Chapter 5: Project Scope Management Flashcards
Define “Managing Project Scope”
Managing the project scope is primarily concerned with defining and controlling what is and is not included in the project
The Project Scope Management processes are:
Plan Scope Management, Collect Requirements, Define Scope, Create WBS, Validate Scope, and Control Scope
Define “Plan Scope Management” (as a scope management process)
The process of creating a scope management plan that documents how the project and product scope will be defined, validated, and controlled
Define “Collect Requirements” (as a scope management process)
The process of determining, documenting, and managing stakeholder needs and requirements to meet project objectives
Define “Define Scope” (as a scope management process)
The process of developing a detailed description of the project and product
Define “Create WBS” (as a scope management process)
The process of subdividing project deliverables and project work into smaller, more manageable
components
Define “Validate Scope” (as a scope management process)
The process of formalizing acceptance of the completed project deliverables
Define “Control Scope” (as a scope management process)
The process of monitoring the status of the project and product scope and managing changes to the scope baseline
True or false: scope management processes should rarely overlap
False. The Project Scope Management processes are presented as discrete processes with defined interfaces while, in practice, they overlap and interact in ways that cannot be completely detailed in the PMBOK Guide
Define “Product scope”
The features and functions that characterize a product, service, or result
Define “Project scope”
The work performed to deliver a product, service, or result with the specified features and functions. The term “project scope” is sometimes viewed as including product scope
Describe the differences between a predictive life cycle, and an adaptive or agile life cycle
In a predictive life cycle, the project deliverables are defined at the beginning of the project and any changes to the scope are progressively managed. In an adaptive or agile life cycle, the deliverables are developed over multiple iterations where a detailed scope is defined and approved for each iteration when it begins. More on pg 131
Projects with predictive life cycles use backlogs (including product requirements and user stories) to reflect their current needs
False. Projects with ADAPTIVE life cycles use backlogs (including product requirements and user stories) to reflect their current needs
Trends and emerging practices for Project Scope Management include but are not limited to a focus on collaborating with business analysis professionals to:
Determine problems and identify business needs, Identify and recommend viable solutions for meeting those needs, Elicit, document, and manage stakeholder requirements in order to meet business and project objectives, Facilitate the successful implementation of the product, service, or end result of the program or project
The relationship between a project manager and a business analyst should be a ______ partnership
collaborative
The project manager will need to tailor the way Project Scope Management processes are applied. Considerations for tailoring include but are not limited to:
Knowledge and requirements management, Validation and control, Development approach, Stability of requirements, Governance
Inputs for the process “Plan Scope Management” include, but are not limited to:
Project charter, Project management plan, Enterprise environmental factors, Organizational process assets
The organizational process assets that can influence the Plan Scope Management process include but are not limited to:
Policies and procedures, Historical information and lessons learned repositories
Project teams may attend project meetings to develop the scope management plan. True or False: Attendees of these initial meetings should only include project managers and specialists, and experts to lend their knowledge from past projects
False. Attendees may include the project manager, the project sponsor, selected project team members, selected stakeholders, anyone with responsibility for any of the scope management processes, and others as needed
The components of a scope management plan include:
Process for preparing a project scope statement, Process that enables the creation of the WBS from the detailed project scope statement, Process that establishes how the scope baseline will be approved and maintained, Process that specifies how formal acceptance of the completed project deliverables will be obtained
True or false: the scope management plan should be formally written and highly detailed
False. The scope management plan can be formal or informal, broadly framed or highly detailed, based on the needs of the project
Define “requirements management plan”
The requirements management plan is a component of the project management plan that describes how project and product requirements will be analyzed, documented, and managed
Define the process “Collect Requirements”
Collect Requirements is the process of determining, documenting, and managing stakeholder needs and requirements to meet objectives
Outputs of the Collect Requirements process may include:
Requirements documentation, Requirements traceability
matrix
True or false: product requirements are not detailed in the PMBOK Guide. Why or why not?
True. The PMBOK Guide does not specifically address product requirements since those are industry specific
A business document that can influence the Collect Requirements process is the ______
Business Case
Data-gathering techniques that can be used for the Collect Requirements process include but are not limited to:
Brainstorming, Interviews, Focus Groups, Questionnaires and surveys, benchmarking
What are questionnaires and surveys best used for in information gathering?
They are designed to quickly accumulate information from a large number of respondents. Questionnaires and/or surveys are most appropriate with varied audiences, when a quick turnaround is needed, when respondents are geographically dispersed, and where statistical analysis could be appropriate
Define “Benchmarking”
Benchmarking involves comparing actual or planned products, processes, and practices to those of comparable organizations to identify best practices, generate ideas for improvement, and provide a basis for measuring performance. The organizations compared during benchmarking can be internal or external
Define “Plurality” in the context of voting
A decision that is reached whereby the largest block in a group decides, even if a majority is not achieved. This method is generally used when the number of options nominated is more than two
Define “Multicriteria decision analysis”
A technique that uses a decision matrix to provide a systematic analytical approach for establishing criteria, such as risk levels, uncertainty, and valuation, to evaluate and rank many ideas
Define “Affinity diagram”
Affinity diagrams allow large numbers of ideas to be classified into groups for review and analysis
Define “Mind mapping”
Mind mapping consolidates ideas created through individual brainstorming sessions into a single map to reflect commonality and differences in understanding and to generate new ideas
Define “Nominal group technique”
The nominal group technique enhances brainstorming with a voting process used to rank the most useful ideas for further brainstorming or for prioritization. The nominal group technique is a structured form of brainstorming consisting of four steps
Describe the four steps of the nominal group technique
- A question or problem is posed to the group. Each person silently generates and writes down their ideas. 2. The moderator writes down the ideas on a flip chart until all ideas are recorded. 3. Each recorded idea is discussed until all group members have a clear understanding. 4. Individuals vote privately to prioritize the ideas, usually using a scale of 1 – 5, with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest. Voting may take place in many rounds to reduce and focus in on ideas. After each round, the votes are tallied and the highest scoring ideas are selected
Facilitation skills are used in the following situations, but are not limited to:
Joint application design/development (JAD), Quality function deployment (QFD), User stories
Define “Joint application design/development (JAD)”
JAD sessions are used in the software development industry. These facilitated sessions focus on bringing business subject matter experts and the development team together to gather requirements and improve the software development process
Define “Quality function deployment (QFD)”
In the manufacturing industry, QFD is another facilitation technique that helps determine critical characteristics for new product development. QFD starts by collecting customer needs, also known as voice of the customer (VOC). These needs are then objectively sorted and prioritized, and goals are set for achieving them
What is VOC?
The voice of the consumer
Define “User Stories”
User stories, which are short, textual descriptions of required functionality, are often developed during a requirements workshop. User stories describe the stakeholder role, who benefits from the feature (role), what the stakeholder needs to accomplish (goal), and the benefit to the stakeholder (motivation)
Define “Context Diagram”
The context diagram is an example of a scope model. Context diagrams visually depict the product scope by showing a business system (process, equipment, computer system, etc.), and how people and other systems (actors) interact with it. Context diagrams show inputs to the business system, the actor(s) providing the input, the outputs from the business system, and the actor(s) receiving the output
Define “Prototyping”
Prototyping is a method of obtaining early feedback on requirements by providing a model of the expected product before actually building it. Examples of prototypes are small-scale products, computer generated 2D and 3D models, mock-ups, or simulations
True or false: Storyboarding is a prototyping technique
True. Storyboarding is a prototyping technique showing sequence or navigation through a series of images or illustrations
Define “Requirements Documentation”
Requirements documentation describes how individual requirements meet the business need for the project. Requirements may start out at a high level and become progressively more detailed as more information about the requirements is known
Define “Solution Requirements”
These describe features, functions, and characteristics of the product, service, or result that will meet the business and stakeholder requirements. Solution requirements are further grouped into functional and nonfunctional requirements
Define “Functional requirements” vs. “Non-Functional requirements”
Functional requirements describe the behaviors of the product. Examples include actions, processes, data, and interactions that the product should execute. Nonfunctional requirements supplement functional requirements and describe the environmental conditions or qualities required for the product to be effective. Examples include: reliability, security, performance, safety, level of service, supportability, retention/purge, etc.
Define “Transition and readiness requirements”
These describe temporary capabilities, such as data conversion and training requirements, needed to transition from the current as-is state to the desired future state
Define “requirements traceability matrix”
The requirements traceability matrix is a grid that links product requirements from their origin to the deliverables that satisfy them. The implementation of a requirements traceability matrix helps ensure that each requirement adds business value by linking it to the business and project objectives
Tracing requirements includes but is not limited to:
Business needs, opportunities, goals, and objectives, Project objectives, Project scope and WBS deliverables, Product design, Product development, Test strategy and test scenarios, High-level requirements to more detailed requirements
Typical attributes used in the requirements traceability matrix may include:
a unique identifier, a textual description of the requirement, the rationale for inclusion, owner, source, priority, version, current status (such as active, cancelled, deferred, added, approved, assigned, completed), and status date, etc.
True or false: Since all the requirements identified in Collect Requirements may not be included in the project, the Define Scope process selects the final project requirements from the requirements documentation developed during the Collect Requirements process
True
Examples of project documents that can be considered as inputs for the Define Scope process include but are not limited to:
Assumption log, Requirements documentation, Risk register
Define “Product analysis”
Product analysis can be used to define products and services. It includes asking questions about a product or service and forming answers to describe the use, characteristics, and other relevant aspects of what is going to be delivered
Examples of product analysis techniques include but are not limited to:
Product breakdown, Requirements analysis, Systems analysis, Systems engineering, Value analysis, Value engineering
Define “Project scope statement”
The project scope statement is the description of the project scope, major deliverables, and exclusions. The project scope statement documents the entire scope, including project and product scope. It describes the project’s deliverables in detail. It also provides a common understanding of the project scope among project stakeholders
Define “Acceptance criteria”
A set of conditions that is required to be met before deliverables are accepted
Define “Project exclusions”
Identifies what is excluded from the project. Explicitly stating what is out of scope for the
project helps manage stakeholders’ expectations and can reduce scope creep
True or false: The project scope contains high- level information, while the project charter statement contains a detailed description of its components
False. The project charter contains high- level information, while the project scope statement contains a detailed description of the scope components
Are project deliverables a component of the project charter or scope statement?
Scope statement
Is the Summary milestone schedule a component of the project charter or scope statement
Project Charter
Define “Create WBS”
Create WBS is the process of subdividing project deliverables and project work into smaller, more manageable components. The key benefit of this process is that it provides a framework of what has to be delivered. This process is performed once or at predefined points in the project
Define “work packages”
The planned work is contained within the lowest level of WBS components, which are called work packages. A work package can be used to group the activities where work is scheduled and estimated, monitored, and controlled. In the context of the WBS, work refers to work products or deliverables that are the result of activity and not to the activity itself
Define “Decomposition”
Decomposition is a technique used for dividing and subdividing the project scope and project deliverables into smaller, more manageable parts. The work package is the work defined at the lowest level of the WBS for which cost and duration can be estimated and managed. The level of decomposition is often guided by the degree of control needed to effectively manage the project
Decomposition of the total project work into work packages generally involves the following activities:
Identifying and analyzing the deliverables and related work, Structuring and organizing the WBS, Decomposing the upper WBS levels into lower-level detailed components, Developing and assigning identification codes to the WBS components, Verifying that the degree of decomposition of the deliverables is appropriate
True or false: Different deliverables should have comparable levels of decomposition
False. Different deliverables can have different levels of decomposition
How does one create a properly sized work package in creating the WBS?
To arrive at a work package, the work for some deliverables needs to be decomposed only to the next level, while others need additional levels of decomposition.
True or false: there’s no such thing as excessive decomposition in creating the WBS
False. Excessive decomposition can lead to nonproductive management effort, inefficient use of resources, decreased efficiency in performing the work, and difficulty aggregating data over different levels of the WBS
How much of the actual prospective work does the WBS need to include?
The WBS represents all product and project work, including the project management work. The total of the work at the lowest levels should roll up to the higher levels so that nothing is left out and no extra work is performed. This is sometimes called the 100 percent rule
Define “planning package”
A control account may include one or more planning packages. A planning package is a work breakdown structure component below the control account and above the work package with known work content but without detailed schedule activities
Define “WBS dictionary”
The WBS dictionary is a document that provides detailed deliverable, activity, and scheduling information about each component in the WBS. The WBS dictionary is a document that supports the WBS
Information in the WBS dictionary may include but is not limited to:
Code of account identifier, Description of work, Assumptions and constraints, Responsible organization, Schedule milestones, Associated schedule activities, Resources required, Cost estimates, Quality requirements, Acceptance criteria, Technical references, and Agreement information
Define “Validate Scope”
Validate Scope is the process of formalizing acceptance of the completed project deliverables
The verified deliverables are obtained from what process?
The Control Quality process
True or false: Control Quality is always performed before Validate Scope
False. Control Quality is generally performed before Validate Scope, although the two processes may be performed in parallel
How is the Scope Baseline used or applied throughout a project?
The scope baseline is compared to actual results to determine if a change, corrective action, or preventive action is necessary
Define “Verified Deliverables”
Verified deliverables are project deliverables that are completed and checked for correctness through the Control Quality process
Define “Control Scope”
Control Scope is the process of monitoring the status of the project and product scope and managing changes to the scope baseline. This process is performed throughout the project
_______ ensures all requested changes and recommended corrective or preventive actions are processed through the Perform Integrated Change Control process
Controlling the scope
True or false: some type of change control process is mandatory for every project
True. Change is inevitable
What kind of data is contained in the Work performance data?
Work performance data can include the number of change requests received, the number of requests accepted, and the number of deliverables verified, validated, and completed
