PMBOK Terms, Tools and Techniques, and Organization Structure Flashcards
This will include general information, such as types of organizations leadership styles, best project practices, and acronyms.
What is Project Management
The application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements.
What are the benefits of Project Management?
- Meet business objectives and goals
- Address stakeholder needs and expectations
- Resolve issues sooner
- Be more successful
- Become more adaptive
What does BCA stand for
Benefit Cost Analysis
What does BCR stand for?
Benefit Cost Ratio
What does BIM stand for?
Building Information Model
What does CCB stand for?
Change Control Board
What does CCM stand for?
Critical Chain Method
What does COQ stand for?
Cost Of Quality
What does CPI stand for?
Cost Performance Index
What does CPIF stand for?
Cost Plus Incentive Fee
What does CPM stand for?
Critical Path Method
What does CV stand for?
Cost Variance
What does EMV stand for?
Expected Monetary Value
What does FF stand for?
Finish to Finish
What does FFP stand for?
Firm Fixed Price
What does FPEPA stand for?
Fixed Price with Economic Price Adjustments
What does FS stand for?
Finish to Start
What does IRR stand for?
Internal Rate of Return
What does MOU stand for?
Memorandum of Understanding
What does NPV stand for?
Net Present Value
What does OBS stand for?
Organizational Breakdown Structure
What does OPA stand for?
Organizational Process Assets
What does PBP stand for?
Payback Period
What does PDCA stand for?
Plan Do Check Act
What does PDM stand for?
Precedence Diagramming Method
What does RACI stand for?
Responsible, Accountable, Consult, Inform
What does RAM stand for?
Responsibility Assignment Matrix
What does RBS stand for?
Resource or Risk Breakdown Structure
What does RCA stand for?
Root Cause Analysis
What does RFI stand for?
Request For Information
What does RFP stand for?
Request For Proposal
What does RFQ stand for?
Request For Quotation
What does ROM stand for?
Rough Order of Magnitude
What does SF stand for?
Start to Finish
What does SIPOC stand for?
Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs and Customers
What does SS stand for?
Start to Start
What does SV stand for?
Schedule Variance
What does SWOT stand for?
Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats
What does TOR stand for?
Terms of Reference
What does VAC stand for?
Variance At Completion
What does VOC stand for?
Voice Of the Customer
What does WPD stand for?
Work Performance Data
What does WPI stand for?
Work Performance Information
What does WPR stand for?
Work Performance Reports
What three characteristics does a successful Project Manager have?
Knowledge (Know the tools and techniques.) Performance (Work ethic and being able to deliver.) Personal Skills (Being able to lead a team.)
What is a Portfolio?
A portfolio is a group of projects or programs that are linked together by a business goal.
What is a Program?
A group of projects that are closely linked to the point that managing them together provides some benefit.
What is a Project?
Any work that produces a specific result and is temporary.
What are all the Project Lifecycles?
- Predictive
- Adaptive
- Iterative
- Incremental
- Hybrid
What is a Predictive Lifecycle?
The projects schedule, scope, and costs are defined up front.
What is an Adaptive Lifecycle?
Adaptive lifecycles are about change. Teams approach the work by repeatedly performing all project activities to deliver small pieces of the project. Each piece is called an increment and can be considered a final product in its own right.
What is an Iterative Lifecycle?
An Iterative Lifecycle plans most of the work up front but uses repeated loops within the project lifecycle to identify possible changes to scope, schedule and cost baselines. Changes can be made throughout these loops.
What is an Incremental Lifecycle?
The team delivers small usable pieces of work to their stakeholders for feedback through a series of iterations. Close to adaptive, but increments here cannot be considered final products. They have to combine in a final iteration to be considered complete.
What is a Hybrid Lifecycle?
Any combination of predictive and adaptive approaches.
What does a Portfolio Charter provide?
A portfolio charter lays out the strategic benefits that a portfolio is going to accomplish. It lists all of the programs and projects included in the portfolio.
What does a Program Charter provide?
A program charter defines the shared benefit that the program is achieving as well as the list of projects it includes.
What does a Project Charter provide?
A project charter gives a project description, summary schedule, and business case, and assigns a project manager.
What is Progressive Elaboration?
Progressive elaboration is when you learn more and more about a project as it goes on, and update the project management plan. Almost all projects will be progressively elaborated.
What are some characteristics that don’t define a project that you think would normally be?
Projects are not always strategic or critical. They are not ongoing operations, and they are not always successful.
What is an operation or process?
Work that is done in a way that is repeatable and ongoing.
What is a project constraint?
Any limitation that’s places on your project before you start doing the work.
What are the three categories project managers do in their roles?
Gather project requirements, manage stakeholder expectations, and deal with project constraints.
What are the three types of PMO Offices?
- Supportive
- Controlling
- Directive
What is a Supportive PMO?
Supportive PMO’s provide all the templates you need while your project is under way. They will lay out the standards for how you should communicate our project’s scope, resources, schedule, and status, but won’t force you to follow those templates.
What is a Controlling PMO?
Controlling PMO’s will check that you are following the process they prescribe. They will also periodically review the work that you are doing to make sure that you are following said guidelines.
What is a Directive PMO?
Directive PMO’s actually provide project managers to project teams. The project manager usually reports to the PMO directly. The reporting structure makes sure that project managers follow the frameworks and templates, because their job performance depends on it.
What are the eight interpersonal and Team Skills?
- Leadership
- Team Building
- Trust Building
- Motivation
- Influencing
- Coaching
- Conflict Management
- Political and Cultural Awareness
What is the difference between a functional organization and a projectized organization?
In a functional organization, project managers don’t have the authority to make major decisions on projects, whereas projectized organizations give all authority to the PM.
What are all the different organization types?
- Organic
- Functional
- Multidivisional
- Weak Matrix
- Balanced Matrix
- Strong Matrix
- Project Oriented
- Virtual
- Hybrid
- Project Management Office (PMO)
What are the six key project constraints?
- Time
- Cost
- Scope
- Resources
- Quality
- Risk
What are characteristics of organizational process assets?
Process, policies, procedures, and knowledge repositories in which you revamp based on past experience.
What are enterprise environmental factors?
Factors that the project manager can’t control: People, market, where database storage is, government policy, company standards, company risk tolerance.
What are the 5 Process groups, in order?
- Initiating
- Planning
- Executing
- Monitoring & Controlling
- Closing
What are the 10 knowledge areas, in order?
- Integration
- Scope
- Schedule
- Cost
- Quality
- Resource
- Communication
- Risk
- Procurement
- Stakeholder
What is a sequential relationship?
A project where you are completing it in phases, and those phases come one after the other.
What is an overlapping relationship?
A project where the phase times overlap with each other.
What is an iterative relationship?
An approach to project phases that is partway between sequential and overlapping. This means you have a single team that is performing the Initiating and Planning process, while also doing the executing for the previous phase. Agile software development uses this commonly.
What are three main components in the PMI Talent Triangle?
Technical Project Management, Leadership, and Strategic/Business Management.
What are the six styles of leadership, and what is a characteristic of each one?
- Laissez Faire
- Transactional
- Charismatic
- Transformational
- Interactional
- Servant Leader
Laissez fair is a hands-off leadership approach. Transactional leaders make goals explicit and then track progress towards completing them. Charismatic leaders inspire the team and encourages them through a strong conviction of their own. Transformational leaders focus on inspiring, but encourage the team to change the environment around them. Interactional leaders change style depending on the situation, and servant leaders focus on serving the teams needs.
What are the 14 different power dynamics that can affect a team?
- Positional
- Informational
- Referent
- Situational
- Personal or charismatic
- Relational
- Expert
- Reward-oriented
- Punitive of coercive
- Ingratiating
- Pressure based
- Guilt based
- Persuasive
- Avoiding
What is “Float?”
The duration of which an activity can be delayed without affecting the critical path. Activities on the critical path will always have a float of zero.
What is the critical path in a Network Diagram?
The critical path is the path that takes the longest duration out of the available paths. Any delay in activities along the critical path will delay the project.
What is a forward pass in a Network Diagram?
The duration of path from left to right on a Network Diagram (Foward Pass = Start Date + Duration - 1). Used to calculate the early start and finish figures.
What is a backward pass in a Network Diagram?
The duration of a path from right to left on a Network Diagram. (Last Date - Duration + 1) Used to calculate the late start and finish figures.
What are Enterprise Environmental Factors (EEF’s)?
Enterprise Environmental Factors tell you how your company does business. Company overall strategy, policies, company culture, etc. Can also include outside influences like government regulations. An important one is the Project Management Information System (PMIS).
What are Organizational Process Assets (OPA’s)?
Organizational process sets tell you about how your company normally runs its projects. Things like templates, lessons learned, etc.
What is the Project Management Information System (PMIS)?
The Project Management Information System determines how work is assigned, and makes sure that tasks are done in the right order. This is an EEF.
What are all the components to the Project Management Plan?
- Scope Management Plan
- Requirements Management Plan
- Schedule Management Plan
- Cost Management Plan
- Quality Management Plan
- Resource Management Plan
- Communications Management Plan
- Risk Management Plan
- Procurement Management Plan
- Stakeholder Management Plan
- Scope Baseline
- Schedule Baseline
- Cost Baseline
The Project Management Plan is “Formal.” What does this mean?
Formal means that it is written down and distributed to your team.
What is the first thing you should do when you encounter a change?
Consult the Project Management Plan
What are the baselines for in the Project Management Plan?
They include snapshots of the scope, schedule, and budget that you can use to keep track of them as they change.
What is work performance Data?
Raw data that is being measured by how and when the processes from each knowledge area are being performed.
Any time you have to correct a mistake or make a repair in a deliverable, you’re fixing a _____.
Defect
What are the three components of the Direct and Manage Project Work process?
- Use the plan to create deliverables
- Repair defects in deliverables
- As the project plan changes, make sure those changes are reflected in the deliverables.
What is explicit and tacit information?
Explicit information is information that is written down. Tacit information is in people’s heads.
Do changes, even if not approved, need to be in the change log?
Yes
Does a repair to a defect need to go through change control?
Yes
What is a Change Request?
A form that you fill out to send a change through change control.
What is Change Control vs a Change Control System?
Change control is how you deal with changes in your Project Management Plan, a Change Control System is the set of procedures that lets you make those changes in an organized way.
What does the Performance Measurement Baseline consist of?
- Scope Baseline
- Schedule Baseline
- Cost Baseline
This is a snapshot of your scope, schedule, and cost.
What is a Forecast?
When someone makes an estimate or prediction of a future condition that could lead to trouble.
If you can make a change on your own that doesn’t impact the project constraints: scope, cost, time, quality, risk, or resources, can the PM make this change?
Yes, the project manager is within their rights in this case without having to go through control.
What is a key benefit to project integration?
Project integration, the use of all processes and knowledge areas, makes sure that the project stays aligned with the benefits it’s meant to bring.
What is Tailoring?
Tailoring is when you make changes to the processes your team will use during the course of the project.
What does the “Work Authorization System” do?
Ensures that every work package is performed at the right time and in the proper sequence. This is defined by the company, and is external to a project.
Who determines the prioritization of issues on a project?
The Project Manager
Do defect repairs require an update in the project management plan?
No
What is Product Scope?
All the features and functions of the product or service that you and your team are building.
What is Project Scope?
All of the work that needs to be done to make the product.
What is Scope Creep?
Uncontrolled changes that cause the team to do extra work.
What is the purpose of the Scope Management Plan?
The Scope Management Plan describes the process you’ll use for defining scope and managing changes to it.
What purpose does a Requirements Management Plan serve, and what knowledge area is it in?
The Requirements Management Plan will describe all of the processes the team uses to document your requirements na maintain that document throughout the project. You’ll find the approach the team will take to planning, tracking, and reporting on requirements. You’ll use this document to describe the prioritization process for requirements and how you’ll build a traceability matriculates for your requirements as well. This plan is created in the “Scope Management” knowledge area.
What is the purpose fo the Scope Management Plan?
The Scope Management plan details the process you and your team will follow as you document your scope, comes up with the WBS, and validate/control scope for the rest of the project.
What are the four main decision making techniques?
- Unanimity
- Majority
- Plurality
- Autocratic
What is Multicriteria Decision Analysis?
Multicriteria decision analysis is when teams use numbers to help them map out decisions.
What is the Nominal Group Technique?
A form of brainstorming where you write down the ideas as you find them, and have the group vote on which ones they like best. You then use all the votes to rank the ideas and separate the ones that aren’t important from the ones you want to delve into deeper.
What is Facilitation?
Facilitation is the ability to effectively guid ea group event to a successful decision, solution, or conclusion.
What are three types of Data Representation?
- Affinity Diagrams
- Idea/Mind Maps
- Contact Diagrams
What are the common data gathering techniques?
- Interviews
- Focus Groups
- Questionnaires and Surveys
- Brainstorming
- Benchmarking
- Observation
- Prototype
What is a prototype?
A model of the product that you’re going to build that gives your stakeholders a better idea of what your team is thinking.
How do you know when your requirements bathing process is complete?
When you’ve got a way to verify each of them once they’re built.
What are Functional Requirements?
Functional Requirements are the behaviors of the product. (Examples: New features, bug fixes)