Common ITTOs

Question 1

Common Inputs

Answer 1

• Enterprise Environmental Factors (INTERNAL: Organizational structure, IT capabilities, resource availability, employee capabilities etc, EXTERNAL: government regulations, legal and financial regulations, industry standards etc.)
• Organization process assets (information, policies, procedures, documents that help achieve objectives, examples: project templates, software tool, historical info, risk & change management procedures, etc. Leads to an output called “OPA updates”)
• Project documents (everything not included in the project management plan. Example: Assumption log, Activity list, Cost forecasts etc. Total 33 documents covering all 10 knowledge areas. Leads to output called “project document updates”)
• Project Management Plan (“how-to” doc that defines how project is executed, monitored & controlled, and closed; 18 components, 14 plans & 4 baselines; leads to output called “project management plan updates”)

Question 2

Common Tools and Techniques

Answer 2

• Expert judgement (common tool in the planning process, includes hiring an expert or subject-matter experts to help plan a process, team members are good experts)
• Data gathering (gathering requirements or data required to come up with an output using methods like brainstorming (bring together stakeholders to discuss ideas.. Facilitated by PM), interviews (ask stakeholders series of questions), focus groups (bring together SME to discuss perspectives), checklist (created by organization given to stakeholders), questionnaires & surveys)
• Data analysis (analyzing gathered data with techniques like Alternative analysis (alternate methods to do a particular process), Root cause analysis (RCA), Variance analysis (diff between “plan” and “actual” progress), and trend analysis (are parameters showing any trend?))
• Decision-making (Make decisions on what to do with the gathered, analyzed, represented data using methods like voting, multi-criteria decision analysis, and autocratic decision-making)
• Data representation (present data to stakeholders using charts, matrices, diagrams, etc.)
• Interpersonal and Team skills (to manage different stakeholders.. Active listening (understand, acknowledge, clarify) Conflict management, Facilitation (bring group together, generate ideas, solve problems), Meeting management (invite right stakeholders, set time limit, follow up with MoM))
• Meeting (Agenda distributed before meeting, times for topics, ensure attendees have inputs)
• Project management information system (work authorization system, configuration management system, Microsoft office (word, project))

Question 3

Common output

Answer 3

• Change request (proposal to change a document, deliverable, or baseline; request to add/remove work from scope, complete project faster/cheaper; not just requested by customers but also by team members to fix projects implemented using corrective action (bring project back on track), preventive action (ensure project stays on track), defect repair (fix a broken component of project))
• Work performance data (simply raw data, not useful by itself)
• Work performance information (compare raw data against plan, gives actual status, output of monitoring & control process)
• Work performance report (overall status report.. (raw) data –> work performance info –> create report)
• Updates (updating the input document which got updated during the process)