Chapter 4

Question 1

What is a project’s infrastructure?

Answer 1

A project’s infrastructure is made up of the Measure of Value, the project’s objectives, its governance, and its resources.

Question 2

What is the purpose of organizational governance?

Answer 2

Organizational governance is a set of clear boundaries to define stakeholder roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities that re used to set strategic direction and guide performance.

Question 3

What is project governance? What is its purpose?

Answer 3

Project governance is a framework that is used to guide a project through its various decisions.

Question 4

What is a project management office? What does it do?

Answer 4

A project management office is a group or department within an organisation that oversees project management standards, methods, and policies.

Question 5

What is the purpose of a project governance committee? Who should be on it?

Answer 5

A project governance committee is responsible for establishing stakeholder roles, monitoring progress, and ensuring that the project has the resources it needs. It can also provides authority to the project manager, and can shunt decisions upwards when needed.

Question 6

Why is it important that a project governance committee have oversight over a project?

Answer 6

If a project governance committee doesn’t have oversight over a project, that project will not be able to do much, as it won’t be able to get resources, make big decisions, etc.

Question 7

Describe the common responsibilities of a project manager?

Answer 7

A project manager is many things. They are a manager, planning, organizing, and controlling, via the project plan, as well as obtaining resources and seeing that things actually happen. They also are an administrator, do performance reviews, and take care of day-to-day stuff.

Question 8

What makes a good project manager?

Answer 8

A good project manager must be able to communicate, handle people, be good at maintaining positive relationships, and be able to organize people and projects.

Question 9

Why are projects dependent on the host or sponsoring organization?

Answer 9

Projects are dependent on the host because the host can allocate resources between the project and its peers.

Question 10

Describe the functional organization. How does functional organization influence selection of a project manager and their access to resources?

Answer 10

A functional organization is traditional, one that is organized by function (marketing, IT, etc). Projects in a functional organization are generally started in one function, but have to cross multiples, which then raises the question, what function gives up what?

Question 11

What are some advantages and disadvantages of projects hosted by a functional organization?

Answer 11

The advantages of the functional organization are:

• Increased flexibility: In that people can be brought in as needed, and when done, return to their function.
• Breadth and depth of knowledge: as people are brought into projects, it expands their expertise, which is brought back to their function.
• More focused ownership

The disadvantages:

• Muddled authority/responsibility in cross-functional areas
• Poor response time, due to multiple layers of management/multiple functions
• Tribal Selfishness - people from one function may act “loyal” to the function instead of the organization.

Question 12

Describe the project-based organization. How does project organization influence selection of a project manager and their access to resources?

Answer 12

A project-based organization is one where each project is treated as its own independent unit in the organization, and where the project manager and team are assigned to their project full-time.
Advantages:
- Clear authority & responsibility
- Solid communication
- High level of integration
Disadvantages:
-Project isolation: without a project management office, a project may not follow the same methods as other projects.
- Duplication of Effort: People are bad at sharing unless there’s someone to force them to. Worse, after projects, people may be “held onto” if they’re valuable, rather than let them work on another project.
- Projectitis: When the team becomes a family, and the project becomes, well, a pet-project. The project can just go on forever…

Question 13

What is business process outsourcing?

Answer 13

Business process outsourcing occurs when an organization outsources an entire function, such as accounting, technology, R&D, etc, to an organization that specializes in it.

Question 14

What is full outsourcing?

Answer 14

Full outsourcing occurs when the outsourced processes and resources are entirely owned by the external source.

Question 15

What is full insourcing?

Answer 15

Full insourcing is where you don’t outsource at all.

Question 16

What is selective outsourcing?

Answer 16

Selective outsourcing is when specific resources are kept internal, and others, usually those less critical or less valuable, are outsourced.

Question 17

What’s a fixed-price or lump-sum contract?

Answer 17

A fixed-price or lump-sum contract is one where a final cost is negotiated and agreed upon.

Question 18

What are the three types of cost-reimbursable contract?

Answer 18

The three types of cost-reimbursable contracts are:

• Cost-plus-fee: The seller is paid for what it cost to do the thing, plus an extra percentage of that cost.
• Cost-plus-fixed-fee: Same as above, but the fee is fixed, so if they go over, they lose money, they go under, they make more.
• Cost-plus-incentive-fee: Same as the first, but if certain objectives are met, bonus money is given.

Question 19

What is the purpose of a project charter?

Answer 19

A project charter documents the project’s MOV, as well as the infrastructure that’s needed to support it. It also details the project plan. All-in-all, it’s a summary of the project overall.