IST 302 Ch 5 Quiz

Requirements and scope are both important and related. Describe the relationship between them.

- Requirements are a collection of items, or capabilities that the customer needs in the final deliverables. - Project Scope defines the boundaries of the project. It describes the activities and tasks that need to be done in order to fulfill the requirements and outlines in detail what is and is not included in the project.

Why is scope so important that it's one of the three items in the triple constraint?

A critically important and difficult aspect of project management is defining the scope of a project. It ensures that the project team and stakeholders have the same understanding of what products the project will produce and what processes the project team will use to produce them.

Why are so many companies spending a lot of time/money on improving requirements gathering and documentation?

Part of the difficulty is that people often do not have a good process for collecting and documenting project requirements. Interviewing stakeholders one on one is often very effective, although it can be expensive and time consuming.

What are way companies wouldn't have to pay as much for improving requirements gathering and documentation?

Questionnaires and surveys can be efficient ways to collect requirements as long as key stakeholders provide honest and thorough information. Observation can also be a good technique for collecting requirements, especially for projects that involve improving work processes and procedures. For software development projects, prototyping and document analysis are common techniques for collecting requirements,

mind mapping

Some project managers like to use mind mapping to help develop WBSs. is a technique that uses branches radiating from a core idea to structure thoughts and ideas. allows people to write and even draw pictures of ideas in a nonlinear format. This more visual, less structured approach to defining and then grouping tasks can unlock creativity among individuals and increase participation and morale among teams.

How do WBS relate to a project schedule

The building blocks of a schedule start with a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). The WBS is a hierarchical reflection of all the work in the project in terms of deliverables. In order to produce these deliverables, work must be performed

What can you do at the beginning of a project to help ensure that you manage scope well from the start?

The first step in project scope management is planning how the scope will be managed throughout the life of the project.

Is a WBS the same as a project schedule? Explain why or why not.

The main difference between the two is the scope as a WBS covers the project in its entirety while a project plan focuses on a smaller part of a project. So a project can have a WBS that compartmentalizes it into several parts. Each of these parts would then have a project plan.

how does a work package relate to a WBS.

are the smallest unit of work that a project can be broken down to when creating your Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) A work package also represents the level of work that the project manager monitors and controls. You can think of work packages in terms of accountability and reporting. If a project has a relatively short time frame and requires weekly progress reports, a work package might represent work completed in one week or less. If a project has a very long time frame and requires quarterly progress reports, a work package might represent work completed in one month or more.

Requirements

as "a condition or capability that is necessary to be present in a product, service, or result to satisfy a business need." It further explains that requirements "include the quantified and documented needs and expectations of the sponsor, customer, and other stakeholders.

Deliverables

can be product related, such as a piece of hardware or software, or process related, such as a planning document or meeting minutes.

Scope will change on a project. How can you control the changes and make sure they don't ruin your project?

collecting requirements, defining scope, and validating scope You also need to develop a process for soliciting and monitoring changes to project scope. Stakeholders should be encouraged to suggest changes that will benefit the overall project and discouraged from suggesting unnecessary changes. The project management plan, project documents, work performance data, and organizational process assets are the main inputs to scope control.

What's the main project management tool for documenting project scope throughout the project?

deliverable

WBs

foundation document in project management because it provides the basis for planning and managing project schedules, costs, resources, and changes.

Briefly describe what scope validation means

involves formal acceptance of the completed project deliverables. This acceptance is often achieved by a customer inspection and then sign-off on key deliverables.

A work breakdown structure (WBS) is like the skeleton of a project - lots of other project activities depend on good information. Be able to describe a WBS in your own words.

is a deliverable-oriented grouping of the work involved in a project that defines its total scope. Because most projects involve many people and many different deliverables, it is important to organize and divide the work into logical parts based on how the work will be performed.

What would a WBS dictionary include that a standard WBS would not?

is a document that provides detailed information about each WBS item. WBS dictionary is a definition of the work involved in the task—a clarification that makes the summary description in the WBS easier to understand in terms of the approach taken to complete the work.

Describe a work package

is a task at the lowest level of the WBS. It is a group of related tasks within a project. Because they look like projects themselves, they are often thought of as sub-projects within a larger project.

why is scope validation important.

project team must develop a process for scope validation that meets unique project needs. Careful procedures must be developed to ensure that customers are getting what they want and that the project team has enough time and money to produce the desired products and services.

Define "project scope" in your own words.

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

What are some of the main activities involved with scope management?

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

top-down approach

start with the largest items of the project and break them into subordinate items. This process involves refining the work into greater and greater levels of detail. After finishing the process, all resources should be assigned at the work package level. The top-down approach is best suited to project managers who have vast technical insight and a big-picture perspective.

bottom-up approach

team members first identify as many specific tasks related to the project as possible. They then aggregate the specific tasks and organize them into summary activities, or higher levels in the WBS.

Analogy approach

you use a similar project's WBS as a starting point. Kim Nguyen from the opening case might learn that one of her organization's suppliers did a similar IT upgrade project last year. She could ask them to share their WBS for that project to provide a starting point for her own project.

The book describes five different approaches to developing a WBS — be prepared to briefly describe each one and why you would use it.

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