Project Management Foundations Flashcards
1
Q
How do projects get started?
A
When someone has a problem to solve or an opportunity to pursue.
2
Q
What is a project?
A
A project is a temporary endeavor that has a unique goal, and usually a budget.
3
Q
What is project management?
A
It is applying knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to achieve your project’s objectives.
4
Q
What are the five questions of project management?
A
- What problem are you solving?
- How are you going to solve this problem?
- What is your plan?
- How can you tell when you’re done?
- How well did the project go?
5
Q
What problem are you solving?
A
Clearly defining what the project is supposed to accomplish is a big step toward making it a success.
6
Q
How are you going to solve this problem?
A
Whether you’re solving a problem, or pursuing an opportunity, you might have to choose from several possible strategies. Once you’ve picked out your approach, it’s time to flesh out your solution, gathering requirements, identifying deliverables, and defining project scope.
7
Q
What is your plan?
A
You have to identify the work to be done, in detail. How long it might take, the resources you need, and how much they cost. With that info in hand, you also need to spell out how you want things to happen in your project, like communication, managing changes, and so on.
8
Q
How will you know when you’re done?
A
Clearly defined objectives, requirements, measurable results.
9
Q
When you get to the end of the project, you’re ready to answer the last question:
A
How did the project go? Review the project. What worked well, what didn’t, why? How could we have done better?
10
Q
What are the five skills of a project manager?
A
- Technical skills
- Business expertise
- Problem solving
- Interpersonal skills
- Leadership skills
11
Q
What are the technical skills of a project manager?
A
What goes into a project plan, building and fine tuning a project schedule, reading a Gant chart, using the critical path and measuring performance.
12
Q
What are the business skills of a project manager?
A
Making sure a project delivers value. You need to understand your organization’s business, what it does, and what it considers important.
13
Q
What is the project management life cycle?
A
- Initiating
- Planning
- Executing
- Monitoring
- Closing
14
Q
Initiating
A
All about getting the commitment to start a project. To get that commitment, you start by defining the project. What’s the project supposed to accomplish. What’s the scope. What’s a rough estimate of the resources needed and the cost. You also identify the project stakeholders, and make sure they agree on what the project is. From there you ask for the approval to proceed.
15
Q
Planning
A
Where you figure out how you’re going to perform the project. In essence, planning answers the questions, what are we going to do? How are we going to do it? And how will we know when we’re done? When the plan is complete, it’s time to get approval to launch the project.
16
Q
Executing
A
Starts with launching a project. You bring your resources on board, get them settled in, and explain the rules you’re using to run the project. After that, everyone jumps in to put the plan into action.
17
Q
Monitoring
A
Means checking in to see what’s going on in the project and how that compares to what you planned. If the project is sliding off-track, you take action to get it back on course.
18
Q
Closing
A
You get the client to officially accept that the project is complete. You document the project performance, gather lessons learned, close contracts, and help resources move on to their next assignments.
19
Q
When each project management process group occurs one after another, it’s known as _____, or the ____, because the processes flow from one to the next.
A
When each project management process group occurs one after another, it’s known as traditional project management, or the waterfall approach, because the processes flow from one to the next.
20
Q
Waterfall project management works well when …
A
Waterfall project management works well when the project goal and solution are clearly defined, and the scope and deliverables are clear cut.
21
Q
Simple projects with very little uncertainty are great candidates for ______, because you know what needs to be done and how to handle issues that arise.
A
Simple projects with very little uncertainty are great candidates for waterfall project management, because you know what needs to be done and how to handle issues that arise.
22
Q
With many projects today, you don’t know what the solution looks like, so you have to figure it out as you go. This type of project requires _____.
A
With many projects today, you don’t know what the solution looks like, so you have to figure it out as you go. This type of project requires Agile.
23
Q
Agile project management goes through …
A
Iterations, sometimes called sprints, to deliver partial, yet production-quality solutions at regular intervals.
24
Q
What’s also good about Agile?
A
With this approach, the customer gets value from the project sooner. In addition, the customer’s feedback on what’s been delivered so far can help improve the overall solution. The customer has to be more involved than in traditional projects. Project teams tend to be smaller, more experienced, and able to work without much supervision.
25
With agile project management, you then ...
Develop detailed plans for each iteration. Executing is easier because you work on more than one iteration at a time. Another characteristic of agile projects is that you monitor and control them more closely, and teams tend to communicate faster and more frequently.
26
A classic functional hierarchy is where ...
Each person reports to only one supervisor.
27
A matrix is where ...
People report to both functional managers and project managers
28
A projectized organization is where ...
Most of the people work on projects.
29
In a functional hierarchy, projects ...
Aren't the priority, making it difficult for projects to succeed.
30
Matrix organizations support projects more than ...
Pure hierarchies.
31
A projectized organization gives ...
Almost complete authority to project managers for their projects.
32
During which process group does the project manager orient team members to the project and expectations?
Executing. At the beginning of the executing process group, you kick off the project, get resources on board, and explain the rules for the project.
33
Your project seems to be going off track, so you take action to resolve the problem. In which project management process group are you working?
Monitoring and controlling. The process group checks on the status of the project and compares it to what was planned.
34
Which organizational factor would you use when having to make a difficult decision?
The organization's mission. When a project supports the organization's mission, the project will likely get more support and resources, so the mission helps determine the best thing to do.
35
Initiating a project is about getting ...
Commitment to move forward.
36
What is the first step in project initiation?
Assign a project manager who guides the project through the rest of the initiation process.
37
Initiation boils down to ...
Defining the project. You identify the problem the project is supposed to solve and gather information about the project, objectives, requirements, deliverables, and more.
38
One you have an initial project definition, what's next?
Preparing the project charter. This document formally authorizes the project and describes the authority of the project manager.
39
What are stakeholders?
People who have a stake in the outcome of your project.
40
Who can stakeholders include?
Customer, project sponsor, departments involved, or people working on the project itself.
41
Why is knowing your stakeholders important?
You need to know what they expect from the project and how they contribute to it. It's vital to understand stakeholders' importance, influence, and interest in the project. That way, you can build relationships with influential stakeholders and make sure they're satisfied with project results.
42
What is the project customer?
A person or group with a problem to solve. The project customer brings three crucial things to a project. First, the customer funds the project. Second, the customer has a lot to say about what the project will do. Third, the customer approves deliverables from start to finish.
43
What is the project sponsor?
The sponsor is someone who wants to see the project succeed and has enough formal authority to make that happen. A sponsor can help prioritize objectives, talk to stakeholders who aren't being supportive, and suggest improvements to the project plan.
44
What is a functional or line manager?
Functional managers run departments and are accountable for achieving their department's goals. They also manage the people in their departments who are the ones you need to staff your project.
45
How are team members stakeholders?
While they're assigned to your project, their jobs depend on their assignments and may depend on how well they perform.
46
How are departments stakeholders?
They are either people who affect the project or people who are affected by it, so they have a vested interest in how the project turns out.
47
What is the first step toward project success?
Finding out what the customer really wants. The project goal is the end result that the customer desires.
48
What is a goal in relation to project management?
A goal is something like a problem to solve, or an opportunity to take advantage of. It drives everything in the project.
49
Where do you start in identifying the project goal?
You start by putting together a problem statement that clearly defines the problem or opportunity. One way to backtrack from a solution to the original problem or opportunity is to ask why.
50
What is the next step after defining the project goals?
Identifying more detailed objectives. They help define project scope, the approach you choose, and the success criteria you have to meet.
51
Why is it important to define your project strategy?
There is more than one way to achieve your project goal and objectives.
52
Once you've identified possible strategies, you evaluate them. How?
A decision matrix helps you compare the options. Evaluate how each option satisfies the project objectives. Then rate the performance for each objective. Consider whether the strategy's risks are acceptable.
53
What is the next step after defining the project goal, objectives, and strategy?
Determine specifically what the project must deliver, known as requirements.
54
Why is it important that you identify the correct requirements?
Because if you don't identify the project's true requirements, the stakeholders won't be satisfied with the project results. And if you include requirements that aren't necessary, the project will probably take longer and cost more than it should.
55
Why can it be difficult to gather requirements?
Because stakeholders might describe their requirements incorrectly or provide inconsistent or contradictory requirements. The might leave out requirements they need or include nice to haves. Sometimes people who aren't stakeholders try to squeeze their requirements into your project. In addition, stakeholders often balk at committing the time it takes to define requirements.
56
They are several techniques for gathering requirements. What are they?
1. Interviews.
2. Observe how people work.
3. Questionnaires and surveys.
57
What can you do if documentation or results already exist?
You can identify requirements by analyzing documents or reverse-engineering products.
58
What is the next step after gathering requirements? Why?
Next, you need to analyze the initial requirements to make sure they make sense. You might discover that you don't have all the information you need, or that the requirements are inconsistent or duplicated.
59
What is the next step after analyzing requirements?
Go back to your stakeholders to ask more questions and clarify their answers.
60
When the requirements reach their final phase, what must be done?
Document the requirements. To ensure that the requirements are correct and everyone understands them, it's important to write them in a clear, easy to understand language.
61
What can help eliminate duplication and conflicts regarding requirements?
Organizing requirements into related categories.
62
What are project deliverables?
The results that a project delivers.
63
How do you determine if deliverables are what they're supposed to be?
You need some way to measure them.
64
What are project deliverable measurements called?
Success criteria.
65
What do project deliverables help you do?
They help you define the project scope, which basically means what is and isn't included in the project.
66
Besides project scope, what do project deliverables help you do?
They help you measure progress while your project is underway.
67
To document project deliverables, start by listing what?
The end deliverables or the results your project delivers at the end of the project.
68
After listing end deliverables, what is the next step?
Document intermediate deliverables, which are delivered during the course of the project.
69
To document intermediate deliverables, what should you do?
Try to define deliverables that can be accomplished in the time frame between status reports. That way you can evaluate progress based on the deliverables completed since the last report.
70
Now that you've identified your deliverables, how can you tell if the ones you receive are what the stakeholders want?
You need quantifiable criteria you can measure them with.
71
What is success criteria?
Definitions of what success looks like. They help you determine whether those deliverables are what you need.
72
To be effective, success criteria should be?
Clear and quantifiable.
73
What is another aspect of defining a project?
To identify project assumptions and risks.
74
Why should you identify project assumptions?
Because during project initiation, there's a good chance you won't have all the information you need. To begin the project, you can make assumptions about that information.
75
Later, when the project picture becomes clearer, you should do what with your project assumptions?
Revisit them and modify them if necessary.
76
What is risky about project assumptions.
Different people make different assumptions. If those assumptions aren't addressed and everyone isn't on the same page, it can cause future problems.
77
How do you uncover unspoken assumptions as you define and plan the project?
Ask people what they expect and what they envision when they think about the project.
78
What is a project risk?
A risk is a situation or even that might occur that could affect your project positively or negatively.
79
What makes a risk a risk?
That it's uncertain.
80
How should you mitigate risks?
Early on in the project, spend some time identifying risks that could affect the project, mainly so the management team can make an educated decision about whether or not to invest in the project.
81
Assumptions and risks are management so long as you do what?
Identify them upfront.
82
What is the culmination of project definition?
Project scope with a scope statement.
83
What does project scope describe?
It describes the boundaries of the project, what is included in the scope of the project, and also what's not included.
84
Why is it important to get the project scope in writing?
Scope creep and the ability to remind stakeholders what they agreed to at the beginning of the project.
85
What is the point of defining a project?
To give the project customer or management team the info they need to approve the project.
86
What is a typical review process?
Stakeholder compares the project information to acceptable criteria that align with the organization's goals.
87
What are the three possible outcomes from a review?
The project is approved to proceed to planning, it's denied, or it's sent back for rework.
88
When the project is approved to proceed to planning, what is the final step in initiation?
To create and distribute a project charter. This document authorizes and publicizes the project.
89
What typically goes into a project charter?
The name of the project, the purpose of the project, a short summary of its goal and objectives, a high-level project description (which may include things like high-level success criteria, requirements, scope, risk, assumptions and constraints), a milestone schedule, cost estimate, and a list of stakeholders. It also includes a formal declaration of the sponsor's support for the project.
90
What can you also include in your project charter?
Information about the project manager, such as the project manager's name, responsibilities, and brief description of the work the project manager does. Also, the extent of the project manager's authority and the specific work the project manager has authority to perform, such as requesting resources or signing contracts.
91
When the project has been authorized and your authority as project manager is common knowledge, you're ready to do what?
Begin planning the project.
92
After you get the go ahead to plan your project, what is the first thing you should do?
Identify the work that has to be done.
93
What is a WBS?
Work Breakdown Structure. It helps organize work by divvying up the project work into manageable pieces so you can plan, track, and manage your project.
94
How does creating a WBS help the project?
It's easier to estimate time and cost for smaller chunks of work. After you estimate the small chunks, you can add them up to get an estimate for the entire project. By breaking work into smaller pieces, you have built-in checkpoints to measure progress on the project.
95
A WBS contains what?
Two kinds of tasks: summary tasks and work packages.
96
Summary tasks are what?
Are the higher-level tasks that summarize work in some way. They describe parts of the project. They could represent phases or deliverables or even work done by different groups in your organization.
97
How many levels of summary tasks depends on what?
The size of the project. A few levels are enough for a small project. If a project is large or complex, you might have several levels of summary tasks.
98
What are the lowest level tasks in the WBS?
Work packages. They spell out the lowest level project deliverables and the detailed work needed to deliver them.
99
Breaking your project down into manageable pieces helps you do what?
Plan and manage your project effectively.
100
What is the best way to build a work breakdown structure?
Start by using the scope statement and deliverables to identify the top level summary tasks. Then break down the summary tasks into smaller chunks. Intermediate deliverables come in handy for identifying lower level summary tasks and work packages.
101
Why should you consider breaking down work to match the frequency of your status reports?
That way, you have measurable results and completed tasks for every status report.
102
To give your team the info they need, what should you do with your WBS?
Create work package documents that describe the work that needs to be done in detail.
The level of detail in the work package document depends on how familiar the work is and the experience of the person assigned to the task.
103
What does a work package document do besides describe the work?
It also identifies how you know the task is complete and whether it is completed correctly. For some tasks, you can include the corresponding deliverable and success criteria in a work package document. Otherwise, write up a description of what you will have when the task is complete and what it should look like.
104
What are the two most common questions about a project?
1. How much time will it take?
2. How much will it cost?
105
Why does estimating accurately matter?
You estimates could determine whether it makes sense to run the project because knowing those estimates affects both project schedule and cost.
106
How do you start estimating time?
During initiating and planning, you might work with the core planning team to develop initial estimates. During project execution, you can get more accurate estimates from the people assigned to the tasks. You can use past experience or query the project team to determine a good estimate of 10%+/-
107
Part of planning is to identify and document project roles and responsibilities, who reports to whom, and the skills needed to do the project work. What tool should be used to achieve this?
Resource management plan.
108
What does the resource management plan also include?
Staffing plan, which describes everything about how you'll staff the project.
109
Where do you start when creating a resource management plan?
A responsibility matrix. This document spells out who can make or approve decisions, the groups performing work, and which groups need to be consulted or informed about what's going on.
110
A responsibility matrix includes what?
Four categories of responsibility: [R] means a group is responsible for performing work. [I] represents informed, which means a group gets information. [C] means that you consult a group about decisions. However, they aren't accountable for the decision that's made. [A] is for accountable, which means the group makes or approves decisions and delegates work.
111
What is the second part of a resource management plan?
A project organization chart. It shows the hierarchy and reporting structure for people involved with the project.
112
What is the third part of a resource management plan?
Identify the skills the project requires and how many people you need with those skills. A skills matrix helps to do that.
113
How do you build a skills matrix?
Take a look at your work packages and identify the skills each package requires. Then create a matrix when tasks require a specific skill. Then you estimate the number of resources you need with each skill.
114
What is the fourth part of a resource management plan?
Developing the detailed staffing plan. Identify where you plan to get resources. When do you need them? Identify any training they need and document resource-related processes, getting team members on board, handing out assignments, getting status updates, and releasing them from the project when their work is done.
115
What does a resource management plan document?
Who does what, who reports to whom, the resources you need, and how you'll manage them.
116
How do you build a schedule from a WBS?
Put the tasks in the right sequence. Add dependencies or links to identify which tasks have to finish before other tasks can start, which tasks start at the same time, and so on. Next, add the time you estimate each task will take. Third, assign people to tasks. With this, you can calculate task duration. Finally, take into account other constraints like deadlines and when resources are available.
117
What is one of the most important aspects of your project?
The schedule. It tells you how long the project will last and when you need the people who will do the work.
118
What are the three key constraints you need to manage?
1. Project cost
119
What should the project budget be?
It should be a realistic estimate of the cost to complete the project work. You estimate all the costs associated with completing the project work, including labor, materials, and other costs, like travel.
120
What is the project budget?
It is the cost target you aim for as you manage a project.
121
What are the two types of risk?
Risks you're aware of, A.K.A known unknowns and risks you're not aware of, A.K.A unknown unknowns.
122
What can you do after identifying risks?
Fill out a Risk Information Form, including details such as: What objectives are in danger? What events can cause the risk to occur? What the consequences are? Who owns the risk?
123
What are unknown unknowns?
Risks that you're not aware of. They come from situations that are so unlikely they never occur to you.
124
How do you plan for unknown unknowns?
By setting aside contingency funds and time for dealing with them.
125
To minimize the effect of risks, you have to do what?
You first have to identify the risks that your project faces.
126
What does a risk management plan document?
Which risks you're going to worry about and how you plan to handle them.
127
How do you begin your risk management plan?
First, identify which risks warrant managing. Start by evaluating how likely they are and how series their impact would be. It makes sense to manage risks that are at least fairly likely and serious.
128
What are some risk responses you can use?
The easiest option is to accept the consequences.
Avoiding risk is another approach.
Mitigating risk means taking steps to reduce the consequences or impact of the risk.
Transferring risk means handing off the risk to someone else.
129
How do you handle risks that have no response or risks you didn't identify?
Contingency in time or funds.
130
What is the final step in a risk management plan?
Defining how to monitor risks and measure responses. Create a risk log to summarize the risks you'll manage. For each risk include a description of the risk, the events or circumstances that trigger the risk, the probability and impact, the response you've chosen, who will monitor the risk, the result you'll expect from the response if you have to use it, and finally, the risk status.
131
What does a risk management plan do?
Help protect your project from things that can go wrong.
132
Since the success of a project depends on good communication, you must do what?
Set up a communication plan.
133
What is a communication plan?
Tracking stakeholders and keeping them up to date on the project according to their role in relation to the project.
134
What does quality management include?
Processes to make sure that a project satisfies it's objectives and requirements.
135
What is a quality management plan?
Your roadmap to meeting objectives.
136
What does project quality translate into?
It translates into meeting the customers requirements and delivering on time and within budget. In the case of deliverables being products, quality also means conforming to specifications.
137
What are the three components of a quality management plan?
First, there's the quality for deliverables. The second part of the quality management plan is a quality assurance plan. This spells out the processes you use during the project to ensure that the final results meet the quality standards. Finally, you plan for quality control which means how you measure and monitor quality in the final deliverables.
138
What is the bottom line of a quality management plan?
You examine or measure results to see if they meet the standard set.
139
What is a big part of quality management?
Continuous improvement. If you find quality issues, you analyze the problems to see how to prevent them, or at least reduce their frequency. They help identify factors that could lead to problems. Those factors can help you figure out ways to prevent the problems.
140
What does a Pareto diagram do?
It shows how many defects are generated by each cause. That way you can address the causes that produce the most defects first.
141
What does a change management plan do?
A change management plan helps you add important changes into your project while keeping out ones that don't make sense.
142
What are the first steps of a change management plan?
First, you identify what you want to control like the project scope, requirements, and the schedule (or even the entire project plan).
143
What are baseline documents?
The version of the change management plan that you control.
144
What is the baseline?
The project requirements approved by the stakeholders.
145
What are the typical components of a change management process?
The first process is documenting and submitting a change request. Include details about the requested change, the reason it's needed, the business justification, and the results it should produce. Next, someone has to evaluate the request and estimate its impact. The evaluator determines whether the change is needed. If it is, the evaluator decides if the suggested approach is correct or if an alternative is required. Then, they estimate the effort and cost the change would require, the impact on the project, and whether it introduces risks. Third, the change review board reviews the evaluated change request and either approve, deny, or ask for more information. If accepted, the baseline documents must be updated. Finally, track where change requests are in your process.
146
What does a change request log show?
It shows the status of submitted change requests, who's in charge of the request, the impact estimate, current status, and at the end, actual impact.
147
To mitigate overwhelm, what should you also include in your change management plan?
A process for emergency changes that need a rapid decision between meetings of the change review board.
148
What is a procurement plan?
A plan for purchasing outside your organization.
149
What does a procurement plan include?
First identify what you need to purchase. Second, document your procurement processes. The plan describes criteria for choosing vendors, the selection process, types of contracts you use and how you manage those contracts. Third, you describe your make or buy decision process. The last part of the procurement plan is a list of potential vendors who offer what you need. Describe how you researched vendors and contractors and the criteria for developing the list.
150
What does procurement planning help?
It helps you make smart decisions about whether to purchase products and services and if you do, which products and services to procure.
151
For resources outside your organization, what does the procurement process look like?
Solicitation, evaluation, selection, contracting, and ongoing management.
152
What does solicitation begin with?
A request for proposal, RFP. It's a typical way to ask vendors for proposals or bids.
153
What does the RFP describe?
It describes the services or resources you need, when you need them and your budget for the work. Include the criteria you plan to use to select a vendor so companies can decide whether or not to bid. Don't forget to include the instructions and deadline for submitting a proposal, and the date you'll announce a decision.
154
What is contracting?
It is when you prepare and sign a contract for the resources you need. Contracts usually include a statement of work, terms and conditions, deliverables, deadlines, and the price.
155
What categories do contracts fall into?
Fixed-price, where the vendor is paid a fixed amount no matter how much time the work takes, or how much it costs. Time and materials contracts pay for time worked and expenses incurred. A cost-plus contract is like time and materials with the addition of penalties or rewards based on the vendor's performance. With a retainer, you agree to pay for a specified amount of time and define the work as you go.
156
Why is getting approval important?
You need stakeholders' commitment to make the project a success. It's important that the stakeholders understand what the project is about and buy into it.
157
What is the general practice most companies use for accounting for unknown risks?
Set aside a percentage of the budget and project duration based on past projects. If you don't have past experience, use 15%.
158
What is a general practice for choosing the best estimate for cost?
Choose a point halfway between average and worst-case values.
159
What is a network diagram?
A diagram that shows the sequence of tasks. Each task appears in a box with the task name, and perhaps other task info. Arrows drawn between boxes shows how the tasks are linked.
160
What is a task dependency?
When one task controls the timing of another. The task in control is the predecessor and the one being controlled is the successor.
161
What are the four types of task dependencies?
Finish-to-start is when the one task cannot be started until the predecessor is completed.
A finish-to-finish dependency means that the finish of one task controls the finish of another.
Start-to-start means that the start of one activity triggers the start of the other.
Start-to-finish means that the start of one task triggers the finish of another.
162
How can you figure out which type of dependency to use?
Ask a few questions. Which task controls the other? Does the start of finish date of the first task control the second task? Does the predecessor control the start or finish of the successor?
163
How does adding task dependencies to your tasks help your network diagram?
It gets your project tasks in sequence.
164
What is the final piece of the scheduling puzzle?
How many people work on each task and when they're available. With this info, you can see how long tasks take and when they should occur.
165
Where do you assign resources to in your WBS?
Work packages, because they represent work that must be done.
166
Where shouldn't you assign resources?
Summary tasks and milestones. Summary tasks roll up work from lower levels and milestones don't have duration.
167
What do milestones do?
They show progress and other key project points.
168
What is the critical path?
It is the longest sequence of tasks in your schedule. It is the place to look when you want to keep your project on time or deliver it early.
169
Why is the critical path critical?
Because any delay on that path delays the finish date of the project. If you can figure out how to shorten the critical path, you can shorten the project schedule.
170
How do you tell which tasks are on the critical path?
They don't have any slack, also known as float. Just like a string with no slack, critical tasks can't move without affecting the project finish date.
171
A task has two sets of start and finish dates. How?
The early start and early finish are the earliest possible dates the task could start or finish based on its dependencies with other tasks. The late start and late finish are the latest possible dates without delaying the tasks that follow.
172
What is a forward pass?
When you start at the project start date and use task duration and dependencies to calculate when they finish.
173
How do you calculate the late start and late finish dates?
You calculate these dates by working backwards from the end of the project, or the backward pass.
174
What is the critical chain method?
It is a slightly different take on the critical path. You schedule tasks to occur as late as possible and helps prevent delays in the project finish date.
175
What are the benefits of the critical chain method?
You don't have to spend money on the project until you absolutely have to. It focuses on resource limitations to identify the important tasks to manage. It gives you buffers against deadlines.
176
How does critical chain work?
You start by scheduling tasks with the most limited resources, so you use those people as effectively as possible. The approach uses buffers to give a project breathing room, so that the finish date isn't delayed.
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What are a few techniques to shorten the project schedule?
Fast-tracking means you overlap tasks that normally occur one after the other. The best tasks to fast-track are the longest tasks on the critical path. But it also increases risk.
Crashing means you spend additional money to shorten the schedule, like paying for more people or expedited delivery of key materials.
Cutting project scope.
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What is a crash table?
It shows the cost to crash each critical task and the duration you eliminate by crashing them.
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When do you define the project baseline?
Once the stakeholders have approved the project plan.
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What is the baseline?
A collection of the approved project documents like requirements, the schedule, budget, spread sheets, etc.
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What can you do with baseline documents?
You can compare actual project performance to see how the project's doing.
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What is not something milestones do?
Summarize schedule and cost performance. Milestones don't have duration or assigned resources, so they can't summarize cost. However, looking at only milestones does provide one type of high-level summary of the schedule.
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What is not a required part of creating a project schedule?
What time people start working each day.
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When are Agile projects great?
When business needs change frequently or the business wants to receive value sooner.
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How does Agile work?
By frequently delivering small chunks of product known as features. With Agile, work is performed in time periods called iterations or sprints. The goal of each iteration is to deliver a complete, ready to use feature.
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What is the difference between waterfall and Agile?
The waterfall approach defines the scope of the project and then estimates the time, cost, and quality to deliver that scope. Agile looks at time, cost, and quality as fixed elements. Then you figure out which features you can produce given those constraints.
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What is the Agile methodology?
It starts with the envision stage, where you define the goal and the boundaries of the project. You then repeat the speculate, explore, and adapt stages to develop and test features. At the end of the project, you perform a closing stage to wrap things up.
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What is change control?
It is done by prioritizing the backlog of features, and risk is managed with frequent releases.
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What is the envision stage of Agile?
The envision stage is the start of your project. You define the project goal and objectives and figure out who you need on your team. You also set up the guidelines for how you'll run the project. When envisioning is done you'll have a project definition that spells out the project customer, goal, objectives, scope, stakeholders.
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How does Agile differ from waterfall after the envision stage?
For each iteration, you cycle through the speculate, explore, and adapt stages, instead of doing so for the whole project.
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What is the speculate stage of Agile?
When the business and technical teams identify the features to include in the current iteration.
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What is a feature?
A small function or deliverable that addresses a business need.
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Why is the first iteration speculate stage long than the following ones?
Because you identify and estimate all the features for the project, which is called the backlog. When the features list is complete, the business and technical teams review the features and prioritize them. Once the prioritized feature list is approved by the customer or sponsor, you can create the iteration, milestone, and release plan.
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What does the release plan do?
This plan outlines all the features, when they're scheduled in the iterations, and when they'll be implemented in the organization.
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Each time you start another speculate stage, what must you do?
You have to re-estimate, reevaluate, and re-prioritize the the features to decide which ones to include in the iteration, like features that weren't completed and are now back in the backlog, or new features that were identified since the original backlog was build and the next features in the backlog you want to include.
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What is a key concept with the Agile approach?
You stop working on features when the iteration is scheduled to end, even if the features aren't done. If features are incomplete, you put the incomplete work into the backlog to address it in a future interation.
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What is the explore stage mostly about?
Building and implementing features, with short daily meetings to keep things on track reviewing the status on completed and incomplete work.
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What is a close phase?
Tying up loose ends. You reconcile the project financials. You work with resource managers to reassign team members. You communicate the project results to the customer and stakeholders.
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What are the names for the stages in an Agile iteration?
Speculate, explore, adapt.
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Executing a project starts with what?
Lining up the people and other resources you need to perform the work.
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What is a kick-off meeting for?
To show team members their assignments, who they're working with, and how the project's going to go.
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What is a project notebook?
A place to store project information, like your project plan, specifications, documents, and reports.
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What does project execution represent?
Performing all the work you identified in the work breakdown structure.
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What kicks in at the same time as executing?
Monitoring and controlling your project. Monitoring means collecting data and where the project stands. Controlling is about correcting course to get your project back on tracking.
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What is the first step to a productive meeting?
Identify the purpose of the meeting and the results you need, like approval to move forward, or to resolve the issue.
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What is a facilitator?
The person who kicks off the meeting with a brief introduction, the purpose of the meeting, the agenda topics, the attendees, and the ground rules for interaction. They can coax people to participate and wrangle the conversation back on topic.
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What is one model for typical team phases?
Forming, storming, norming, and performing.
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What is forming?
Individuals are just starting to form a team. They aren't sure of their goal and who does what. As a leader, you have to clearly define the team's goals and give them direction.
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What is storming?
Storming teams have difficultly making decisions because of disagreements. You have to help them stay focused on their goals and help them make decisions. Communication will help.
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What is norming?
When the team understands their common goal and everyone pitches in to be successful.
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While work is underway, what must be done?
You need to track how things are going, what's been done, what's left to do, and what it cost.
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What are the exceptions to the change request approval process?
If a change request affects the project's business case. In that case, the customer needs to approve it. If a change request affects other projects, take the request to your organization's executive board. Emergencies are another special case.
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What does owning a risk mean?
Before a risk occurs, you proactively implement risk responses. That means you take steps to avoid, mitigate, or plan contingencies for the risk. Then you watch for signs that high-priority risks are unfolding. Also watch for the events that trigger a contingency plan. When a risk occurs, launch the response you planned. Then, track the results. Finally, regularly report risk status and update the risk log and detail sheet.
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What is earned value analysis?
It's based on three measures calculated through the project status date. First, you measure planned value. Second, earned value is the amount of money you've earned by completing work (budgeted cost of work performed). The third measure is the actual cost for the completed work. A graph of these values helps you see whether your project is on schedule and within budget.
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What is budgeted cost of work scheduled?
How much you plan to spend to complete the work scheduled through the status date.
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How does a Gantt chart help with seeing where your project stands?
It compares the current schedule to your baseline plan. The position of the task bars in the timescale shows whether tasks are ahead of, behind, or right on schedule. It shows how long the project will take and which variances exist.
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What do variance values show?
The exact difference between your baseline and current schedule.
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What is the most important part of closing?
Getting the customer to agree that the project completed successfully.
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How can you improve the performance of future projects?
By identifying what worked well, what didn't, and how things can be done together.
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A closeout report is primarily used to
Share a summary of the project with others.
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To get detailed values of project schedule and cost performance look at ___ and ____.
Schedule variance; cost variances.
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What does it mean when earned value is above planned value?
More work has been completed than planned, and the task or project is ahead of schedule.
