2. Environment Flashcards
What are the Enterprise Environment Factors (EEFs)?
Enterprise environmental factors (EEFs) refer to conditions, not under the control of the project team, that influence, constrain, or direct the project. These conditions can be internal and/or external to the organisation. EEFs are considered as inputs to many project management processes, specifically for most planning processes.
What are the Internal EEFs?
- Organisational culture, structure, and governance. Examples include vision, mission, values, beliefs, cultural norms, leadership style, hierarchy and authority relationships, organisational style, ethics, and code of conduct.
- Geographic distribution of facilities and resources. Examples include factory locations, virtual teams, shared systems, and cloud computing.
- Infrastructure. Examples include existing facilities, equipment, organisational telecommunications channels, information technology hardware, availability, and capacity.
- Information technology software. Examples include scheduling software tools, configuration management systems, web interfaces to other online-automated systems, and work authorisation systems.
- Resource availability. Examples include contracting and purchasing constraints, approved providers and subcontractors, and collaboration agreements.
- Employee capability. Examples include existing human resources expertise, skills, competencies, and specialised knowledge.
What are the External EEFs?
- Market place conditions. Examples includes competitors, market share brand recognition, and trademarks.
- Social and cultural influences and issues. Examples include political climate, codes of conduct, ethics, and perceptions.
- Legal restrictions. Examples include country or local laws and regulations related to security, data protection, business conduct, employment, and procurement.
- Commercial databases. Examples include benchmarking results, standardised cost estimating data, industry risk study information, and risk databases.
- Academic research. Examples include industry studies, publications, and benchmarking results.
- Government or industry standards. Examples include regulatory agency regulations and standards related to products, production, environment, quality, and workmanship.
- Financial considerations. Examples include currency exchange rates, interest rates, inflation rates, tariffs, and geographic location.
- Physical environmental elements. Examples include working conditions, weather, and constraints.
What are the Organisational Process Assets (OPA)
Organisational Process Assets (OPAs), also called Historical information, are the plans, processes, policies, procedures, and knowledge bases specific to and used by the performing organisation.
The OPAs also include the organisation’s lessons learned from previous projects and historical information. OPAs may include completed schedules, risk data, and earned value data. OPAs are inputs to many project management processes
What are the organisation’s Processes, Policies, and Procedures for conducting project work in the Initiating and Planning group processes?
o Guidelines and criteria for tailoring the organisation’s set of standard processes and procedures to satisfy the specific needs of the project; o Specific organisational standards such as policies (e.g. human resources policies, health and safety policies, security and confidentiality policies, quality policies, procurement policies, and environmental policies); o Product and project life cycles, and methods and procedures (e.g. project management methods, estimation metrics, process audits, improvement targets, checklists, and standardised process definitions for use in the organisation; o Templates (e.g. project management plans, project documents, project registers, report formats, contract templates, risk categories, risk statement templates, probability and impact definitions, probability and impact matrices, and stakeholder register templates); and o Preapproved supplier lists and various types of contractual agreements (e.g. fixed-price, cost-reimbursable, and time and material contracts).
What are the organisation’s Processes, Policies, and Procedures for conducting project work in the Executing, Monitoring and Controlling group processes?
o Change control procedures, including the steps by which performing organisation standards, policies, plans, and procedures or any project documents will be modified, and how any changes will be approved and validated;
o Traceability matrices;
o Financial controls procedures (e.g. time reporting, required expenditure and disbursement reviews, accounting codes, and standard contract provisions);
o Issue and defect management procedures (e.g. defining issue and defect controls, identifying and resolving issues and defects, and tracking action items);
o Resource availability control and assignment management;
o Organisational communication requirements (e.g. specific communication technology available, authorised communication media, record retention policies, videoconferencing, collaborative tools, and security requirements);
o Procedures for prioritising, approving, and issuing work authorisations;
o Templates (e.g. risk register, issue log, and change log);
o Standardised guidelines, work instructions, proposal evaluation criteria, and performance measurement criteria; and
o Product, service, or result verification and validation procedures.
What are the organisation’s Processes, Policies, and Procedures for conducting project work in the Closing group process?
Project closure guidelines or requirements (e.g. final project audits, project evaluations, deliverable acceptance, contract closure, resource reassignment, and knowledge transfer to production and/or operations).
What information is stored in the Organisational Knowledge Repositories?
- Configuration management knowledge repositories containing the versions of software and hardware components and baselines of all performing organisation standards, policies, procedures, and any project document;
- Financial data repositories containing information such as labour hours, incurred costs, budgets, and any project cost overruns;
- Historical information and lessons learned knowledge repositories (e.g. project records and documents, all project closure information and documentation, information regarding both the results of previous projects selection decisions and previous project performance information, and information from risk management activities);
- Issue and defect management data repositories containing issue and defect status, control information, issue and defect resolution, and action item results;
- Data repositories for metrics used to collect and make available measurement data on processes and products; and
- Project files from previous projects (e.g. scope, cost, schedule, and performance measurement baselines, project calendars, project schedule network diagrams, risk registers, risk reports, and stakeholder registers).
What is a system?
A system is a collection of various components that together can produce results not obtainable by the individual components alone. A component is an identifiable element within the project or organisation that provides a particular function or group of related functions.
Systems are the responsibility of an organisation’s management.
Describe the principles regarding systems
- Systems are dynamic,
- Systems can be optimised,
- System components can be optimised,
- Systems and their components cannot be optimised at the same time, and
- Systems are nonlinear in responsiveness (a change in the input does not produce a predictable change in the output).
What are the organisational systems factors?
- Management Elements
- Governance Frameworks
- Organisational structure types
What is the definition of governance?
Governance refers to organisational or structural arrangements at all levels of an organisation designed to determine and influence the behaviour of the organisation’s members.
What is the governance framework?
Governance is the framework within which authority is exercised in organisations. This framework includes but is not limited to:
Rules, Policies, Procedures, Norms, Relationships, Systems, and Processes.
What are the governance domains for portfolios, programs, and projects?
Alignment, Risk, Performance, and Communications.
Each domain has the following functions:
Oversight, Control, Integration, and Decision-making.
What are the key functions or principles of management?
- Division of work using specialised skills and availability to perform work;
- Authority given to perform work;
- Responsibility to perform work appropriately assigned based on such attributes as skill and experience;
- Discipline of action (e.g., respect for authority, people, and rules);
- Unity of command (e.g., only one person gives orders for any action or activity to an individual);
- Unity of direction (e.g., one plan and one head for a group of activities with the same objective);
- General goals of the organisation take precedence over individual goals;
- Paid fairly for work performed;
- Optimal use of resources;
- Clear communication channels;
- Right materials to the right person for the right job at the right time;
- Fair and equal treatment of people in the workplace;
- Clear security of work positions;
- Safety of people in the workplace;
- Open contribution to planning and execution by each person; and
- Optimal morale.
