PMP Exam Chapter 3 Basics of Project Management

What is a Project Life Cycle?

The series of phases that a project passes through from its start to its completion.

What are responsibilities of the Development Team?

The small group of people who actually do the work to deliver the product, service, or result of the project

What is a Project Life Cycle?

These are a series of phases that a project passes through from its initiation to its closure. They provide the basic framework for managing the project.

What are Predictive Projects?

These are also known as fully plan driven. They are ones where the scope, time and cost are determined as early as possible. They arise in the Waterfall method of management.

What are Project Phases?

These are logically related project activities that culminate in the completion of one or more of the deliverables.

What are Iterative and Incremental Projects?

These are project phases that intentionally repeat one or more project activities as the team's understanding increases.

What is Work Performance Data?

These are the raw observations and measurements that are identified during the activities performed in the project work: % of work that has been physically completed, start and finish dates & technical measures.

What is the Prioritization in the Project Vision?

This area is all about determining how the project fits into the landscape of all the other projects going on within the organization

What if Work Performance Information?

This is the performance data that has been collected from the controlling processes. It includes the status of deliverables, status of change requests, etc.

What is Stakeholder Management

a firm's strategy for recognizing and responding to the interests of all its salient stakeholders - Stakeholder management is the process by which a project manager deals with stakeholders. As you will see later in this course, stakeholder management is only formally called out once in the processes of project management. However, it is something you must constantly do.

What does Generally Recognized mean?

There is consensus by the majority of those executing projects around the knowledge and practices being successfully applied to most projects most of the time.

What does a Good Practice mean?

whatever the knowledge, skill, tool, or technique in question is found to enhance the chances of creating the expected business value

What are Work Performance Reports?

Work performance information organized into reports that are distributed to stakeholders

A Linear Methodology has what characteristics?

-Well Known risks -Sequential -Limited Scope Change

What are the characteristics of a Incremental life cycle?

-the product, service, or result of the project is produced using a series of chunks. -The big difference between this model and an iterative cycle is that those using an incremental life cycle will work to maintain the original road map, and few opportunities exist for feedback from the customer until the final product, service or result is released

What are Project Management Processes?

A systematic series of activities directed toward causing an end result where one or more inputs will be acted upon to create one or more outputs.

How do Projects address Monitoring?

Project managers monitor and control the work of producing the products, the services or the results that the project was undertaken to produce.

How do Projects address Scope?

Projects have defined objectives. Scope is progressively elaborated on throughout the project's life cycle.

What is the Ranked Product Backlog?

- A product backlog is a listing of the user stories, features or requirements. These items are often referred to as product backlog items or PBIs. - Ranking the backlog allows the prioritization of items in the backlog from most important to the least important. - Sometimes the backlog is further defined into groups of user stories that belong together. - The development team uses the backlog to define which features to deliver when. - Each of the items on the backlog items are relatively independent of each other. - The backlog may be reprioritized at any time

What are User Stories?

- A story is a self-contained unit of work agreed upon by the developers and the stakeholders. - Stories are the heart of Scrum, and the building blocks of the sprint. - Each user story must be producible in a single sprint. Often, this requires the development team to break stories down until they fit into a single sprint. Additionally, each story must provide functionality that has real value to the business.

What is Adaptive Life Cycle development commonly known as?

- Agile development - It is typically both iterative and incremental in nature.

What are the MBO's 3 basic steps?

- Establish unambiguous and realistic objectives. - Regularly evaluate if the objectives are being met. - Implement corrective action when necessary.

What are the Outputs of the Closing Group step?

-Produces the final product, service, or result -Project records which then become assets to the organization because they allow it to engage in continuous process improvement.

What 3 roles does the (PMO) Project Management Office take on

PMOs provide project management for the various projects within the organization and are responsible for the results of those projects. PMOs provide tools, techniques, policies, methodologies, and templates for the organization to manage various projects. PMOs provide guidance and support to the organization on how to manage projects. This includes providing training for the project managers on the processes and tools of project management.

What is the PMO and what does it do?

(PMO) Project Management Office A PMO is a department within the organization that centralizes the management of projects.

What is the difference between a Product Owner and Product Sponsor

- A Sponsor is the all powerful authority they give the project manager the authority to execute. the Owner is responsible for certain areas - When the development team needs more information about a user story, they rely on the product owner to either know that information or ensure that the correct people are in the room to provide that information.

What are the characteristics of a Iterative life cycle?

-uses a series of steps where each step learns from the previous ones to produce the overall product -embraces the fact that many projects struggle with knowing at the beginning what the final product should look like and responds by building in as many learning opportunities as possible

A High Formality Methodology has what characteristics?

-Well Documented -Rigid Process -Significant Number of Steps

What is Spiral Methodology?

uses prototyping to prove capabilities or investigate requirements and functionality. This methodology is often referred to as "chunking" because it makes use of discrete phases to produce parts of the overall product, service, or result of the project.

What are the Success Criteria in the Project Vision?

- It is where the business defines the attributes that are critical to satisfying their needs, and the overall success of the product. - The measures must be quantifiable and objective to prevent different people from interpreting the project's results differently

What are responsibilities of the scrum master?

- Scrum process, teaching scrum to everyone, implementing scrum so it fits with culture, and ensuring that everyone follows scrum's rules and practices - Development team members report to each other and not the scrum master so the scrum master has no formal authority to make anyone do anything

What is the management style of the Development Team?

- Self-managing, self-organizing, and cross functional. The team does not have a project manager or functional leader who directs the team's efforts. - the team is 100% dedicated to one and only one project

What is the Project Justification in the Project Vision?

- The Project must be significant enough that it warrants spending time and money to - Projects exist in a competitive landscape. The business must be able to explain why doing this project is the best expenditure of the available resources.

What is the purpose of the Project Vision?

- The vision sets the direction of the project and guides the scrum team. Very similar to a project charter. - The vision describes why the project is being undertaken and what the desired end state is

What is the Business need in the Project Vision?

- What is the problem the business needs solved? - Who is going to buy the product or who is the target customer? -What pain point of pain for the business is being addressed. - How does the product of the project compare to existing products, both from competitors and our organization, or what are the product's unique selling features must be answered by the business.

How is a PMO different from a Project Manager?

- have the power to terminate projects. - have the power to provide resources to projects. - manage the interdependencies between projects. - monitor an individual projects' compliance with organizational policies. - gather lessons learned and share the information throughout the organization. - provide centralized communication about projects. - more heavily involved early in the project.

What are the 2 key goals of the Initiating Process Group step?

-Develop a project charter -Identify stakeholders

What are the characteristics of a Hybrid life cycle?

-Is a combination of the adaptive and predictive life cycles. -Predictive model for those requirements that are either well known or fixed and uses an adaptive model for requirements that are unknown, incomplete, or evolving -Team follows a process defined by the larger organization to ensure consistency of process

A Low Formality Methodology has what characteristics?

-Limited Documentation -Limited Processes

What are the characteristics of a Adaptive life cycle?

-May be iterative, incremental, or agile. -Project scope is defined at the beginning of each iteration and only generally at the beginning -These life cycles are also called agile or change-driven

A Iterative Methodology has what characteristics?

-Potential for unknown risks -Significant scope change and feedback

What are Waterfall Advantages?

1) A waterfall model offers the easiest departmentalization and managerial control. 2) A waterfall model forces the team to completely define all requirements before proceeding to the next phase. This is also its biggest disadvantage. 3) The waterfall model has strong emphasis on documentation and the development of source code. 4) The waterfall model provides a very structured and disciplined approach to development. This high degree of structure may also be seen as a disadvantage by many.

What are the 5 steps of the Waterfall model

1) Analysis — The business need is defined and the top level scope is defined for the product or service that will best meet the need. 2) Design — The specific requirements that are necessary to complete the product or service are defined. 3) Development — The product or service is built in accordance with the previously defined requirements. 4) Testing — The product is tested to ensure that all the features and functionality are working in accordance with the requirement. In addition, integration testing is completed to ensure the product or service will function correctly within the global environment. 5) Deployment — The product or service is completed and moves into the operations phase.

What are the 5 areas covered by the Project Vision

1) Business Need 2) Project Justification 3) Success Criteria 4) Prioritization 5) Constraints and Assumptions

In an Iterative Life Cycle, in each chunk the project goes through four stages:

1) Determine objectives, alternatives and constraints. 2) Evaluate alternatives, identify and resolve risks (prototype). 3) Develop and verify the next level of the product. 4) Plan the next phase of the project.

What are 5 common characteristics held by projects?

1) Have unique charter and goals 2) Might have unique organization found in Projectized organizations 3) Develops a unique product or service 4) Defined start and end dates 5) Mostly heterogeneous teams (Projects require teams with varying and often dissimilar skills)

How are Incremental life cycles different from iterative development?

1) It does not focus on a single release of the product, service or result and it typically makes use a complete team instead of one broken by functional areas. 2) Its focus of having a complete process in each cycle. This means that each project chunk goes through a similar evolution of requirements, design, testing, release to production and operation with the entire team participating in each part

What are the 3 roles in Scrum?

1) Product owner 2) Development team 3) Scrum master

What are the 4 documents required to implement a Scrum

1) Project Vision 2) Ranked Product Backlog 3) Team or scrum board 4) Burndown Chart

What are Waterfall Disadvantages?

1) Real world projects rarely follow a purely sequential process 2) Requires the project team to know and define all the requirements at the beginning of the project 3) Waterfall models often cause a large time gap between requirements definition and when stakeholders actually see the product or service of the project

What are responsibilities of the Product Owner?

1) Responsible for representing the interests of all stakeholders 2) Obtaining funding 3) Defining the initial requirements 4) Defining the return on investment or ROI 5) Defining Project Objectives 6) Primary owner of the product backload

PMI® perspective on project management contends that it really comes down to carefully managing six key drivers:

1) Scope — The project's scope is it's defined objectives. The key for the project manager is to avoid scope creep. 2) Quality — Quality is the degree to which the product, service or result meets the stated requirements. 3) Schedule — The project schedule is the committed delivery date for the project. 4) Budget — The budget is the forecasted expenditure for the project. 5) Resources — The resources are the people and/or materials needed to complete the desired product, service, or result. 6) Risk — Unknown events happen on every project. Being able to manage the unknowns is perhaps the most important skill of a true professional project manager.

Scrum is based on what 2 aspects of industrial process theory?

1) Self-organization is the idea that the development team will decide what work needs to be accomplished and who will do the work to deliver the desired business results. 2)Emergence is the idea that information, requirements and facts will emerge as the project progresses. The key is that the team uses processes, tools, and techniques capable of harnessing this new information for the betterment of the organization

When is the Waterfall methodology warranted?

1) The project has requirements that are extremely well known and unlikely to change. 2) The project involves a high volume, transactional system where errors or incomplete requirements could damage existing capabilities. 3) The project team is made up of new and inexperienced resources or resources that have never worked together before. 4) The project would benefit the organization if it was not allowed to alter it's requirements.

What are Spiral Methodology Challenges?

1) The project teams must have strong risk assessment expertise. The primary advantage of the spiral methodology is that it provides for better risk management. If the project team lacks skills in this area the advantage doesn't exist. 2) The model has a greater potential to overrun costs and schedules because a spiral methodology uses looping iterations. Even though the project manager is supposed to define the number of these loops, often additional loops are added to allow for new requirements or new information. This can cause the schedule and/or costs to slip.

What 3 issues that must be carefully managed with your stakeholders when prototyping:

1) The prototype should never be deployed as a product. This often happens and causes significant frustration as the prototype is rarely designed to handle the load of real world use. 2) Creation of the prototype will cost additional money without providing an immediate product. However, it is expected that this will save money in the long run. 3) The use of prototypes can dramatically increase the likelihood of a problem called architectural compression.

What are Spiral Methodology Advantages?

1) The spiral model is evolutionary in nature allowing the features and functions to evolve over time thereby creating a better final product. 2) The spiral model provides a strong focus on the project risks. The iterative process mitigates risk by using prototypes to ensure the team can actually deliver the desired results before too much time or money is invested. 3) Prototypes allow for rapid evaluation of the solution provided by the project team. It allows the team to make adjustments to the solution based on the changing business environment. 4) Other models can be incorporated into the spiral model to assist the developers or to address special needs of the project team. 5) The project team and sponsor can more quickly see the results of the project and alter requirements as needed.

What are 5 common characteristics held by Operations?

1) Usually has semi-permanent charter 2) Semi-permanent organization 3) Maintains an existing set of practices 4) Provides a standard product or service (e.g. an assembly line) 5) Are continuous

What are the 3 Primary Drivers of the Empirical Process?

1) Visibility - The team cannot successfully manage or optimize that which they cannot see. Therefore, the first key is to ensure the team can see all pertinent information. 2) Inspection - The various aspects of the process must be examined frequently enough that unacceptable variances in the process can be detected. It is not enough to say you can see what is going on in a process. The team must also regularly examine all aspects of that process so they can determine when variances are occurring that are beyond what the team has determined is allowable. 3) Adaptation - If one or more of the processes are determined out of control the processes change. Once you can see the drivers in a process and have taken the time to examine those variables to ensure you know which variables are in control and which ones are not, the only thing left is to fix those processes that are not performing as expected.

What are some disadvantages to Iterative development?

1) the team may experience significant struggles with the overall system architecture because no time is ever spent building an overall architecture 2) It requires a seasoned and skilled project manager to lead the effort because there is often less formalization of the process and documentation

When is incremental life cycle is especially advantageous?

1) when working with new or unfamiliar technology and has the advantage of producing production ready product, service, or result early in the project timeline 2) It also has the advantage of experiencing lower costs to change requirements as compared to other models.

How many people in a Development Team

6 plus or minus 3

What is a Project Phase?

A collection of logically related project activities that culminates in the completion of one or more deliverables.

What is the Product Backload?

A document where the user stories, features or requirements of the project are listed in rank order from most important to least important from the perspective of the business

What are Project Management Process Groups?

A logical grouping of project management inputs, tools and techniques, and outputs. The Project Management Process Groups include: -Initiating -Planning -Executing -Monitoring and Controlling -Closing Project Management Process Groups are NOT project phases.

What is a Portfolio?

A portfolio is a grouping of related and unrelated projects and programs that are grouped forvisibility and control purposes. Often, portfolios are created based upon budgetary authority, but they can be formed for many reasons.

What is a Program?

A program is a group of related projects managed in a coordinated way. The projects involved in the program are connected in some way that justifies adding the management expense and effort required to coordinate them.

What is a Phase Gate Review?

A review at the end of a phase in which a decision is made to continue to the next phase, to continue with modification, or to end a program or project.

PMI® describes life cycles as generally either being?

Adaptive or predictive

What is a Project Management Knowledge Area?

An identified area of project management defined by its knowledge requirements and described in terms of its -Component processes -Practices -Inputs -Outputs -Tools -Techniques

What are Adaptive Projects?

Change driven, adaptive, or Agile methods of management are intended to respond to high levels of change and stakeholder involvement with fixed time and fixed cost.

What are Project Constraints?

Constraints are factors that limit the options of the project manager and the project team. Common constraints — such as time, budget, requirements, resources or risks — can dramatically impact the results, like the customer satisfaction. It's the management's responsibility to set the priority of each constraint within a project. It is the project manager's and project team's responsibility to analyze the impacts that any changes will have according to the project constraints.

How do Programs address Change?

The program manager must expect change from both inside and outside the program and must be prepared to manage it.

When are Empirical processes used?

Empirical processes are used in situations where it is difficult to have consistent likelihood of successful processes. Therefore, empirical processes focus on creating a situation with the highest success using three primary drivers

A methodology that only cycles once through its steps is said to be?

Highly linear or sequential

What are Constraints and Assumptions in Project Vision?

It allow the business to define limitation with which the team must live. This includes issues like budget limitations, time constraints, technology or resource limitations

What is Management By Objectives?

MBO is a management technique that requires all processes, initiatives and operations to be tracked against specific, defined objectives. If the project does not support or follow a defined objective it is likely to lose it's resources and sponsor support and will therefore fail. MBO only works if management strongly supports it.

What is OPM3

OPM3™ stands for Organizational Project Management Maturity Model. It is PMI's model to help organizations determine their level of project management maturity. PMI® publishes a separate standard for OPM3™.

Projects vs. Operations

Operations manage the existing processes, products, services, Projects focus on the new things being created. Operations focus on removing the waves from processes. Projects, on the other hand, create the next product, service or result — and these naturally create waves

How do Portfolios address Change

Portfolio managers continually monitor changes in the broad environment.

How do Portfolios address Planning?

Portfolio managers create and maintain the necessary processes and communication protocols necessary for the aggregate portfolio.

How do Portfolios address Management?

Portfolio managers may manage or coordinate portfolio management staff.

How are Portfolios Monitored?

Portfolio managers monitor the aggregate performance and value indicators.

How do Portfolios address Scope?

Portfolios have a business scope that changes with the strategic goals of the organization.

How do Programs address Planning?

Program managers develop the overall program plan and create other high-level plans to guide detailed planning at the component level.

How do Programs address Management?

Program managers manage the program staff and the project managers. They provide vision and overall leadership.

How are Programs Monitored?

Program managers monitor the progress of program components to ensure the overall goals, schedules, budget, and benefits of the program are met.

How do Programs address Scope?

Programs have a larger scope and provide more significant benefits.

What is Project Management?

Project Management is the management of a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.

How do Projects address Planning

Project managers elaborate on high-level information, turning it into detailed plans throughout the project cycle.

How do Projects address Change?

Project managers expect change and therefore implement processes to keep change managed and controlled.

How do Projects address Management

Project managers manage the project team in order to meet the project's objectives.

What is the most common form of an iterative life cycle?

Spiral methodology

Who are stakeholders?

Stakeholders are persons or organizations whose interests may be positively or negatively affected by the performance or completion of the project. Stakeholders include project team as well.

How do Programs measure Success?

Success is measured by the degree to which the program satisfies the needs and benefits for which it was undertaken.

How do Projects measure Success?

Success is measured by the product and project quality, timeliness, budget compliance, and degree of customer satisfaction.

How do Portfolios measure Success?

Success is measured in terms of the aggregate performance and value indicators.

What are the 3 types of PMO's

Supportive — These PMOs act as a consultative role. Their primary function is to provide things like templates, best practices, training, access to pertinent information, and most importantly lessons learned from previous projects. You should think of this type of PMO as a repository. This type PMO has very little power or control over the projects in the organization. Controlling — Controlling PMOs do NOT directly manage projects. However, this type of PMO mandates compliance to varying degrees. The PMO maintains this control by establishing project management frameworks and methodologies that must be adopted. It also requires the use of specific templates, forms, and tools. Directive — Directive PMOs take the most direct and overt control of projects. Directive PMOs include the organization's project managers who are assigned by and report to the PMO. In this form of a PMO a high degree of control is maintained.

Key to differentiating projects and operations is to focus on the constraining factors found in projects that are not found in operations

defined scope, schedule and costs

What are the characteristics of a Predictive life cycle?

significant time in the early phases of the project determining project schedule, scope, and cost estimates, often referred to as the project's triple constraints. Throughout the rest of the project, the team then works to tightly manage any scope changes. -works well when the requirements are known and its is critical to maintain stable scope, schedule and cost targets -does not work well to missed or changing requirements