PMBOK - Chap 2 Flashcards
An organization’s culture and style, or cultural norms, include established approaches to initiate and planning projects, the means considered to acceptable for getting the work done and recognizes who make or influence the decisions. Which are the common experiences that shapes an organizational culture?
- shared vision, mission,values, beliefs and experiences;
- regulations, policies, methods, and procedures;
- motivation and reward system;
- risk tolerance;
- view of leadership, hierarchy, and authority relationship;
- code of conduct, work, ethic, and work hours;
- operating environment.
Matrix organizations can be classified as weak, balanced, or strong. Which are the characteristics of each one?
Weak matrix organizations maintain many of the characteristics of a functional organization, and the role of the project manager is more of a coordinator or expediter that work as a staff assistant.
Balanced matrix organizations recognizes the need for a full time project manager, it does not provide the project manager with full authority over the project, budget, and resources.
Strong matrix organizations have similar characteristics of projectized organizations with full time project managers, providing to them high to moderate authority over the project and resources and full control of the budget.
Which are the differences between the classic functional structure and projectized structures?
In a functional structure, each employee has one clear superior and staff members are grouped by specialty. Each department does its project work independently.
In a projectized organization, the resources are all involved in project work, and project managers have great independence and authority. The project manager report directly to the executive chief. Team members report directly to the project manager.
Many organizational structures include strategic, middle management, and operational levels. How project manager may interact with all these levels?
Analyzing the environment and creating a strategy based on:
- strategic importance of the project;
- capacity of stakeholder to exert influence on the project;
- degree of project management maturity;
- project management system
- organization communications
After understand all organizational factors and the relation among strategic, middle management, and operational levels, the characteristics of the project can be defined. Which are these characteristics?
- project manager’s level of authority;
- resources availability and management;
- entity controlling the budget;
- project manager’s role;
- project team composition.
What is organizational process assets?
They are the plans, process, policies, procedures, and knowledge base specific and used by the performing organization.
The process assets may also include lessons learned, historical information, completed schedules, risk data, and earned value data.
Which are the organizational process and assets for conducting project work?
Initiating and planning: guidelines, organizational’s set of standards, policies, procedures, and templates.
Executing, monitoring and controlling: change control procedures, financial controls procedures, issues and defect management procedures, communication requirements, procedures for prioritizing, risk control procedures and work instructions.
Closing: project closing guidelines or requirements.
You are a new project manager at a huge company and you have been asked to create a corporate knowledge base. What kind of information would you put in this base?
- Configuration knowledge base with organizational standards, policies, procedures, and any other project documents;
- Financial database containing labor hours, incurred costs, budgets, and any other project costs overruns;
- Historical information and lessons learned;
- Issues and defect management database with issues and defects resolutions;
- Process measurement database;
- project files from previous projects (scope, cost, schedule, performance measurement, etc).
Enterprise environment factors refer to conditions, not under the control of the project team, that influence, constrain, or direct the project. Which are the most common enterprise environment factors?
- organizational culture, structure, and governance;
- geographic distribution of facilities and resources;
- government or industry standards;
- infrastructure;
- existing human resources;
- personnel administration;
- company work authorization system;
- marketplace conditions;
- stakeholder risk tolerance;
- political climate;
- organization’s established communications channels;
- commercial databases;
- project management information system.
What is a stakeholder?
A stakeholder is an individual, group, or organization who may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of a project.
How project governance can be defined?
Project governance is an oversight function that is aligned with the organization’s governance model and that encompass the project life cycle, providing structure, process, decision-making models and tools for managing the project.
Since projects are temporary in nature, how can be measured the success of a project?
The success of a project can be measured in terms of completing the project within the constraints of scope, time, cost, quality, resources, and risk approved between the project managers and senior management.
A generic life cycle structure is often referred to when communicating with upper management or external entities less familiar with the project. This structure is different from project management process groups. Explain this structure.
The common structure is composed by phases: starting the project, organizing and preparing, carrying out the project work, and closing the project.
The starting phase occurs during the development of the project charter. Organizing and preparing phase is performed during the elaboration of project management plan. Carrying out phase takes place during the construction of the solution and finish when products are delivered.
The closing phase starts when all deliverables have been accepted and the documentation of the products has been finished.
A project may be divided into any number of phases and each one represents a group of both similar and related activities. The phase can also allow the project to be segmented and make it easier to manage. Regardless to the number of phases, which are the basic characteristics for all phases?
- The work had a different focus that differs from any other phases.
- Achieving
