3 | Planning the Project

Question 1

Project Management Plan?

Answer 1

Is a document that details how a project will be executed to achieve its objectives.

Question 2

A well-defined project management plan consists of certain components like?

Answer 2

• A description of the project management processes that will be used and the level of
implementation for each.
• A description of the tools and techniques that will be used to complete those processes.
• Plans for monitoring and controlling changes to the project.
• Details on configuration management (documented procedures for authorizing and controlling changes to a product, service, or result).
• A description of the techniques that will be used to create and control the project’s performance baselines (scope, time, and cost).
• Techniques for communication with stakeholders.
• A definition of the project life cycle.
• A plan for identifying, documenting, and addressing open issues.

Question 3

Project management plans might include any number of

subsidiary management plans, such as?

Answer 3

1. Requirements management plan
2. Schedule management plan
3. Cost management plan
4. Quality management plan
5. Process improvement plan
6. Human resource plan
7. Communications management plan
8. Risk management plan
9. Procurement management plan
10. Scope management plan

Question 4

Subsidiary Plan | Scope Management Plan?

Answer 4

Is a planning document that describes how a project team will define,
verify, manage, and control the project scope. The plan can be either formal or informal, depending on the needs of the project.

Question 5

Subsidiary Plan | Requirements Management Plan?

Answer 5

Is a document that describes how project requirements will be
analyzed, documented, and managed throughout the project life cycle.

Question 6

Components of the requirements management plan include?

Answer 6

• Methods to plan, track, and report requirement activities.
• Configuration management related activities.
• Processes for requirements prioritization.
• Formats and guidelines on developing a traceability matrix for requirements.

Question 7

Schedule Management Plan?

Answer 7

Is an approach

to develop, maintain, and manage the project schedule.

Question 8

The Schedule Management Plan describes?

Answer 8

• The purpose of the plan.
• Approved schedule development tools and techniques such as a particular project management
software application.
• The number, types, and purposes of the project schedules to be developed and maintained.
• How changes to the schedule baseline will be managed.
• Who is responsible for developing and maintaining the project schedules.
• How and when schedule performance will be reported.

Question 9

Subsidiary Plan | Cost Management Plan?

Answer 9

Is a document that outlines the guidelines for planning, estimating,
budgeting, and controlling project costs.

Question 10

The Cost Management Plan describes?

Answer 10

It describes how risk budgets, contingencies, and
management reserves will be communicated and accessed. It also provides the planning and structure necessary to control project costs and keep them within the budget limits.

Question 11

Subsidiary Plan | Quality Management Plan?

Answer 11

Is a document that describes a team’s approach to implementing the
quality policy. It explains how quality control and quality assurance will be performed.

Question 12

Subsidiary Plan | Process Improvement Plan?

Answer 12

Is a document that describes the steps to analyze and determine areas
of improvements in creating the project deliverables. The areas of process improvements include process boundaries, process configuration, process metrics, and targets for improved performance.

Question 13

Subsidiary Plan | Human Resource Plan?

Answer 13

Is a document that provides guidance on how the human resources required for a project should be defined, staffed, managed, controlled, and eventually released after the project is completed. It includes the components necessary for developing cost estimates such as the project staffing attributes, personnel rates, and related rewards and recognitions. The plan illustrates the project’s organizational structure and includes the staffing management plan that describes the project management team’s approach to managing the increase and decrease of project staff across the project life cycle.

Question 14

Subsidiary Plan | Communications Management Plan?

Answer 14

Is a document that describes the project team’s approach to communicating information about the project. It documents what information must be communicated to whom, by whom, when, and in what manner. It also documents how information is collected, archived, and accessed.

Question 15

Subsidiary Plan | Risk Management Plan?

Answer 15

A risk management plan is a document that describes the team’s approach to identifying risks. It identifies:

• The methodology, approaches, and tools that will be used.
• The roles and responsibilities of those involved.
• The budgeting and scheduling for risk management activities.
• The risk categories

Question 16

Subsidiary Plan | Procurement Management Plan?

Answer 16

Is a document that outlines the guidelines for obtaining or purchasing work from outside sources. It specifies the types of contracts that will be used, describes the process for obtaining and evaluating bids or proposals, mandates the standardized procurement documents that must be used, and explains how multiple providers will be managed. The plan also states how procurement activities will be coordinated with other project management activities, such as scheduling and performance reporting.

Question 17

Project Objectives?

Answer 17

Are the criteria used to measure whether a project is successful or not. Projects
can have one or more objectives, and sub-objectives can be added to the project to further clarify
project goals

Question 18

Project objectives must be:

Answer 18

• Specific in terms of the scope.
• Quantifiable in terms of time, cost, and quality.
• Realistic and attainable.
• Consistent with organizational plans, policies, and procedures.

Question 19

Customer Requirements?

Answer 19

Is the documented list of customers’ needs and
expectations that must be met in order to meet the project objectives. Some of the requirements
criteria include conformance to specific standards, quality, functional interface, data, security and
control, content, technical, training and performance support, and deployment.

Question 20

Requirements are further categorized into?

Answer 20

1. Project requirements

2. Product requirements

Question 21

Project requirements can include?

Answer 21

The business,

project management, and delivery requirements of the project.

Question 22

Product requirements can include?

Answer 22

The technical, security, and performance requirements of the product.

Question 23

Stakeholder Requirements Collection Methods?

Answer 23

There are various methods to collect project or product requirements from
stakeholders, such as:

• Interviewing
• Focus groups
• Facilitated workshops
• Group creativity techniques
• Group decision-making techniques
• Questionnaires and surveys
• Observations
• Prototypes

Question 24

Stakeholder Requirements Collection Method | Interview Techniques?

Answer 24

Interviewing is a technique that uses one-to-one interaction to know more about project requirements from individual stakeholders. This is used to identify the stakeholder’s individual requirements, goals, or expectations relating to the project. This method gives opportunity to build questions and receive detailed answers while developing a good rapport with the stakeholders. It aids in identifying and defining the features and functions of the desired project deliverables.

Question 25

Stakeholder Requirements Collection Method | Focus Groups?

Answer 25

Focus groups are trained moderator-guided interactive discussions that include stakeholders and SMEs (Subject Matter Experts). They are a form of qualitative research that is used to elicit stakeholders’ and SMEs’ expectations and attitudes toward the proposed product, service, or result
of the project

Question 26

Stakeholder Requirements Collection Method | Facilitated Workshops?

Answer 26

Facilitated workshops are group sessions that bring together key multidisciplinary or cross functional stakeholders to define project or product requirements. Facilitated workshops are an important technique to quickly define cross-functional requirements of the various stakeholders of the project. They help build trust, foster relationships, reconcile differences, and improve communication among the stakeholders, thereby leading to enhanced stakeholder consensus.

Question 27

Stakeholder Requirements Collection Method | Group Creativity Techniques?

Answer 27

Group creativity techniques are group activities established within organizations to identify project or product requirements for a project.

Question 28

What are the five Group Creativity Techniques?

Answer 28

1. Brainstorming
2. Nominal group technique
3. The Delphi technique
4. Idea (or mind) mapping
5. Affinity diagram

Question 29

Group Creativity Technique | Brainstorming?

Answer 29

This technique is used to generate and create multiple ideas related to the project and product requirements.

Question 30

Group Creativity Technique | Nominal group technique?

Answer 30

This technique uses a voting process to rank the most useful ideas obtained through brainstorming. Ranking allows for further brainstorming or for prioritization.

Question 31

Group Creativity Technique | The Delphi technique?

Answer 31

This is a group technique that extracts and summarizes anonymous group input to choose among various alternatives.

Question 32

Group Creativity Technique | Idea (or mind) mapping?

Answer 32

This technique consolidates ideas created through brainstorming in a map that reflects the commonality, differences in understanding, and generation of new ideas.

Question 33

Group Creativity Technique | Affinity diagram?

Answer 33

This technique enables the sorting of a large number of ideas collected during brainstorming into distinct categories for review and analysis.

Question 34

Group Decision-Making Techniques?

Answer 34

Are assessment processes that evaluate multiple alternatives
to arrive at an outcome. These techniques are used to generate, classify, and prioritize project or product requirements. The outcome is the resolution of future action for the project.

Question 35

What are the four Group Decision-Making methods?

Answer 35

1. Unanimity
2. Majority
3. Plurality
4. Dictatorship

Question 36

Unanimity Group Decision-Making Method?

Answer 36

Everyone in the group agrees on a single course of action.

Question 37

Majority Group Decision-Making Method?

Answer 37

Requires support from more than 50% of the members of the group to
indicate the selected decision.

Question 38

Plurality Group Decision-Making Method?

Answer 38

The largest batch in the group decides for the group even if a majority is not
achieved.

Question 39

Dictatorship Decision-Making Method?

Answer 39

One individual makes the decision for an entire group.

Question 40

Requirements Documentation?

Answer 40

Describes how individual requirements meet the business need of
the project. The requirements that are documented in the requirements documentation must be unambiguous, traceable, complete, consistent, and acceptable to key stakeholders of the project

Question 41

RTM stands for?

Answer 41

Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM)

Question 42

Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM)?

Answer 42

Is a tabular document that links the project or
product requirements to their origin and traces them throughout the project life cycle. It links each
requirement to the business and project objectives, Work Breakdown Structure, product design and
development, and test scenarios. It ensures that approved requirements in the requirements
documentation are met at the end of the project. The RTM also provides a structure for managing
changes to the project or product scope.

Question 43

Project Scope Statement?

Answer 43

The scope statement defines the project and what it does and does not need to accomplish. It is
created at an early stage in the project to reflect the stakeholders’ common understanding of major
activities to be performed in the project and provide a basis for future project decisions about what
should and should not be included in the project.

Question 44

Project Scope Statement Components?

Answer 44

1. Project objectives: These are the measurable success criteria for the project. Project objectives are called critical success factors in some organizations.
2. Product description: The characteristics of the product, service, or result of the project undertaken.
3. Project requirements: The conditions or capabilities that the deliverables of the project must meet to satisfy a standard, contract, specification, or
   government or industry regulation.
4. Project deliverables: Any tangible, measurable result or outcome required to complete a project or portion of a project. The scope statement should include a list of the summary-level sub products that, taken together, constitute completion of the project.
5. Project boundaries The parameters of what is and what is not included within a project.
6. Product acceptance criteria: The process and criteria for accepting finished products or services resulting from a project.
7. Project constraints: Factors that limit the way that the project can be approached. These limitations may concern time, cost, scope, quality, resources, and others. For example, you may be given a project deadline or overall budget that your project must work within.
8. Project assumptions: Statements that must be taken to be true in order for the planning to begin. For example, if your project requires that you incorporate energy costs into your budget, you may want to make the assumption that the price of oil on the project start date will remain the same as it is today in order to create project cost estimates

Question 45

Constraints?

Answer 45

Are limitations that concern scope, time, cost, and ultimately quality. These factors are interrelated and exist in a state of equilibrium. As the project progresses, if one of these factors is
altered, the other two factors should be balanced to accommodate the change without
compromising on the quality of the product or service.

Question 46

What are the three main constraints?

Answer 46

1. Scope
2. Time
3. Cost

Question 47

Product Analysis?

Answer 47

Is an evaluation of the project’s end product and what it will take to create the product. It translates project objectives into tangible deliverables and requirements.

Question 48

What are the five Product Analysis Techniques?

Answer 48

1. Functional analysis
2. Value engineering and value analysis
3. Quality function development
4. Systems engineering

Question 49

Product Analysis Technique | Functional Analysis?

Answer 49

Analyzing all the things that a product does, including primary and
related functions, to identify unnecessary functions that may drive up cost on a product.

Question 50

Product Analysis Technique | Value engineering and value analysis?

Answer 50

Identifying and developing the cost versus benefits ratio for each
function of a product. It is a method for controlling costs while
maintaining performance and quality standards, and is very
common in military and construction contracts.

Question 51

Product Analysis Technique | Quality function deployment?

Answer 51

Identifying what the customer’s needs are and translating those
needs into technical requirements. It is appropriate for each stage of the product development cycle.

Question 52

Product Analysis Technique | Systems Engineering?

Answer 52

Analyzing products holistically and integrating factors such as users, usage environment, and related hardware or software, with which the product must function.

Question 53

Alternative Identification Techniques?

Answer 53

Alternative identification techniques are methods for generating as many alternative solutions and plans as possible during project planning.

Question 54

What are the three Alternative identification techniques?

Answer 54

1. Lateral thinking: A creative approach to problem solving in which the team attempts to think about a problem in new ways and generate a fresh solution.
2. Brainstorming: A general creativity technique for generating possible alternatives. Brainstorming methods can be structured or unstructured in approach. The goal is to generate as many ideas as possible from as many team members as possible.
3. Delphi technique: A group technique that extracts and summarizes anonymous expert group input to choose among various alternatives. Often used to arrive at an estimate or forecast.