Conflict Tolerance - Means-ends Orientation - Open-systems Focus

Criteria for measuring success of a project

- Met scope, time, and cost goals. - Satisfied the customer/sponsor. - Results met the main objective, such as making or saving a certain amount of money, etc.

4 processes for project cost management

- Planning cost management - Estimating cost - Determining the budget - Controlling cost

Six processes of Project schedule management

- Planning schedule management - Defining activities - Sequencing activities - Estimating activity durations - Developing the schedule - Controlling the schedule

6 Main processes of project scope management

- Planning scope management - Collecting requirements - Defining scope - Creating the WBS - Validating the scope - Controlling the scope

Product/Development Life Cycles

- Predictive Life Cycle - Iterative Life Cycle - Incremental Life Cycle - Adaptive Life Cycle - Hybrid Life Cycle

Main inputs for developing a project management plan

- Project Charter - Outputs from other processes - Enterprise Environment factors - Organizational process assets

Main inputs in the closing projects phase

- Project Charter - Project Management Plan - Project Documents - Accepted Deliverables - Business Documents - Agreements - Procurement Documentation - Organizational Process Assets

Inputs for the integrated change control process

- Project Management Plan - Project documents - Work Performance Information - Change Requests - Enterprise Environmental Factors - Organizational Process Assets

Inputs for a WBS

- Project management plan - Project documents - Enterprise environmental factors - Organizational process assets

Main inputs for scope validation

- Project management plan - Project documents - Verified deliverables - Work performance data

Main inputs of scope control

- Project management plan - Project documents - Work performance data - Organizational Process assets

Main inputs of schedule control

- Project management plan - Project documents - Work performance data - Organizational process assets

Why is top management commitment crucial for project managers?

- Project managers need adequate resources. - Project managers often require approval for unique project needs in a timely manner. - Project managers must have cooperation from people in other parts of the organization. - Project managers often need someone to mentor and coach them on leadership issues.

What should be included in a project charter?

- Project's title and date of authorization - Project manager's name and contact information - Summary schedule - Summary of projects budget - Brief description of the project's objectives - Project success criteria - Summary of planned approach - Roles and Responsibilities matrix - Sign off section for signatures of key project stakeholders. - Comments section

Functions of a CCB

- Provide guidelines for preparing changes requests - Evaluating change requests - Managing the implementation of approved changes

Main outputs of developing the schedule

- Schedule baseline - Project schedule - Schedule data - Project calendars - Change requests - Project management plan updates - Project documents updates

Project Life Cycle Phases

- Starting the project. - Organizing and preparing. - Carrying out the work. - Finishing the project.

Four Frames of Organizations

- Structural - Human Resources - Political - Symbolic

Final report consists of

- Summary level description of the project or phase - Scope objectives, the criteria used to evaluate the project and product scope, and the evidence that the completion criteria were met - Quality objectives the criteria used to evaluate the project and product quality, and the verification and validation information - Schedule objectives, including planned and actual milestone delivery dates and reasons for variances - Summary of how the final project, service, or result achieved the benefits that the project was undertaken to address - Summary of how the final project, service, or result achieved the business needs identified in the business plan - Summary of any risks or issues encountered on the project and how they were addressed

Possible criteria for IT Projects

- Supports key business objectives or strategies - Has strong internal sponsor - Has strong customer support - Uses realistic level of technology - Can be implemented in one year or less - Provides positive NPV - Has low risk in meeting scope, time, and cost goals

Factors influencing success in virtual teams

- Team Processes - Leadership Style - Trust and Relationships - Team Member Selection and Role Preferences - Task-Technology Fit - Cultural Differences - Computer-Mediated Communication - Team Life Cycles - Incentives - Conflict Management

PMI Talent Triangle

- Technical project management skills. - Strategic and business management skills. - Leadership skills

Name some knowledge areas of project management.

- Time - Cost - Scope - Project Integration - Quality - Human Resources - Communication - Risk - Procurement - Stakeholder Management

Name some project attributes.

- Unique purpose - Is temporary - Developed using progressive elaboration - Requires resources - Should have a sponsor - Involves uncertainty

Outputs of closing projects

- Updated project documents - Final product, service, or result transition - Final report - Updated organizational process assets

Best practices in project delivery

- Use an integrated toolbox. - Grow project leaders. - Develop a streamlined delivery process. - Measure project health using metrics.

Approaches to develop a WBS

- Using guidelines - The analogy approach - The top down approach - The bottom up approach - The mind mapping approach

Suggestions for performing integrated change control

- View project management as a process of constant communication and negotiation. - Plan for change - Establish a formal change control system - Use effective configuration management - Define procedures for making timely decisions about smaller changes - Use written and oral performance reports to help identify and manage change - Focus on leading the project team and meeting overall project goals and expectations.

Primal Leadership- Leadership Styles

- Visionary - Coaching - Affiliative - Democratic - Pacesetting - Commanding

Outputs of scope control

- Work performance information - Change requests - Project Management Plan Updates - Project Document Updates

Outputs of schedule control

- Work performance information - Schedule forecasts - Change requests - Project management plan updates - project document updates

A schedule management plan includes

- project schedule model development - the scheduling methodology - level of accuracy and units of measure - control thresholds - rules of performance measurement - reporting formats - process descriptions

Advantages of using Project Management techniques:

-Better Control of Financial, Physical, and Human Resources -Improved Customer Relations -Shorter Development Times -Lower Costs and Improved Productivity -Higher Quality and Increased Reliability -Higher Profit Margins -Better Internal Coordination -Positive Impact on Meeting Strategic Goals -Higher Worker Morale

List the main processes involved in project schedule management.

-Planning schedule management - Defining activities: involves identifying the specific activities that the project team members and stakeholders must perform to produce the project deliverables. - Sequencing activities: involves identifying and documenting the relationships between project activities - Estimating activity durations: involves estimating the number of work periods that are needed to complete individual activities. - Developing the schedule: involves analyzing activity sequences, activity resource estimates, and activity duration estimates to create the project schedule. - Controlling the schedule: involves controlling and managing changes to the project schedule.

Project Attributes

-Unique purpose -Temporary -Drives change and enables value creation -Developed using progressive elaboration -Requires resources, often from various areas -Should have a primary customer or sponsor -Involves uncertainty

Basic IT Project Portfolio Categories

-Venture: Help transform the business -Growth: Help the company increase its revenues. -Core: Help run the business.

How do you determine NPV?

1- Determine the estimated costs and benefits for the life of the project and the products it creates. 2- Determine the discount rate. 3- Calculate the net present value.

Four stages of selecting an IT project

1- Information technology strategy planning. 2- Business Area Analysis 3- Project Planning 4- Resource Allocation

Assume that you have a project with major categories called planning, analysis, design, and testing. What level of the WBS would these items fall under?

2

If estimates for total discounted benefits for a project are $120,000 and total discounted costs are $100,000, what is the estimated return on investment (ROI)?

20 %

By 2027, employers will need over _______ million individuals working in project management-oriented roles.

87

Which of the following items is not normally included in a project charter?

A Gantt chart

Tracking Gantt chart

A Gantt chart that compares planned and actual project schedule information

Hybrid Life Cycle

A combination of approaches is used based on the nature of the work.

Interactional Leadership Style

A combination of transactional, transformational, and charismatic styles.

Requirement

A condition or capability that is required to be present in a product, service, or result to satisfy a business need.

Direct Costs

A cost directly related to creating the products/ services.

Definitive estimate

A cost estimate that provides an accurate estimate of project costs

Indirect Costs

A cost not directly related to creating the products/services.

DevOps

A culture of collaboration between software development and operations teams to build, test, and release reliable software more quickly.

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

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

Project Scope Statement (PSS)

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.

Project Charter

A document that formally recognizes the existence of a project and provides direction on the project's objectives and management.

Stakeholder Register

A document that includes details related to the identified project stakeholders

WBS Dictionary

A document that provides detailed information about each WBS item.

Project Management Plan

A document used to coordinate all project planning documents and guide project execution and control.

Change Control Board (CCB)

A formal group of people responsible for approving or rejecting changes to a project.

Change Control System

A formal, documented process that describes when and how official project documents may be changed

Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

A framework for describing the phases of developing information systems

Organizational Project Management

A framework in which portfolio, program, and project management are integrated with organizational enablers in order to achieve strategic objectives.

Virtual Team

A group of people who work together despite time and space boundaries using communication technologies

Program

A group of related projects, subsidiary programs, and project activities manages in a coordinated manner to obtain benefits and control not available from managing them individually.

Black Swan

A high impact event that is rare and unpredictable, but not improbable in retrospect.

Systems approach

A holistic and analytical approach to solving complex problems that includes using a systems philosophy, systems analysis, and systems management

PERT Analysis

A means for considering schedule risk on projects.

Kick-off meeting

A meeting held at the beginning of a project so that stakeholders can meet each other, review the goals of the project, and discuss future plans

Return on Investment

A method for determining the financial value of a project; the ROI is the result of subtracting the project costs from the benefits and then dividing by the costs.

Cash Flow Analysis

A method for determining the estimated annual costs and benefits for a project, and the resulting cash flow.

Net Present Value (NPV) analysis

A method of calculating the expected net monetary gain or loss from a project by calculating the value of all expected future cash inflows and outflows at the present time.

Net Present Value Analysis

A method of calculating the expected net monetary gain or loss from a project by discounting all expected future cash inflows and outflows to the present point in time.

Slipped Milestone

A milestone activity that is completed later than originally planned

Discount Factor

A multiplier for each year based on the discount rate and year.

Activity-on-arrow (AOA)

A network diagramming technique in which activities are represented by arrows and connected at points called nodes to illustrate the sequence of activities; also called arrow diagramming method (ADM)

Precedence Diagramming Method (PDM)

A network diagramming technique in which boxes represent activities

Systems analysis

A problem-solving approach that requires defining the scope of the system, dividing it into components, and then identifying and evaluating its problems, opportunities, constraints, and needs.

Case Modeling

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

Product Life Cycle

A process used to define, create, and deliver products.

Deliverable

A product created as part of a project.

Which of the following statements is false?

A product life cycle is the same as a project life cycle.

Deliverable

A product or service, such as a technical report, a training session, a piece of hardware, or a segment of software code, produced or provided as part of a project.

Start to Start dependency

A relationship in which the "from" activity cannot start until the "to" activity or successor is started.

Finish to Finish dependency

A relationship in which the "from" activity must be finished before the "to' activity can be finished.

Start to Finish dependency

A relationship in which the "from" activity must start before the "to" activity can be finished.

Finish to Start dependency

A relationship in which the "from" activity or predecessor must finish before the "to" activity or successor can start.

Network Diagram

A schematic display of the logical relationships among project activities and their sequencing. AKA Pert charts

Champion

A senior manager who acts as a key advocate for a project.

Process

A series of actions directed toward a particular result.

Ethics

A set of principles that guides decision making based on personal values of what is considered right and wrong.

Organizational Culture

A set of shared assumptions, values, and behaviors that characterize the functioning of an organization.

Milestone

A significant event that normally has no duration on a project; serves as a marker to help in identifying necessary activities, setting schedule goals, and monitoring progress.

Gantt Chart

A standard format for displaying project schedule information by listing project activities and their corresponding start and finish dates in a calendar form.

Baseline

A starting point, a measurement, or an observation that is documented so that it can be used for future comparison.

Balanced Scorecard

A strategic planning and management system that helps organizations align business activities to strategy, improve communications, and monitor performance against strategic goals.

Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM)

A table that lists requirements, their various attributes, and the status of the requirements to ensure that all are addressed.

Activity List

A tabulation of activities to be included on a project schedule

Work Package

A task at the lowest level of the WBS

Crashing

A technique for making cost and schedule trade-offs to obtain the greatest amount of schedule compression for the least incremental cost

Critical chain scheduling

A technique that focuses on limited resources when creating a project schedule.

Stakeholder Analysis

A technique that project managers use to help understand and increase the support of stakeholders throughout the project.

Mind Mapping

A technique that uses branches radiating from a core idea to structure thoughts and ideas

Project

A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.

Weighted Scoring Model

A tool that provides a systematic process for selecting projects based on many criteria.

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

A tool that provides the basis for deciding how to do the work. Also provides a basis for creating the project schedule and for measuring and forecasting project performance.

Megaproject

A very large project that typically costs over l billion dollars, affects over one million people, and lasts several years.

Interpersonal and Team Skills

Active listening, communication styles assessment, conflict management, cultural awareness, decision making, emotional intelligence, facilitation, influencing, leadership, meeting management, motivation, negotiation, networking, nominal group, observation/conversation, political awareness, and team building.

Dummy Activities

Activities with no duration and no resources used to show a logical relationship between two activities in the arrow diagramming method of project network diagrams

The activity list should include the _____, an activity identifier, and a brief description of the activity.

Activity Name

Predecessors, successors, logical relationships, leads and lags, resource requirements, constraints, imposed dates, and assumptions are all examples of _____

Activity attributes

Buffer

Additional time to complete a task

IT Governance

Addresses the authority for and control of key IT activities in organizations, including IT infrastructure, IT use, and project management.

Systems management

Addressing the business, technological, and organizational issues associated with creating, maintaining, and modifying a system

Data Representation

Affinity diagrams, cause-and-effect diagrams, control charts, flow charts, hierarchical charts, histograms, logical data models, matrix diagrams, matrix-based charts, mind mapping, probability and impact matrix, scatter diagrams, stakeholder engagement assessment matrix, stateholder mapping/representation, and text-oriented formats.

Scope

All the work involved in creating the products of the project and the processes used to create them.

Determining the Budget

Allocating the overall cost estimate to individual work items to establish a baseline for measuring performance. Main Outputs: Cost Baseline, Project Funding Requirements, and Project Document Updates.

Management Reviews

Also called phase exits, phase gate reviews, or kill points are very important for keeping projects on track and determining if they should be continued, redirected, or terminated.

Data Analysis

Alternative analysis, assessment of other risk parameters, assumption and constraint analysis, cost of quality, cost-benefit analysis, decision tress analysis, document analysis, and earned value analysis.

Agile Methods

An adaptive product life cycle used when deliverables have a high degree of change and a high frequency of delivery.

rough order of magnitude (ROM) estimate

An estimate of what a project will cost

Rational Unified Process (RUP) framework

An iterative software development process created by IBM that focuses on team productivity and enables all team members to deliver software best practices to the organization.

Best Practice

An optimal way recognized by industry to achieve a stated goal or objective.

Three-Point Estimate

An optimistic, a most likely, and a pessimistic estimate.

Outsourcing

An organization's acquisition of goods and services from an outside source.

Project Management Office

An organizational group responsible for coordinating the project management function throughout an organization

Systems philosophy

An overall model for thinking about things as systems

SWOT analysis

Analyzing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats as a tool in strategic planning.

Project Management Tools and Techniques

Assist project managers and their teams in carrying out work in all 10 knowledge areas.

A _____ is a starting point, a measurement, or an observation that is documented so that it can be used for future comparison. changes.

Baseline

Data Gathering

Benchmarking, brainstorming, check sheets, checklists, focus groups, interviews, market research, questionnaires and surveys, and statistical sampling.

Cash Flow

Benefits minus costs or income minus expenses.

Which is a similarity between scope control and schedule control?

Both are portions of the integrated change control process under project integration management.

Which of the following outputs is often completed before initiating a project?

Business Case

Explicit knowledge

Can be easily explained using words, pictures, or numbers and is easy to communicate, store, and distribute.

Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)

Can be used to estimate project duration.

Opportuinities

Chances to improve the organization.

What is CCB and what is its role?

Change Control Board is a formal group of people responsible for approving and rejecting changes to a project.

Change control system includes

Change control board, configuration management, and a process for communicating changes.

Outputs of monitoring and controlling project work

Change requests and work performance reports

What report published in 1995 by the Standish Group found that only 16.2% of IT projects were successful in meeting the three goals?

Chaos

Political Frame

Coalitions composed of varied individuals and interest groups. Conflict and power are key issues.

Gantt Chart

Common tool for displaying project schedule information by listing project activities and their corresponding start and finish dates in calendar form.

What are the primary tools for interface management?

Communication and Relationships

Discretionary Costs

Company van use its own judgement in deciding whether to fund them.

_______ ensures that the descriptions of the project's products are correct and complete.

Configuration management

Project work is most successful in an organizational culture where all of the following characteristics are important except ______

Control

Tangible Costs/Benefits

Costs/Benefits that are easily measured in dollars.

Intangible Costs/Benefits

Costs/Benefits that are not easily measured in dollars.

______ is a method of scheduling that considers limited resources when creating a project schedule and includes buffers to protect the project completion date.

Critical Chain Scheduling

__________ is a network diagramming technique used to predict total project duration.

Critical path method

Symbolic Frame

Culture, language, traditions, and image are all parts of this frame.

Six Sigma Methodology

DMAIC: Used to improve an existing business process. - Define - Measure - Analyze - Improve - Control DMADV: Used to create new product or process designs to achieve predictable, defect-free performance. - Define - Measure - Analyze - Design - Verify

Discretionary Dependency

Defined by the project management team and may include best-practice techniques.

A ______ is a product or service, such as a technical report, a training session, or hardware, produced or provided as part of a project.

Deliverable

Incremental Life Cycle

Deliverables are produced through a series of iterations that add functionality within a set time frame.

Standard

Describes best practices for what should be done to manage a project. IE: PMBOK Guide

Methodology

Describes how things should be done.

Mid-Range Tools

Designed to handle larger projects, multiple users, and multiple projects

Backward pass

Determines the late start and finish dates

Planning Cost Management

Determining the policies, procedures, and documentation that will be used for planning, executing, and controlling project cost. Main Output: Cost Management Plan

Spiral Life Cycle Model

Developed based on refinements of the waterfall model as applied to large government software projects.

Estimating Costs

Developing an approximation or estimate of the costs of the resources needed to complete a project. Main Outputs: Activity Cost Estimates, Basis of Estimates, and Project Document Updates.

Which of the following processes is not part of project integration management?

Developing the project business case

What is one of the main outputs of the initiation process?

Developing the project charter.

A new government law requires an organization to report data in a new way. Which of the following categories would include a new information system project to provide this data?

Directive

What are new requirements imposed by management, government, or some external influence referred to as?

Directives

As the project manager for a software development project, you are helping to develop the project schedule. You decide that writing code for a system should not start until users sign off on the analysis work. What type of dependency is this?

Discretionary

The nature of IT projects is different from the nature of projects in many other industries because they are very ______.

Diverse

Requirements Management Plan

Documents how project requirements will be analyzed, documented, and managed.

Lessons Learned Register

Documents the challenges, problems, realized risks and opportunities, and other content to assist in knowledge management on current and future projects.

Reserves

Dollar amount of a cost estimate that can cover for future situations that are difficult to predict.

Which of the following is not a best practice that can help in avoiding scope problems on IT projects?

Don't involve too many users in scope management.

Which of the following statements is false?

Duration and effort are synonymous terms.

probabilistic time estimates

Duration estimates based on using optimistic, most likely, and pessimistic estimates of activity durations.

________ is the number of workdays or work hours required to complete a task.

Effort

Affiliative Leadership Style

Emphasizes the importance of teamwork and creating harmony by connecting people to each other. This approach is effective when trying to increase morale, improve communication, or repair broken trust.

Configuration Management

Ensures that the descriptions of the project's products are correct and complete. Involves identifying and controlling the functional and physical design characteristics of products and their support documentation.

Which process group normally requires the most resources and time?

Executing

_________ processes include coordinating people and other resources to carry our project plans and create the products, services, or results of the project or phase.

Executing

What tool and technique is used for all processes of project integration management?

Expert Judgement

Main tools/techniques for developing a project charter

Expert Judgement, Data Gathering, Interpersonal and team skills, and meetings.

Types of project knowledge

Explicit and Tactic

A SWOT analysis, being a linear process, cannot be performed using the nonlinear mind mapping technique. (t/f)

False

A merge occurs when one node precedes multiple nodes. (t/f)

False

An organization's project management plan expresses the vision, mission, goals, objectives, and strategies of the organization. (t/f)

False

In a Gantt chart, thick black bars represent milestones achieved in a project. (t/f)

False

In a critical path analysis, the shortest path is what drives the completion date for the project. (t/f)

False

In project schedule management, the next step after sequencing activities is to define these activities (t/f)

False

Initiating and closing tasks are usually the longest and require the most time and resources. (t/f)

False

Projects that address broad organizational needs are likely to fail. (t/f)

False

The arrows in a network diagram represent missed milestones in a project. (t/f)

False

Users can never be stakeholders of a project. (t/f)

False

Which of the following statements is false?

Fast tracking is a technique for making cost and schedule trade-offs to obtain the greatest amount of schedule compression for the least incremental cost.

Communication

Feedback and presentations

You cannot start editing a technical report until someone else completes the first draft. What type of dependency does this represent?

Finish-to-start

Bottom Up Approach

First identify as many specific tasks related to the project as possible, and then aggregate the specific tasks and organize them into summary activities.

Transactional Leadership Style

Focuses on achieving goals or compliance by offering team members appropriate rewards and punishments.

Democratic Leadership Style

Focuses on people's knowledge and skills and creates a commitment to reaching shared goals. This leadership style works best when the leader needs the collective wisdom of the group to decide on the best direction to take for the organization.

Servant Leader Leadership Style

Focuses on relationships and community first and leadership is secondary.

Scope validation

Formal acceptance of the completed project deliverables.

Organizational Process Assets

Formal and informal plans, policies, procedures, guidelines, information systems, financial systems, management systems, lessons learned, and historical information that can influence a project's success.

A _____ determines the early start and early finish dates for each activity in a project.

Forward pass

Strategic Goal

Generally emphasize long-term goals for an organization. IE: Portfolio Management

Tactical Goal

Generally more specific and short term. IE: Individual Project

Benchmarking

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

Impetus

Goal; for a project to respond to a problem, an opportunity, or a directive.

Laissex-Faire Leadership Style

Hands-off approach lets teams determine their own goals and how to achieve them.

Portfolio Manager

Help their organizations make wise investment decisions by helping to select and analyze projects from a strategic perspective.

Project Organizational Structure

Hierarchical, but instead of functional managers or vice presidents reporting to the CEO, program managers report to the CEO.

Functional Organizational Structure

Hierarchy most people think of when picturing an organizational chart

Systems thinking

Holistic view of carrying out projects within the context of the organization

Time

How long should it take to complete the project?

Interface Management

Identifying and managing the points of interaction between various elements of a project

Murphy's Law

If something can go wrong, it will.

Executing Process

Include coordinating people and other resources to carry out the various plans and create the products, services, or results of the project or phase.

Planning Process

Include devising and maintaining a workable scheme to ensure that the project addresses the organization's needs.

Closing Process

Include formalizing acceptance of the project or project phase and ending it efficiently.

Change requests

Include recommended corrective and preventive actions and defect repairs.

Monitoring and Controlling Process

Include regularly measuring and monitoring progress to ensure that the project team meets the project objectives.

Initiating Process

Includes defining and authorizing a project or project phase.

Schedule Management Plan

Informal and broad or formal and detailed, based on the needs of the project.

Which of the following is not part of the three-sphere model for systems management?

Information

Name the five process groups in project management.

Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring & Controlling, and Closing

Main tools for scope validation

Inspection and decision making

Charismatic Leadership Style

Inspires others based on their enthusiasm and confidence.

Initiating involves developing a project charter, which is part of the project _____ management knowledge area.

Integration

The project management plan is the output of which project planning process?

Integration Management

Project Management Institute

International professional society for project managers founded in 1969

Which tool or technique for collecting requirements is often the most expensive and time consuming?

Interviews

Internal Dependency

Involve relationships between project activities that are generally inside the project team's control.

Controlling Costs

Involves controlling changes to the project budget. Main Outputs: Work Performance Information, Cost Forecasts, Change Requests, Project Management Plan updates, and Project Document updates.

Project Integration Management

Involves coordinating all of the other project management knowledge areas throughout a project's life cycle.

Strategic Planning

Involves determining long-term objectives by analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of an organization, studying opportunities and threats in the business environment, predicting future trends, and projecting the need for new products and services.

Prototyping

Involves developing a working replica of the system or some aspect of the system.

Integrated Change Control

Involves identifying, evaluating, and managing changes throughout the project life cycle.

Project Manager

Is crucial to a project's success; work with project sponsors, team, and the other people involved to achieve project goals. Also facilitates the entire process to meet the needs and expectations of people involved in project activities or affected by them.

What is configuration management?

It ensures the descriptions of project's products are correct and complete. Involves identifying and controlling the physical and functional characteristics of products and their support documentation.

What is the effect of globalization according to Thomas L. Friedman?

It has created a "flat" world where everyone is connected and "playing field" is level for many more participants.

What does the change control system do?

It is the formal, document process that describes when and how official documents may be changed.

Tacit knowledge

Known as informal; difficult to express and is highly personal.

Which of the following is not a potential advantage of using good project management?

Lower cost of capital

Personnel in a _______ organizational structure often report to two or more bosses.

Matrix

Which of the following is not part of the triple constraint of project management?

Meeting communication goals.

What are milestones?

Milestones are the most important and visible events in a project and normally have no duration. It often takes several activities and a lot of work to complete a milestone, but the milestone itself is like a marker to help in identifying necessary activities. Milestones are also useful tools or setting schedule goals and monitoring progress. Not every deliverable or output created for a project is really a milestone.

What approach to developing a WBS involves writing down or drawing ideas in a nonlinear format?

Mind Mapping

Which of the following is not a suggestion for performing integrated change control?

Minimize change

Sunk Cost

Money that has been spent/lost in the past

________ involves measuring progress toward project objectives and taking corrective actions.

Monitoring and Controling

Which process includes measuring progress toward project objectives and taking corrective action to match progress with the plan?

Monitoring and Controlling

Commanding Leadership Style

Most often used, also called autocratic or military style leadership. This style is most effective in a crisis or when a turnaround is needed.

Decision Making

Multi-criteria decision analysis and voting.

________________ states that if something can go wrong, it will.

Murphy's law

Visionary Leadership Style

Needed when an organization needs a new direction, and the goal is to move people toward a new set of shared dreams. The leader articulates where the group is going, but lets them decide how to get there by being free to innovate, experiment, and take calculated risks.

Directives

New requirements imposed by management, government, or some external influence.

In a network diagram, a _____ is the starting and ending point of an activity.

Node

What term describes an organization's acquisition of goods and services from outside source in another country?

Offshoring

Coaching Leadership Style

One-on-one style that focuses on developing individuals, showing them how to improve their performance. This approach works best with workers who show initiative and request assistance.

Which of the following is not a suggestion for improving user input?

Only have meetings as needed, not on a regular basis.

PRojects IN Controlled Environments (PRINCE2)

Originally developed for IT projects, and defines 45 separate subprocesses and organizes them into 8 process groups: 1- Starting up a project 2- Planning 3- Initiating a project 4- Directing a project 5- Controlling a stage 6- Managing product delivery 7- Managing stage boundaries 8- Closing a project

Offshoring

Outsourcing from another country.

Which of the following is not true?

PMI'S talent triangle includes leadership and information technology skills along with project management.

What methodology was developed in the United Kingdom, defines 45 separate subprocess, and organizes them into eight process groups?

PRINCE2

Stakeholders

People involved in or affected by project activities.

Configuration Management Specialists

Perform configuration management for large projects by identifying and documenting the functional and physical characteristics of the project's products, control any changes to such characteristics, record and report the changes, and audit the products to verify conformance to requirements.

A work breakdown structure, project schedule, and cost estimates are outputs of the ______ process.

Planning

What is the most difficult and unappreciated process in project management?

Planning

Which of the following processes involves determining the policies, procedures, and documentation that will be used for planning, executing, and controlling the project schedule?

Planning schedule management

Guide Project Execution

Plans must be realistic and useful, so a fair amount of time and effort must go into the planning process.

A ______ is a series of actions directed toward a particular result.

Process

Several application development projects done for the same functional group might best be managed as part of a ________.

Program

A ______ is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.

Project

What is a key output of the initiation process?

Project Charter

__________ is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements.

Project Management

What is the name of one of the popular certifications provided by the Project Management Institute?

Project Management Professional (PMP)

_____ involves the processes required to ensure timely completion of a project.

Project Schedule Management

Outputs of scope definition

Project Scope Statement and Updated Project Documents

A ______ is a document that formally recognizes the existence of a project and provides direction on the project's objectives and management.

Project charter

Where would a draft schedule for a project most likely be found?

Project charter

What is the difference between operations and projects?

Projects are a temporary endeavor undertaken to achieve a unique result or product. Operations are ongoing and done to sustain the business.

Which of the following is not an attribute of a project?

Projects involve little uncertainty.

Portfolio

Projects, programs, subsidiary portfolios, and operations managed as a group to achieve strategic objectives.

Low-End Tools

Provide basic project management features and generally cost less than $200 per user or a low monthly fee for online software

Program Manager

Provide leadership and direction for the project managers heading the projects within a program. Also coordinate the efforts of project teams, functional groups, suppliers, and operations staff supporting the projects to ensure that products and processes are implemented to maximize benefits

High-End Tools

Provide robust capabilities to handle very large projects, dispersed workgroups, and enterprise and portfolio management functions that summarize and combine individual project information to provide an enterprise view of all projects

Life-Cycle Costing

Provides a big picture view of the cost of a project throughout its life cycle.

What is the role of the Project Sponsor?

Provides direction and funding for the project.

Human Resources Frame

Providing harmony between needs of the organization and needs of people.

Preventive actions

Reduce the probability of negative consequences associated with project risks

Matrix Organizational Structure

Represents the middle ground between functional and project structures; personnel often report both a functional manager and one or more project managers.

Management Reserves

Reserves for future situations that are unpredictable. AKA Unknown Unknowns

Contingency Reserves

Reserves for future situations that can be partially planned for. AKA Known Unknowns

What is the last step in the four-stage planning process for selecting IT projects?

Resource allocation

Corrective Actions

Result in improvements in project performance

Profits

Revenues minus expenses.

Structural Frame

Roles and responsibilities, coordination, and control. Organizational charts help describe this frame.

What work will be done as part of the project?

Scope

_________ refer(s) to all the work involved in creating the products of the project and the processes used to create them.

Scope

Triple Constraint

Scope, time, cost

Quadruple Constraint

Scope, time, cost, quality

__________ is the leading agile development method.

Scrum

Which of the following is not a best practice for new product development projects?

Selecting projects that will take less than two years to provide payback

Ungrouped

Several other tools fit in this category.

Project Management Professional (PMP)

Someone who has documented sufficient project experience, agreed to follow the PMI code of professional conduct, and demonstrated knowledge of project management by passing a comprehensive examination.

Cost

Something given up in exchange. (Webster's Dictionary) A resource sacrificed or foregone to achieve a specific objective. (Accounting textbook)

Adaptive Life Cycle

Stakeholders define and approve the detailed scope before the start of an iteration, producing a useable product at the end of each iteration.

Top Down Approach

Start with the largest items of the project and break them into subordinate items

Project portfolio management addresses _______ goals of an organization, while project management addresses ___________ goals.

Strategic, Tactical

Decomposition

Subdividing project deliverables into smaller pieces.

Which of the four frames of organizations addresses how meetings are run, employee dress codes, and expected work hours?

Symbolic

Which of the following terms describes a framework of the phases involved in developing information systems?

Systems development life cycle

Critical path analysis (CPA)

Technique used to predict total project duration. AKA Critical Path Method

Many people use ___ to have a standard format for preparing various project management documents.

Templates

Duration

The actual amount of time worked on an activity plus elapsed time

Cost Overrun

The additional percentage or dollar amount by which actual costs exceed estimates.

Slack/ Float

The amount of time an activity can be delayed without delaying a succeeding activity or project finish date.

Free slack/float

The amount of time an activity can be delayed without delaying the early start date of any immediately following activities.

Payback Period

The amount of time it will take to recoup the total dollars invested in a project, in terms of net cash inflows

Project Management

The application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements.

Scope Baseline

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

What constitutes requirements for agile projects?

The backlog

Project Life Cycle

The collection of the project phases from beginning to end.

Nondiscretionary Costs

The company has no choice in whether to fund them.

Variance

The difference between planned and actual performance.

Internal Rate of Return (IRR)

The discount rate that results in an NPV of zero for a project.

Early finish date

The earliest possible time an activity can finish based on the project network logic

Early start date

The earliest possible time an activity can start based on the project network logic.

Schedule baseline

The entire approved planned schedule

Discount Rate

The interest rate used to discount cash flows. AKA Capitalization Rate or Opportunity Cost of Capital

Late finish date

The latest date an activity can be completed without delaying the project finish date.

Late start date

The latest date an activity can begin without delaying the project finish date.

Required Rate of Return

The minimum acceptable rate of return on an investment.

Effort

The number of workdays or work hours required to complete a task.

Baseline dates

The planned schedule dates for activities

Defect repairs

The process of bringing defective deliverables into conformance with requirements.

Monitoring and Controlling

The process of measuring progress toward project objectives, monitoring deviation from the current plan, and taking corrective action to match progress with the current plan.

Project Scope Management

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

Project Cost Management

The processes required to ensure that a project team completes s project within an approved budget.

Project Schedule Management

The processes required to manage the timely completion of the project.

Project Management Process Groups

The progression of project activities from initiation to planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing.

What are two outputs of the process to develop a project charter?

The project charter and an assumption log.

Which of the following is not a typical reason that project teams would use a predictive approach versus an agile approach to managing a project?

The project has unclear up-front requirements.

Profit Margin

The ratio of profits to revenues.

Return on Investment (ROI)

The result of subtracting the project costs from the benefits and then dividing by the costs. (Always a percentage)

Cost of Capital

The return available by investing the capital elsewhere.

Iterative Life Cycle

The scope is determined early, but time and cost estimates are modified as the understanding of the product measures.

Predictive Life Cycle

The scope, schedule, and cost are determined early, and changes to scope are carefully managed. Includes Waterfall cycle, spiral model, prototyping model, and the Rapid Application Development (RAD) model.

Critical Path

The series of activities that determine the earliest time by which the project can be completed.

Node

The starting and ending point of an activity.

Scope Creep

The tendency for project scope to keep getting bigger.

PERT weighted average

The total project duration estimate takes into account the risk or uncertainty in the individual activity estimates.

The ultimate goal of developing a realistic project schedule is to provide a basis for monitoring project progress for the _________ dimension of the project.

Time

Feeding buffers

Time added before tasks on the critical chain if they are preceded by other tasks that are not on the critical path

Project Buffer

Time added before the project's due date instead of buffers from individual tasks

Drawbacks of CCB

Time needed to make decisions on proposed changes.

What is the triple constraint of project management?

Time, Cost, Scope

What is the goal of schedule control?

To know the status of the schedule, influence the factors that cause schedule changes, determine that the schedule has changed, and manage changes when they occur.

Purpose of RTM

To maintain linkage from the source of each requirement through its decomposition to implementation and validation.

What type of diagram shows planned and actual project schedule information?

Tracking Gantt chart

A summary of the planned approach for managing the project should describe stakeholder needs and expectations, important assumptions, and constraints. (t/f)

True

Identifying the project sponsor is a pre-initiation task. (t/f)

True

Initiating processes take place during each phase of a project. (t/f)

True

It is important for the activity list and activity attributes to be in agreement with the work breakdown structure. (t/f)

True

Lower costs is an advantage of using formal project management. (T/F)

True

The critical path on a project can change as the project progresses. (t/f)

True

The executing process group generally requires the most resources. (t/f)

True

Problems

Undesirable situations that prevent an organization from achieving its goals.

Prototyping Life Cycle Model

Used for developing software prototypes to clarify user requirements for operational software.

budgetary estimate

Used to allocate money into an organization's budget.

Pacesetting Leadership Style

Used to set high standards for performance. The leader wants work to be done better and faster and expects everyone to put forth their best effort.

RAD Life Cycle Model

Uses an approach in which developers work with an evolving prototype.

Analogy Approach

Using a similar project's WBS as a starting point

Joint 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

Scope ________ is often achieved by a customer inspection and then sign-off on key deliverables.

Validation

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

WBS

Project management software helps you develop a _______, which serves as a basis for creating Gantt charts, assigning resources, and allocating costs.

WBS

What tool provides a basis for creating the project schedule and performing earned value management for measuring and forecasting project performance?

WBS

Waterfall Life Cycle Model

Well-defined, linear stages of systems analysis, design, construction, testing, and support.

Cost

What should it cost to complete the project?

Payback

When net cumulative benefits equal the net cumulative costs.

Project Portfolio Management/Portfolio Management

When organizations group and manage projects as a portfolio of investments that contribute to the entire enterprise's success

Learning Curve Theory

When products are produced repetitively, unit cost decreases.

What symbol on a Gantt chart represents a slipped milestone?

White diamond

Operations

Work done in organizations to sustain the business, focusing on ongoing production of goods and services.

Transformational Leadership Style

Works with others to identify needed changes, and empowers/guides changes through inspiration.

Theory of constraints

a management philosophy developed by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and introduced in his book "The Goal and Critical Chain", attempts to minimize multitasking - when a resource works on more than one task at a time

Three Spheres of Systems Management

business, organization, technology

Forward Pass

determines the early start and early finish dates for each activity

Mandatory Dependency

inherent in the nature of the work being performed on a project, sometimes referred to as hard logic

External Dependency

involve relationships between project and non-project activities.

Fast tracking

involves doing activities in parallel that you would normally do in sequence

Activity Attributes

provide schedule-related information about each activity, such as predecessors, successors, logical relationships, leads and lags, resource requirements, constraints, imposed dates, and assumptions related to the activity

SMART criteria

specific, measurable, agreed upon, realistic, time frame

In a __________________ relationship, the "from" activity must start before the "to" activity can be finished.

start-to-finish

A drawback of using ___________ or sample files is that managers and their teams might rely heavily on them and ignore unique concerns for their particular projects.

templates

Total slack/float

the amount of time an activity can be delayed from its early start without delaying the planned project finish date

Dependency/Relationship

the sequencing of project activities or tasks.

Multitasking

when a resource works on more than one task at a time

Bursts

when two or more activities follow a single node.

Merge

when two or more nodes precede a single node on a network diagram

Project Management Knowledge Areas

• Project Scope Management • Project Schedule Management • Project Cost Management • Project Quality Management • Project Human Resource Management • Project Communications Management • Project Risk Management • Project Procurement Management • Project Stakeholder Management • Project Management Integration