L3 Flashcards

1
Q

How do you prioritise stakeholders?

A

Do a power / interest map.

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2
Q

Are the stakeholders on a power/interest map fixed?

A

No, they change from project to project, and may also over time.

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3
Q

What are the project trade offs stakeholders must make?

A

Time
Cost
Quality

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4
Q

What is the time, cost, quality triangle called?

A

The iron triangle.

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5
Q

How do you ask stakeholders to give you their priorities? (When they obvs want cheapest, high quality, short time)

A

Give them a project priority matrix and tick off what they will constrain, what they want to enhance, and what loss they will accept (e.g. big budget)

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6
Q

Are time, cost, and quality the only measures of project success?

A

No, it depends who you ask. A team member might want a nice working environment, a military project might want secrecy etc

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7
Q

How do we measure success beyond time, quality, cost?

A

Use a balanced scorecard.

-Financial requirements: short/med/long term return on investment

-customers/suppliers: direct/indirect requirements

-internal processes: improve business processes, impact on staff satisfaction

-innovation/learning: learning outcomes of the project

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8
Q

How do we quantify what stakeholders want?

A

Must be measurable:

TCQ: agreed timeframe with milestones, agreed budget, quality conforms to specs.

Others: do a pilot study, do benchmarking, do modelling e.g. model how many shop servers you need.

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9
Q

What is M&E?

A

Monitoring and evaluation.

Conventional is done by project managers etc.

Participatory is done by local people, staff etc.

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10
Q

How to decide which version of M&E to go for?

A

Go to power/interest map, see which stakeholders you have.

If it’s a first-timer project, you want to engage stakeholders (participatory). If it’s PBN, you can use conventional.

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11
Q

How to organise what/when to communicate with stakeholders?

A

Use a communication plan, especially in larger scale projects.

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12
Q

What are the elements of project outline planning?

A
  1. Concept development (develop basic project idea)
  2. Scope development (build a plan around the idea)
  3. Product overview (spec list)
  4. Process overview (risk, stakeholder priority, communication) more important for first-timers
  5. Detailed plan
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13
Q

How do we screen project ideas? (4)

A

Marketing studies
Return on investment
Strategy/mission
Feasibility

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14
Q

What goes into good concept development processes?

A
  • allow employees time for exploration
  • important to protect ownership
  • encourage rapid prototyping
  • involve senior management
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15
Q

What goes into bad concept development processes?

A
  • being overly restrictive hinders creativity
  • having no processes at all!
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16
Q

What is scope creep?

A

When the scope of the project changes as time goes on. We want to prevent this!

17
Q

How do we prevent scope creep?

A

Decompose the project into stages. For the project to pass to the next stage it has to go through a gate.

18
Q

What do we look for at the gates in the stage-gate model?

A
  • have 80% of the aims been realised?
  • do you have the resources to do the project? (Feasibility)
  • do better alternatives exist now on the market? (Cut your losses)
  • organisational change (new CEO and the project now doesn’t match the strategy)
  • financial jeopardy
19
Q

What does a project charter aim to address?

A

What, why, who, when, how?

It’s the contractual bible made after planning the project to refer back to.

20
Q

What goes into a project charter?

A

Sponsor name
PM’s responsibility and authority
Exec summary + background info
Scope: requirements + deliverables
Business case
Time: schedules
Resources + constraints
Stakeholder plan
Evaluation methods
Risk management + assumptions

21
Q

How to break down a project into activities?

A
  • list major tasks
  • break them down into detailed tasks
  • continue until all activities are listed
  • determine task dependencies
22
Q

Activity features

A
  • some must happen in sequence, others simultaneously
  • some must happen when and how
  • all uncertain and subject to risk
23
Q

Why do we want an activity map?

A

It makes everything easier:

  • we can estimate resources/allocation
  • we can schedule
  • we can track (better progress estimate)
24
Q

What is a work package?

A

The smallest piece of work that a project has.

It’s a subset of a project that is assignable to specific resources and produces a deliverable.

25
Q

How do we break down projects into work packages?

A
  1. Functional breakdown
    Split into departments eg finance, IT
  2. Activity breakdown
  3. Physical breakdown
    Look at major components eg hardware, software
26
Q

After deconstructing a project into work packages, what do we do?

A

Compilation

Use critical path analysis and Gantt charts to plan how the work packages are organised.

27
Q

Work packages should be small enough that…

A

The same resources work on them throughout.

You can easily track their progress.

28
Q

Work packages should be large enough that…

A

It ends in a verifiable outcome.

They have distinct start times + resources.

29
Q

How can we use an activity plan to create a work breakdown structure?

A

List the deliverables, measures of accomplishment, key constraints/assumptions. This helps assist hierarchical planning.

30
Q

How do decide how much detail (layers) we have in a work breakdown structure?

A

When granularity makes things easy!

  • reporting period (need to have progress to report to management. If you see them monthly, WPs should be <1 month)
  • progress measurement should be easy
  • resource estimation should be easy
  • task details become clearer
  • should have 3-5 levels
  • WPs should have 8-80hrs of length
31
Q

What’s a tool to communicate with stakeholders what needs to be done?

A

RACI Matrix
Responsible, accountable, consult, inform

AKA Responsibility matrix

List tasks and assign RACI to each player involved