Lecture 3 (ch4,5,6)

Question 1

Three different organizational forms:

Answer 1

Functional, matrix, and projectized. There are different levels of matrixes, spanning from weak to strong.

Question 2

What does the power of PM and functional managers depend on?

Answer 2

The organizational form. If you have a projectized form, the PM has almost all power.

Question 3

Namedrop four different cultures: These four are distinguished based on which of the following is the most powerful motivator.

Answer 3

• Power culture – getting the job done according to what the powerful people say (often owners or executives)
• Role culture – formal authority
• Task culture – worker development
• Personal culture – designations of responsibility

(from book) In task cultures, it is more important to get the job done than to worry about who does the work or who gets credit.
In personal cultures, people show genuine interest in the needs of workers, consider worker development as critical to the organizations success, and display an attitude that collaboration is satisfying and stimulating.

Question 4

What is a stakeholder?

Answer 4

Each stakeholder has its own interest in the outcome of the project. They can be both internal and external.

Question 5

What is project management a mix of?

Answer 5

Art & science. Hard and soft skills.

Question 6

What is examples of soft skills?

Answer 6

communication, leadership, conflict resolution, creating a vision.

Question 7

What is exampes of hard skills?

Answer 7

Admin, risk assessment, Budget, mastering PM tools.

Question 8

What are the five steps in building an effective team?

Answer 8

• Clear understanding of the
  project objective
• Clear expectations of each
  person’s role and
  responsibilities
• Results orientation
• High degree of cooperation
  and collaboration
• High level of trust

Question 9

What does the team formation process consist of?

Answer 9

Forming, storming, norming, and performing. Four stages that is gone through before the team is performing at its best.

lastly, adjourning

Question 10

What is needed when projects are very large?

Answer 10

Distributing the PM role to different people and subtasks. Forming it like an organization. This creates overhead but makes the project manageable.

Question 11

What are some benefits of global projects? (Sony example)

Answer 11

• Project never sleeps -One site is always active, - Reduce scheduled duration
• Resources - More experts - Less space restraints
• Close to the local market,
  needs
• Increased level of innovation

Question 12

What are some problems with global projects? (Sony example)

Answer 12

7 Problems:
* Cultural barriers
* Communication
* Feeling like one project/team
* Language
* Time zones, burnout
* Processes and rules
* Career path

Question 13

What are characteristics of Agile teams?

Answer 13

• Self-managed
• Focused on project goals
• Strong communicators
• Able to make decisions quickly
• Responsible
• Willing to trust their instincts

Question 14

(Agile teams) What is a customer representative? aka product owner.

Answer 14

A customer representative is an individual who has authority to represent a community that intends to purchase a product. Provides guidance in how to proceed with the development of the product/ service.

Question 15

(Agile teams) What is scrum master?

Answer 15

similar to project manager, but with emphasis on facilitating and leading in a collaborative fashion

Question 16

(Agile teams) What is a coach?

Answer 16

often included on Agile projects to act as trainer and
facilitator

Question 17

Open ended Q from an old exam: You are a project manager leading an IT development project. Halfway through your project, you realize that you need to hire an additional
worker in order to complete the project on time.
* How will you convince your project sponsors to authorize the hire?
* How will you on-board your new worker?

Answer 17

projects are investments, showing both the cost and expected value of bringing the new person on board will likely be part of the
answer. For onboarding, sharing the charter and recent meeting agendas and minutes for the new hire to read first and then talking
with that person one-on-one to explain and answer questions is a good start. Then introducing the person to both the team and key stakeholders.

Question 18

MCQ: Which of the following roles is typically associated with the project manager?
a) assigned by the performing organization to lead the team that is responsible for achieving the project objectives
b) an ongoing manager of the organization with responsibility for a department or division
c) supports projects by mentoring, training, and assisting teams and facilitating sharing of resources and methodologies
d) a senior manager serving in a formal role, given authority and responsibility for the successful completion of a project

Answer 18

A

Question 19

How is a functional organization structured?

Answer 19

It is organized in which staff is grouped by areas of specialization and the project manager has limited power to assign work and apply resources

Question 20

What is an advantage of the functional structure?

Answer 20

All workers understand clearly what they have to do because they have “only” one boss that gives them instructions.

Question 21

What is a disadvantage of the functional structure?

Answer 21

It can be slow when multiple functions need input. And when a cross-functional understanding is required.

Question 22

What is a projectized organization?

Answer 22

Group employees, collocated or not, by activities on a particular project.

Question 23

What is an advantage of the projectized structure?

Answer 23

People from different functions now report to the same PM, traditional department barriers are reduced.

Question 24

What is a disadvantage of the projectized structure?

Answer 24

One disadvantage is that people are often assigned to only one project even if it only requires limited time. Therefore it results in idle time. Another issue can be that project group develop their own culture that departs from the organizations if not monitored.

Question 25

What is a matrix organization?

Answer 25

Any organization where the PM and function manager shares the responsibility of outcomes. It mixes the two extremes of functional and projectized to combine the twos advantages and trying to avoid their weaknesses.

Question 26

Advantages of matrix:

Answer 26

Flexible, easy to share resources, increased knowledge transfer between projects.

Question 27

disadvantages of matrix:

Answer 27

Two bosses, more meetings, more documentation, and many sources of conflict. Power relations between the two bosses.

Question 28

What is Agile?

Answer 28

Is a form of adaptive or change-driven project management. It largely reacts to what has happened early in the project rather than planning everything in detail from the start. Documentation is limited early on and progressively increased. Work is planned and done in sprints or iterations.

Question 29

What is the four parts of an agile mindset?

Answer 29

1. Satisfy the customer and put emphasis on the output.
2. Engage all participants through empowerment.
3. Facilitate empowerment through servant leadership.
4. Keep things simple with a sustainable pace and emphasis on process development

Question 30

Describe how a strong matrix is different from a weak matrix

Answer 30

A strong matrix gives relatively more power to the PM than the functional managers. In a weak matrix, the functional managers have relatively more power than the PM.

Question 31

What is co-location and why is it used?

Answer 31

Locating team members together to more effectively foster communication and team building and cooperation.

Question 32

For what five activities is the steering team responsible?

Answer 32

1. Overall priority setting.
2. Project selection and prioritization.
3. Sponsor selection.
4. general guidance.
5. Encouragement

Question 33

What is a team charter?

Answer 33

A team charter presents information about how members are expected to collaborate in the activities of the project and participate in making decisions.

Question 34

What two types of characteristics should a good team member have?

Answer 34

It should be knowledgeable in its area of expertise and willing/eager to learn.
The second one is that it should have a good organizational understanding and interpersonal skills to effectively cooperate with the rest of the team.

Question 35

What is the PDCA-model? And what does it stand for?
(in PROJECT TEAM CAPABILITY BUILDING CYCLE)

Answer 35

Plan, Do, Check, Act.
Use lessons from previous experiences to drive learning, Develop shared meaning and approaches, evaluate approaches and select desired approaches, enact and gain broader commitment.

Question 36

What is a potential downside to bringing in project workers too early in the project?

Answer 36

That the costs for salary increases. The costs go up before the project is fully planned. People feel undersstimulated because there are not enough tasks to do.

Question 37

When is the best time to on-board core team members?

Answer 37

As early as possible. There are great benefits to having them in the chartering and planning process. If they were part of the planning they will feel more motivated and committed.

Question 38

What is meant by the team ground rules? Give examples.

Answer 38

It is a more thorough plan of how the project team should work together. It is explanation of the processes they use.

Question 39

What is an issue log?

Answer 39

It is a list of current unsolved issues as well as old issues that have been solved. The purpose is to not forget issues that arise but can’t be handled atm. Also, by putting it in the issue log, focus can be spent on issues that can be dealt with right now instead on focusing on issues that cant be handled atm.

Question 40

What is a plus-delta evaluation?

Answer 40

It is an evaluation template one can use at the end of a meeting to lift things that went well with the meeting and things that can be changed in the meeting for the future.

Question 41

What is the difference between “push” and “pull” methods of communications?

Answer 41

Pull methods are that information is just uploaded somewhere for the stakeholders to access if wanted. Push methods is that the info is actively sent to a stakeholder that will get a notice that new info is available.

Question 42

Describe an Agile “stand-up” meeting

Answer 42

It is a meeting without any coffee or snacks and where everyone needs to stand up. This is a short briefing from everyone on what they accomplished yesterday and what they plan on doing today and any potential difficulties.