Project Management Exam Flashcards
Project Charter’s most important function
it authorizes project; shows the agreement by the key stakeholders
What’s in the Project Charter
project name, sponsor name, project manager name; simple, precise project statement; objective; scope; performance measure; major milestones; major deliverables; assumptions; constraints; business need met; signatures of authorized representatives to acknowledge approval of the project charter
when is the project charter created
in the defining/initiating stage
Checklist Purpose
method of assuring that all needed documents are written; only ensures that the actions on the list are addressed; one way of monitoring activities/tasks (do not monitor completeness); ambiguous/unnecessary items must be excluded
Checklist issue
only as good as the completeness of the items listed and the team’s attention to the work being done; only ensures that items have been addressed
statement of work
Provide more detailed descriptions of what must be planned; clarifies the actual work to be done
Statement of work: what does it define
project’s outcomes in terms of objectives, specific deliverables, acceptance criteria, technical requirements, milestones, constraints, and assumptions
Work breakdown structure
developed from project scope and statement of work, details each activity that must be completed; helps identify specific skills, training, and experience needed on the project
product scope
is used to describe the portion of the scope statement that defines the features and functions of the project outcome or deliverables; the “what”
Purpose of WBS
organizing resources; assigning responsibility to resources; identifying the interaction and contingencies of tasks and how to assign them; control points/milestones; accurate estimating of time/cost for budget purposes; confirming expectations with the customer/sponsor; providing communications platform for the team and stakeholders; validates project scope understanding
Creating the WBS
will require the team to decompose the deliverables into activities and tasks that represent the work needed to produce the deliverables; anything that will require resources to complete the project should be accounted for
The WBS is not
an exhaustive list of all tasks; a project plan, schedule, or chronological list; an organizational structure
risk appetite
the degree of uncertainty an entity is willing to take on in anticipation of a reward
risk tolerance
the degree, amount, or volume of risk that an organization or individual will withstand
risk threshold
measurements along the level of uncertainty or the level of impact at which a stakeholder may have a specific interest. Below threshold the org will accept; above the org will not tolerate
Risk Avoidance
during the planning, the team identifies the risk and sets a path to avoid
Risk mitigation
team acts to reduce the impact/likelihood of risk
risk transfer
shifts risk to a third party
risk acceptance
recognize the risk and accept as part of the project or normal business practice; often done with low impact
risk categories
organization, external, technical
PMBOK
risk breakdown structure; follows the wbs and insures that each activity and task in the WBS is reviewed for risk and opportunity documented as identifiec
Top-down estimation
initial estimates of cost (rough costs) are necessary at the proposal phase of a project for the org to determine if the project should be approved for planning/execution; often provided by someone at the org who has knowledge or experience from prior similar projects; often documented by previous lessons learned
Parametric estimation
top-down method; defining phase; ratio and reporting methods; based on the relationship between the current project and historical data
ratio method
uses experience from prior projects to estimate the overall cost of the current project; can be adopted for other project types where the historic costs can be equated to the current project
