Project Management Midterm

Cost variance is:

The earned value minus the actual cost

The _____ approach for constructing a WBS involves refining the work into greater and greater levels of detail.

Top-down

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

Total slack

A cost management plan can include organizational procedures links, control thresholds, and process descriptions.

True

A sprint review is a meeting in which the team demonstrates to the product owner what it has completed during the sprint.

True

IT project managers must be able to present and discuss project information both in financial and technical terms.

True

Information systems can help an organization support a strategy of being a low-cost producer.

True

Project managers must conduct cash flow analysis to determine net present value.

True

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

True

The project schedule information section of the project management plan includes ____.

An elaborate timetable

_____ is a method for determining the estimated annual costs and benefits for a project.

Cash flow analysis

Administrative activities, such as archiving project files, closing out contracts, documenting lessons learned, and receiving formal acceptance of the delivered work as part of the phase or project, are often involved in _____ processes.

Closing

_____ involves defining and documenting the features and functions of the products produced during the project as well as the processes used for creating them.

Collecting requirements

Which of the following is a network diagramming technique used primarily to predict total project duration?

Critical path analysis

Which of the following processes in project time management involves identifying the specific tasks that the project team members and stakeholders must perform to produce the project deliverables?

Defining activities

Which of the following is a pre-initiation task?

Developing a business case for a project

Which of the following involves developing an approximation of the costs of resources needed to complete a project?

Estimating costs

Which of the following dependencies involve relationships between project and non-project activities?

External

The kick-off meeting is always held before the business case and project charter are completed.

False - A kick-off meeting is 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. The kick-off meeting is often held after the business case and project charter are completed, but it could be held sooner, as needed.

A project charter typically does not authorize the project manager to use organizational resources to complete the project.

False - A project charter is a document that formally recognizes the existence of a project and provides direction on the project's objectives and management. It authorizes the project manager to use organizational resources to complete the project.

The pre-initiation phase of a project using the Scrum method does not involve project charters, stakeholder management strategy, and kick-off meetings.

False - A project charter, stakeholder register, stakeholder management strategy, and kick-off meeting would be created as part of initiation in a project using the Scrum method.

The organization should complete low-priority projects before high-priority ones, if the low-priority ones take less time.

False - Organizations can also categorize IT projects as having high, medium, or low priority based on the current business environment. An organization should always complete high-priority projects first, even if a low- or medium-priority project could be finished in less time.

The number of interfaces in a single project is limited, and does not depend on the number of people involved in the project.

False - Project integration management includes interface management, which involves identifying and managing the points of interaction between various elements of a project. The number of interfaces can increase exponentially as the number of people involved in a project increases.

Project integration management must occur just within the context of a particular project.

False - Project integration management must occur within the context of the entire organization, not just within a particular project.The project manager must integrate the work of the project with the ongoing operations of the organization.

In a network diagram, it is mandatory for every item on the WBS to be shown instead of only those activities with dependencies.

False - The network diagram represents activities that must be done to complete the project. Not every item on the WBS needs to be shown on the network diagram; only activities with dependencies need to be shown.

Which of the following is true of a matrix organizational structure?

In a strong matrix organizational structure, the project manager controls the project budget and has moderate to high authority.

What is integrated change control? What are the main objectives of integrated change control?

Integrated change control is the identifying, evaluating, and managing of changes through a project's life cycle. It's 3 main objectives are influencing the factors that create change, determining that a change has actually occurred, and managing actual changes as they do occur.

Which of the following is true of the schedule performance index (SPI)?

It can be used to estimate the projected time to complete the project

Which of the following is true of a rough order of magnitude estimate?

It provides an estimate of what a project will cost.

_____ helps develop an accurate projection of a project's financial expenses and benefits.

Life cycle costing

Which of the following reserves allows for future situations that are unpredictable?

Management reserves

The process of controlling costs primarily involves:

Managing changes to the project budget

_____ refers to the degree to employees identify with the organization as a whole, rather than with their types of job or profession.

Member identity

_____ refers to a set of shared assumptions, values, and behaviors that characterize the functioning of an organization.

Organizational culture

Creating the WBS is a subprocess associated with the _____ process in project scope management.

Planning

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

Planning

Enterprise environmental factors are an output of the executing process of _____.

Project human resource management

In project time management, a(n) _____ is an output of controlling the schedule

Project management plan update

_____ refers to the process of developing a working replica of the system or some aspect of the system.

Prototyping

In project time management, which of the following processes primarily involve identifying and documenting the relationships between project activities?

Sequencing activities

Good Earth, a company manufacturing packaged food products, sets up its stores in Baltonia. However, a year later, the company closes the store down due to high operating costs. In such a scenario, the money spent in paying for the rent of the store in Baltonia would be an example of _____ costs.

Sunk

Parametric models are reliable when the models are flexible in terms of the project's size.

True - most reliable when historical info used to create the model is accurate, parameters are readily quantifiable, and model is flexible in terms of project's size

The technique of fast tracking can result in lengthening the project schedule.

True - starting some tasks too soon often increases project risks and results in rework.

_____refers to the degree to which departments within an organization are encouraged to coordinate with each other.

Unit integration

_____ involves formalizing acceptance of the project deliverables and during this phase the key project stakeholders, such as the customer and sponsor for the project, inspect and then formally accept the deliverables.

Validating scope

Project cost estimates are allocated to work items which are based on the activities in the ____ for the project.

WBS

A(n) _____ is a deliverable-oriented grouping of the work involved in a project that defines its total scope.

WBS (work breakdown structure)

The cost performance index (CPI):

can be used to estimate the projected cost of completing the project.

One of the main outputs of the _____ process is a cost baseline.

cost budgeting

The project management plan is the output of the planning process of project _____.

integration management

The _____ perspective of an organization focuses on different groups' roles and responsibilities in order to meet the goals and policies set by top management.

structural frame

Grey's Infotech sells customized hardware and software solutions for businesses. The salespeople for Grey's have a strict dress code when meeting clients. They are required to wear dark business suits, in order to convey the company's dedication to quality. The meaning conveyed to the clients' through the salespeople's clothing is part of the _____ frame of the organization.

symbolic

In organizational culture, people focus refers to _____.

the degree to which management 's decisions take into account the effect of outcomes on employees within the organization

In organizational culture, control refers to _____.

the degree to which rules, policies, and direct supervision are used to oversee employee behavior

Scope refers to:

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

The first step in the planning process is _____.

to tie the information technology strategic plan to the organization's overall strategic plan