1 | Defining Project Management Fundamentals Flashcards
In this lesson, you will: • Identify basic concepts and terminology of professional project management. • Identify and describe the phases and components of the project life cycle. • Identify and describe the organizational influences on project management. • Define the Agile methodology
What is a Project?
A project is a temporary work endeavor that creates a unique product, service or result.
A project is considered to be successful when what?
When the specified objectives are met within the specified duration and budget and with the required quality.
What is a Subproject?
A subproject is an independently manageable component of an existing project.
The end of a project is reached when what?
- When it’s objectives have been met
- The need for the project no longer exists
- It is determined that the objectives cannot be met
What is Project Management?
Project management is a planned effort for executing and monitoring a project in order to accomplish it’s defined goals and objectives.
Managing a project involves?
- Scheduling
- Identifying requirements
- Establishing objectives
- Balancing quality, scope, time and cost
- Addressing the concerns and expectations of stakeholders
Operations Management include disciplines such as?
- Human resources
- Purchasing
- Sales
- Maintenance
Operations deal with?
The ongoing day-to-day production of goods and services.
What is a program?
A program is a group of related projects that have a common objective. It offers great control over constituent projects and delivers benefits that the organization can use to meet its goals.
A program is managed by?
A program manager
Individual projects are managed by?
Project Managers
What is a portfolio?
A portfolio is a collection of projects, programs and operational work to achieve the strategic business objectives of an organization.
Portfolios are managed by?
A senior management or senior management teams.
Program management includes?
Related and interdependent projects.
Portfolios includes?
Several otherwise unrelated projects if they all support major goals or a significant product line.
Operations?
Operations are ongoing, repetitive tasks that produce the same outcome every time they are performed. The purpose of operations is to carry out day-to-day organizational functions, generate income to sustain the business, and increase the value of organizational assets.
PMO stands for?
Project Management Office
What is the PMO?
The Project Management Office (PMO) is a centralized, permanent, ongoing administrative unit or department that serves to improve project management performance within an organization.
PMO primary functions?
- Maintaining project historical information
- Managing shared resources across projects managed by the PMO
- Monitoring project timeline, budget and quality at an enterprise level
- Identifying and implementing new project management methodologies
- Creating, effective project policies, documentation, and templates
- Helping project managers develop estimates and schedules
- Conducting routine quality assurance reviews
- Managing communication across projects under the PMO
- Maintain standards across projects
- Provide governance
- Improve efficiency
The PMO may publish their policies, templates and other documentation on what?
An intranet site or a Wiki library. The Wiki can be structured to provide links to specific procedures that should be followed to comply with the directives of the PMO.
What is a Project Stakeholder?
A project stakeholder is a person who has a vested business interest in the outcome of a project or who is actively involved in its work.
STAKEHOLDER ROLE:
- Vested interest
- Provided input and requirements
- Project steering
- Expertise
Project Stakeholder Types?
- Customers/end-users
- Sponsor/Champion
- Portfolio managers/Portfolio review board
- Program managers
- PMO
- Project managers
- Project management team
- Project coordinator
- Project scheduler
- Project team
- Vendors and business partners
- Functional managers
- Operations manager
Project Stakeholder | Customers/end users explained & responsibilities?
Customers are individuals or organizations who will receive the product or service generated by the project. Some if their responsibilities are:
- Defining the needs for the project output
- Delivering the project output
- Paying for the project output
Project Stakeholder | Sponsor/Champion explained and responsibilities?
Sponsors may be individuals or groups that provide finances, management support and overall control of the project. The sponsor:
- Has the financial resources for the project
- Signs and publishes the project charter
- Approves initial project baselines, and changes to baselines
- Has the ultimate responsibility for the project’s success
- Signs off on all planning documents, including requirements, business case and scope and change requests
- Authorizes the team to use resources
- Champions and supports the project manager and team
- Reviews progress and quality
- Cuts through red tape, helps deal with roadblocks and expedites activities
- Helps the project manager “market” the project to stakeholders who may not see the benefit of it
- Approval authority
- Funding
- Project charter
- Baseline
- High-level requirements - Control
- Marketing
- Roadblocks
- Business case/justification
Project Stakeholder | Portfolio managers/Portfolio review board explained and responsibilities?
Portfolio managers or executives in the portfolio review board are a part of the project selection committees and belong to the high level project governance side of the organization. Their review considerations may include:
- Gauging the Return on Investment (ROI) of the project
- Identifying the value of the project
- Analyzing the risks involved in taking up the project
- Identifying the factors that may influence the project
Project Stakeholder | Program managers explained and responsibilities?
Program managers, in coordination with the project managers, mange related projects in a program to obtain maximum benefits. They also provide guidance and support every individual project.
Project Stakeholder | PMO explained and responsibilities?
A PMO is an administrative unit that supervises and coordinates the management of all projects in an organization. It focuses on providing:
- Administrative support services, which include processes, methodologies, policies, standards, and templates
- Any key performance indicators and parameters that will allow projects to measure their success
- Training and mentoring support to project managers and project team members
- Support and guidance in managing projects and usage of tools
- Support for resource allocation
- Assistance in better communication among project managers. sponsors and other stakeholders.
- Sets standards and practices for organization
- Sets deliverables
- Provides governance
- Key performance indicators and parameters
- Provides tools
- Outlines consequences of non-performance
- Standard documentation/templates
- Coordinate resources between projects
Project Stakeholder | Project Managers explained and responsibilities?
Project managers are individuals responsible for managing all aspects of the project. The project manager:
- Works with stakeholders to define the project
- Plans, schedule and budgets project activities with team input
- Works with the team to carry of project plans
- Monitor performance and takes corrective action
- Identifies, monitors and mitigate risks
- Keeps the sponsor and the stakeholders informed
- Requests and document scope changes
- Provides timely reports on project metrics
- Acts as an liaison between the project team and other stakeholders
- Manage team, communication, scope, risk, budget and time.
- Manage quality assurance
- Responsible for artifacts
Project Stakeholder | Project management team explained and responsibilities?
The project management team are those members of the project team who perform management activities, such as:
- Acting as the procurement manager for projects that involves multiple contracts and vendors
- Being responsible for inputting data into the Project Management Information System (PMIS) and confirming the accuracy of that data.
- Assuming the role of Project Manager is his or her absence
Project Stakeholder | Project Coordinator explained and responsibilities?
The project coordinator role exists when the organizational structure does not warrant or support a full-scale project manager. The project coordinator has limited decision-making responsibilities. This role requires cross-functional coordination and duties can include:
- Administrative support and documentation assistance
- Time and resource scheduling
- Quality control checking
- Support project manager
- Cross-functional coordination
- Documentation/administrative support
- Time/resource scheduling
- Check for quality
Project Stakeholder | Project Scheduler explained and responsibilities
The scheduler creates and maintains the project timeline. The scheduler is proficient at using project management software such as Microsoft Project and other applications. Other duties might include:
- Communicate timeline and schedule changes
- Monitor schedule status and solicit task status from resources
- Report schedule performance
- Develop and maintain project schedule
- Communicate timeline and changes
- Reporting schedule performance
- Solicit task status from resources
Project Stakeholder | Project team explained and responsibilities?
The project team comprises the project manager, the project management team, and other individual team members. The individual team members perform project work and may not be involved in the project management side of the project. The project team duties include:
- Use expertise to contribute to completing project tasks
- Contribute deliverables on schedule
- Provide estimates of task duration
- Provides estimates of costs and dependencies
- Contribute expertise to the project
- Contribute deliverables according to schedule
- Estimation of task duration
- Estimation of costs and dependencies
Project Stakeholder | Vendors and business partners explained and responsibilities?
Vendors are external parties who enter into a contractual agreement with the organization and provide components or services needed for the project.
Business partners are external to the company and provide specialized support to tasks such as installation, customization, training and support.
Project Stakeholder | Functional Managers explained and responsibilities?
Functional managers are individuals who provide resources (people) to the project manager, who in turn assigns them to project activities. Examples of functional managers are engineer managers, IT managers.
Project Stakeholder | Operations Managers explained and responsibilities?
Operations managers manage the core business areas such as the design of manufacturing, provisioning, testing, research and development, or maintenance side of the organization. Some of their functions include:
- Directly managing the production and maintenance of the final products and services that the organization provides
- Handing off technical project documentation and other records to the operations management group upon project completion
Positive Stakeholders?
Positive stakeholders usually benefit from the successful outcome of the project.
Negative Stakeholders?
Negative stakeholders see negative outcomes of a successful project.
Project Managers are responsible for?
Meeting project objectives and ensure that the project plan is in alignment with the overall program plan.
Project phases, taken together, are referred to as?
The Project Life Cycle
In order to improve management control, projects are broken down into?
Manageable, sequential phases of work activities.
What is a process?
A process is a sequence of activities designed to bring about a specific result in response to a business need.
What is Project Management Processes?
Project Management Processes are all the activities that underlie the effective practice of project management, they are grouped into 5 phases (process groups):
- Initiating/pre-project setup
- Planning
- Executing
- Monitoring/Controlling
- Closing
Initiating process group involves?
Defining the need for a new project of the new phase of an existing project, validating the project, preparing a project charter, and obtaining approval for the project charter to move forward.
Planning process group involves?
Creating the project management plan. This plan addresses scope, time, cost, quality, risk communications, procurement, human resources, and stakeholders. During planning project objectives are refined and a strategy is developed to accomplish the work on the project or phase.
Executing process group involves?
Carrying out the work mentioned in the project management plan in order to meet the project specifications.
Monitoring and Controlling process group involves?
Regular monitoring of project performance and tracking progress made in the project or phase. They also include changes that are to be made to the plan when required and corrective actions needed to get back on track.
Closing process group involves?
Finalizing the project activities, handing off the project or phase output, gaining formal acceptance, tying up the administrative and contractual loose ends, and finally closing the project or phase.
Tailoring?
Not every process in the project life cycle takes place in every project. Determining which processes are appropriate for a given project.
Initiating process group outputs?
- Project purpose
- Goals and objectives
- Project charter
- Business case
- Assignment of a project manager, management sponsor, functional manager, and user representative
- Constraints and assumptions
- High level scope definitions
- High level risks
Planning process group outputs?
- Project Management plans
- Scope Management plan
- Scope statement
- Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
- Activity list
- Project network diagrams
- Activity duration estimates
- Project schedule
- Schedule management plan
- Resource requirements
- Cost estimates
- Cost Management Plan
- Cost baseline
- Quality assurance plan
- Communications plan
- Resource Management plan
- Roles and responsibilities
- Assignment of resources
- Risk management plan
- Procurement management plan
- Statement of work (SOW)
Executing process group output?
- Intermediate or final work results/deliverables
- Change requests
- Project records
- Quality improvements
- Proposals and contracts
What is a project stage?
A project stage is a group of related projects activities that result in the completion of a major deliverable. Documents and information that are created in one stage are used as an input for the next stage.
What are Phase-Gate Reviews?
A phase-gate review, also known as governance-gate review, is a check point review of project deliverables and performance that occurs at the end of each phase of the project where a management review or sign off may be required. Each review is used to check if each phase has fulfilled the exit criteria and is eligible to move to the next phase.
Progressive Elaboration?
Progressive elaboration is defined as the process of increasing the level of detail in a project management plan as more information and more accurate estimates become available. At the beginning of a project, very little is known, perhaps only a high level scope and some objectives. As the project moves forward, requirements are determined, the scope is written, a WBS is developed and time and cost estimates are prepared. Thus, the project management plan becomes more detailed as the project progresses.
Organization Chart?
An organizational chart is a visual representation of a projects organizational structure. It’s purpose is to show both the reporting relationships within the project’s relationship to the parent organization.
Functional organizational structure?
- Each department is responsible for carrying out a specific , similar set of activities
- Multiple people perform each type of activity
- Reporting is hierarchical, with each individual reporting to a single manager
- The project managers authority is low, relative to the functional managers authority
- Team members are loyal to their department and report only to their functional manager
- The project manager is part time on the project and reports to a functional manager, the team members are part time as well
Matrix organizational structure?
- A blend of functional and projectized structures in which individuals report upward in the functional hierarchy, but they also report horizontally to one or more project managers.
- The matrixed reporting scheme may be permanent or temporary
- May be characterized as weak, balanced, or strong depending on the relative authority of the project manager to the functional manager. An organization is said to have a strong matrix when the project managers authority is higher than that of the functional manager
- Team members maintain a home in their department and report to both the functional manager and the project manager
- The project manager is full time on the project while team members are part time
Projectized organizational structure?
- The project manager and a core project team operate as a completely separate organizational unit within the parent organization
- Core team members are responsible for the work of extended team members in their functional area
- Team members are often co-located
- The project manager reports to a program manager and has a significant amount of authority and independence
- Some projectized organizations may contain their own support systems, such as a separate procurement or personnel department, or share support systems with the parent organization
- Team members do not belong to a department so they can be loyal to only the project
- Both the project manager and team members are full time on the project and the project manager has full authority over team members because they report to only him or her
Composite organizational structure?
Most modern organizations involve all the above structures at various levels. It is a combination of all the other types of organizations.
What is a Sprint?
A sprint (or Sprint Cycle) represents a complete process from planning to delivery and demo of a part of the product
Burndown Charts?
A burndown chart is a tool that is used to track the progress of the project by plotting the number of days of Sprint against the number of hours of work remaining. A burndown chart is used to track the pending work until the teams commitment is complete. The burndown chart displays the progress of the team toward the goal.
In an ideal situation, a burndown chart is expected to be a downward sloping graph that will hit zero on the last day. However, this is not always the case because as the project progresses, the team might discover unexpected complexities or issues that may cause work to slow down, which further leads to increased number of hours or work remaining.
If the burndown chart is not a downward sloping graph, then it signals the team to do things differently or increase the pace of their work. It also creates a feedback loop and enables the teams to improve the estimations by committing to only the amount of work that they can accomplish in a Sprint.
