5- 8 Project Scope Management Combo Set 1

Project Schedule Network Diagram

(Output/Input) Any schematic display of the logical relationships among or sequencing of project activities. Always drawn from left to right to reflect project work chronology.

Activity Attributes

(Output/Input) Information that provides 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.

Crashing

(Technique) A project schedule compression technique used to decrease the project duration with minimum additional cost. A number of alternatives are analyzed, including the assignment of additional resources.

Lag

(Technique) The amount of time a successor's start or finish is delayed from the prececessor's start or finish. In a finish-to-start example, activity A (the predecessor) must finish before activity B (the successor) can start. *Making sure that one task waits awhile before it gets started. Ex. When the bride and father dance, everybody wates a while before they join them.

Gantt Chart

(Tool) A bar chart that shows activities against time; although the traditional early charts did not show task dependencies and relationships, modern charts often show dependencies and precendence relationships; these popular charts are useful for understanding proejct schedules and for determining the critical path, time requirements, resource assessments and projected completion dates.

Milestone Chart or Milestone Schedule

(Tool) A bar chart used to identify major milestones in project and the start and finish. Usually set out in the form of a chart. Identifies major sections of a project. Similar to Gantt chart. It consumes NO resources and has NO duration.

which tool or technique for collecting requirements is often the most expensive and time-consuming

INTERVIEWS -- focus groups -- surveys -- observation

Which of the following is a basic principle that applies to creating any good WBS and its WBS dictionary? a. A unit of work should appear at several places in the WBS. b. A WBS items is the responsibility of only one individual, even though many people may be working on it. c. Project team members should rarely be involved in developing the WBS. d. The work content of a WBS item is the sum of the WBS items above it

A WBS items is the responsibility of only one

Finish-to-Finish Relationship (FF)

A logical relationship in which the predecessor must finish before the successor can finish. *When you need to coordinate activities so they finish at the same time.

Finish-to-Start Relationship (FS)

A logical relationship in which the predecessor must finish before the successor can start. This is the most common relationship and the default for most software packages. *One task must be completed before the other can start. The first activity's finish leads into the second activity's start.

Start-to-Finish Relationship (SF)

A logical relationship in which the predecessor must start before the successor can finish. (This is the least used and some software packages do not even allow it.)

Start-to-Start Relationship (SS)

A logical relationship in which the successor can start as soon as the predecessor starts. *When you need to coordinate activities so they begin at the same time.

Beta/PERT (Weighted Three-Point Estimate)

A program evaluation and review technique (PERT) used the three estimated durations of three-point estimating but weight the most likely estimate by a factor of four. This weight average places more emphasis on the most likely outcome in calculating the duration of an activity. Therefor, it produces a curve that is skewed to one side when possible durations are plotted against their probability of occurrence.

Triangular Distribution (Three-Point Estimating)

A technique to reflect risk in the estimates that are provided for both time and cost. Takes the average of three estimated durations - the optimistic value, the most likely value and the pessimistic value. By using the average of three values rather than a single estimate, a more accurate duration estimate for the activity is obtained.

Earned Value (EV) or Budgeted Cost of Work Performed (BCWP)

A technique where you figure out how much of your project's value has been delivered to the customer so far. You can do this by comparing the value of what your schedule says you should have delivered against the value of what you actually delivered. It's about how much work you have been able to accomplish with the money you have been given.

________ uses 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.

JAD

Instead of writing tasks down in a list or immediately trying to create a structure for tasks, the ________ allows people to write and even draw pictures of ideas in a nonlinear format. a. Analogy approach b. Bottom-up approach c. Mind-mapping approach d. Top-down approach

MIND MAPPING Approach

which of the following is not a suggestion for improving user input

ONLY HAVE MEETINGS AS NEEDED, NOT ON A REGULAR BASIS

The approved project scope statement and its associated WBS and WBS dictionary form the ________ . a. Scope verification b. Scope baseline c. Project management plan d. Work package

SCOPE BASELINE

Even when the project scope is fairly well defined, many information technology projects suffer from ________, which is the tendency for project scope to keep getting bigger and bigger.

SCOPE CREEP

Which of the following processes of project scope management involves reviewing the project charter and preliminary scope statement created during the initiation process and adding more information during the planning process as requirements are developed and change requests are approved?See page 179

SCOPE DEFINITION

Key project stakeholders, such as the customer and sponsor for the project, inspect and then formally accept the deliverables of the project during the ________ process of project scope management.

SCOPE VERIFICATION

The project management plan, requirements documentation, the requirements traceability matrix, and validated deliverables are the main inputs for ________.

SCOPE VERIFICATION

Hammock

Summary activities used in a high-level project network diagram.

Most project managers consider the ________ of WBS construction to be conventional; you start with the largest items of the project and break them into their subordinate items. a. Analogy approach b. Bottom-up approach c. Mind-mapping approach d. Top-down approach

TOP-DOWN APPROACH

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

TWO

Float

The amount of time that a schedule activity can be delayed without delaying the end of the project and can be calculated using a Forward Pass (to determine early start and early finish dates of activities. It is calculated as the difference bewteen late finish date and early finish date. Also referred to as slack.

Schedule Variance (SV)

The difference bewtween what was accomplished and what was scheduled. A negative number means the project is behind schedule. A positive number means the project is ahead of schedule.

Standard Deviation (Statistical Term)

The measurement of the variability of the quantity measured, such as time or costs, from the average.

Critical Path

The path with the longest duration within the project. It is sometimes defined as the path with the least float (usually zero float). The delay of a tast on the critical path will delay the completion of the project.

Schedule Performance Index (SPI)

The ratio of what was actually completed to what was scheduled to be completed in a given period. Values less than 1.0 mean the project is receiving less than a dolar's worth of work for each dollar we were scheduled to spend. Measures schedule efficiency.

Successor

The schedule activity that happens second or subsequently to a previous activity when defining dependencies between activites in a network.

Predecessor

The schedule activity that must happen first when defining dependencies between activites in a network.

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

USE CASE MODELING

________ is the difference between planned and actual performance.

VARIANCE

scope_________ is often achieved by a customer inspection and then sign off on key deliverables

VERIFICATION

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

WBS

A ________ represents the lowest level of work that the project manager is using to monitor and control the project.

WORK PACKAGE

A(n) ________ represents the lowest level of work that the project manager is using to monitor and control the project. a. Scope baseline b. Work breakdown structure c. Milestone d. Activity list

Work breakdown structure

requirement

a condition or capability that must be met or possessed by a system, product, service, result, or component to satisfy a contract, standard, specification, or other formal document

requirement

a condition or capability that must be met or possessed by a system, product, service,result, or component to satisfy a contract, standard, specification, or other formal document

work breadown structure (WBS)

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

work breakdown structure (WBS)

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

WBS dictionary

a document that describes detailed information about each WBS item

project scope statement

a document that includes, at a minimum, a description of the project, including its overall objectives and justification, detailed descriptions of all project deliverables, and the characteristic s and requirements of products and services produced as park of the project

requirements management plan

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

requirements management plan

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

use case modeling

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

use case modeling

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

deliverable

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

requirements traceability matrix (RTM)

a table that lists requirements, various attributes of each requirement and the status of the requirement to ensure that all requirements are a rest

requirements traceability matrix (RTM)

a table that lists requirements, various attributes of each requirement, and the status of the requirements to ensure that all requirements are addressed

scope

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

scope

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

bottom-up approach

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

bottom-up approach

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

top-down approach

creating a WBS by starting with the largest items of the project and breaking them down into their subordinate items

top-down approach

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

analogy approach

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

analogy approach

creating a WBS by using a similar projects WBS as a starting point

prototyping

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

project scope management

processes involved in defining and controlling what work is and is not included in the project

The project scope statement, stakeholder requirements documentation, and organizational process assets are the primary inputs for creating a ________.

scope baseline -- work package -- WBS -- prototype

a_______ is a deliverable oriented grouping of the work involved in a project that defines the total scope of the project

scope statement -- WBS -- WBS dictionary -- work package

decomposition

subdividing project deliverables into smaller pieces

scope baseline

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

scope baseline

the approved projects scpoestatement and its associated WBS and WBS dictionary

project scope management

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

scope creep

the tendency for project scope to keep getting bigger

scope creep

the tendency for projects scope to keep getting bigger

what approach in developing a WBS involves writing down or crawling ideas in a nonlinear format

top-down -- bottom-up-- analogy -- MIND MAPPING

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

joint application design (JAD)

using highly organized and intensive workshops to bring together project stakeholders e.g. sponsors, users, business analysts, programmers and so, to jointly define and design information systems

One of the most important and most difficult aspects of project management is defining the ________ of the project.

SCOPE

Project Mean (Statistical Term)

Sum of the means of the individual tasks.

Project Variance (Statistical Term)

Sum of the variances of the individual tasks.

what major restaurant chain terminated a large project after spending $170 million on it, primarily because they read it realize that the project scope was too much to handle

mikeyD

variance

the difference between planned and actual performance

Fast Tracking

(Technique) A scheduling compression technique where you do activities in parallel that you would normally do in sequence. May increase rework and project risk.

Lead

(Technique) The amount of time a successor's start or finish can occur before the prececessor's start or finish. In a finish-to-start example, activity A (the predecessor) must finish before activity B (the successor) can start. *When you let a task get started before it's predecessor is done. Ex. You might want th caterer preparing dessert an hour before everyone is eating dinn.er

Time-Scale Network Diagram

(Tool) Any project schedule network diagram drawn in such a way that the positioning and length of the schedule activity represents its duration. Essentially, it is a bar chart that includes schedule network logic.

Resource Leveling

(Tool/Technique) A schedule network analysis techique that is performed after the critical path has been determined to address specific delivery dates and take into account resource availability or to keep resource usage at a constant level during specified time periods of the project. The resulting schedule often has an altered critical path and could result in the project taking longer to complete.

Critical Chain Method

(Tool/Technique) A schedule network analysis technique that modifies the project schedule to account for limited resources. In this method, resource dependencies are used to determine the critical path. Then, buffers are added working backwards from delivery data into the schedule at strategic points, and the project is managed so that each milestone is hit on time.

What-If Scenario Analysis

(Tool/Technique) A technique used to assess the feasibility of the project schedule should unexpected events occur. This analysis is useful for preparing contingency and response plans to mitigate the impact of identified risk events and could involve simulations of varoius project durations using different sets of project assumptions. The most common simulation is the Monte Carlo Analysis technique.

work package

a task at the lowest level of the WBS

One approach for constructing a WBS is the ________ , in which you use a similar project's WBS as a starting point. a. Analogy approach b. Bottom-up approach c. Mind-mapping approach d. Top-down approach

ANALOGY APPROACH

Schedule Activity

An element of work performed during the course of a project. It is a smaller unit of work than a work package and the result of decomposition in the Define Activities process of project time management. Activities can be further subdivided into tasks.

In which approach to creating a WBS do team members first identify as many specific tasks related to the project as possible? a. Analogy approach b. Bottom-up approach c. Mind-mapping approach d. Top-down approach

BOTTOM-UP APPROACH

Which of the following processes of project scope management involves defining and documenting the features and functions of the products produced during the project as well as the processes used for creating them?See page 178

COLLECTING REQUIREMENTS

________ is the first step in project scope management and is often the most difficult.

COLLECTING REQUIREMENTS

Which of the following processes of project scope management involves subdividing the major project deliverables into smaller, more manageable components? a. Creating the WBS b. Scope control c. Scope verification d. Scope definition

CREATING the WBS

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

DELIVERABLES

which of the following is not a best practice that can help in avoiding scope problems on information technology projects

DON'T INVOLVE TOO MANY USERS IN SCOPE MANAGEMENT

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

Deliverables -- milestones -- SCOPE -- product development

Logical Relationships

Dependency between two project schedule activities or between project schedule activity and schedule milestone.