PMP Flashcards
Define Stakeholder Engagement Plan
Documents how involved and influential the stakeholders are. Includes communication plan and how much information will be delivered
Define Communications Plan
Identifies how important information will be communicated to stakeholders (who/how/when/how often)
Define Risk Register
List of potential obstacles
Define Risk Report
Summary of identified risks, which have occurred, responses implemented, and overall risk exposure to the project
Define Risk Management Plan
Includes a risk budget, risk resources, risk tolerance levels, and how to implement risk response
What is the predictive or waterfall methodology?
Traditional approach with upfront planning, single-pass execution, and single delivery
What are the steps in the Change Control Process?
Assess the change > identify options for implementing the change > approve or reject the change (change control board (ccb)) > record the change
What is a Change Request Form?
Identify requirements for change (scope, time, organization, etc) > submit to project manager. Includes description, reasons, benefits, costs, impacts, supporting documentation, approvals
What is a Project Management Plan?
Formal, approved document that defines how the porject is executed, monitored, and controlled
What is a Project Charter?
Starts a project or phase. Objectives, scope, responsibilities, approximate schedule, budget estimate, anticipated risks, key stakeholders
Key words associated with: Planning Phase/Process
Plan/estimate/define
Key words associated with: Executing Phase/Process
Manage/conduct/implement
Key words associated with: Monitor and Control Phase/Process
Monitor/control/validate
Define Crashing
Adding more resources to a project
What are Opportunities/Threats?
Positive and negative risks respectively
Define Issue Log
List of real obstacles faced or facing
Define Lessons Learned
Positive and negative experiences of a project
Define Organizational Process Assets (OPA)
Plans, processes, policies, procedures, and knowledge bases specific to and used by the organization. May include schedules, risk data, and earned value data. Basically anything and everything about the project, kind of like lessons learned but all the rest of the crap
Define Stakeholder Register
Index of the project stakeholders and their essential attributes. Create early and update
Define Project Lifecycle
Series of phases that a project passes through from start to completion. Can be predictive (waterfall) or adaptive (agile)
Define Project Phase
Group of logically realted activities that culminate in the delivery of one or more deliverables. Phase exit criteria happens at end. E.g. feasiblity study
Define Project gate
Review of a project or program at the end of a phase with a decision made as whether to continue, modify, or end it
List project management process groups
Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling, Closing. These are not project phases
Define Deliverable
A unique and verifiable product, service, or result
Examples of Adaptive Lifecycle
Agile, iterative, or incremental
What is a Hybrid life cycle
Combines predictive and adaptive aspects. Elements that ar well-known or have fixed requirements follow predictive. Evolving elements follow adaptive
What happens in the Initiating process?
Project is authorized. Only projects aligned with strategic objectives are authorized. Business case, benefits, and stakeholders are considered
What happensin the Planning process?
Objectives are determined and how to reach those objectives with given contraints
What happens in the Executing process?
Actual project work. Mostly about resources. Runs in paraellel with Monitoring and Controlling
What happens in the Monitoring and Controlling process?
Project performance is monitored, measured, and verified (also reporting). Runs in parallel with the Executing process.
What happens in the Closing process?
The project and various phases are brought to a formal end
What are the 9 types of project organization/authority?
Organic/Simple, Functional/Centralized, Multi-divisional, Matrix Strong, Matrix Weak, Matrix Balanced, Project-oriented, virtual, hybrid
Organic/Simple project organization, list PM Authority, PM Role, Resource Availability, and who manages the project
Little, part-time, little, owner/operator
Functional/Centralized project organization, list PM Authority, PM Role, Resource Availability, and who manages the project
Little, part-time, little, functional manager
Multi-divisional project organization, list PM Authority, PM Role, Resource Availability, and who manages the project
Little, part-time, little, functional manager
Matrix Strong project organization, list PM Authority, PM Role, Resource Availability, and who manages the project
Moderate/High, full-time, moderate-high, project manager
Matrix Weak project organization, list PM Authority, PM Role, Resource Availability, and who manages the project
Low, part-time, low, functional manager
Matrix Balanced project organization, list PM Authority, PM Role, Resource Availability, and who manages the project
Low to moderate, part-time, low-moderate, mixed
Project-oriented project organization, list PM Authority, PM Role, Resource Availability, and who manages the project
High/total, full-time, high/total, project manager
Virtual project organization, list PM Authority, PM Role, Resource Availability, and who manages the project
Low to moderate, full-time, low to moderate, mixed
Hybrid project organization, list PM Authority, PM Role, Resource Availability, and who manages the project
Mixed, mixed, mixed, mixed
List the PMO’s authority, role, resource availability, and who manages the project
High/total, full-time, high/total, project manager
Define the 3 types of PMO
Supportive - resource for projects. Provides templates, best practices, training, lessons learned. Repository. Low control | Controlling - provides support but requires compliance (specific frameworks or methodologies, specific templates or tool). Moderate control. | Directive - directly manages the projects
Define Project Steering Group Committee (PSG)
Advisory group that helps set direction, scope, goals, budgets, and timelines
Define project governance
provides direction, establishes decision-making procedures, defines metrics for evaluation project.
What is “development approach”?
Method of creating and evolving a product, service, or result. Basically picking predictive, iterative, inremental, adaptive, or hybrid approach
When should you escalate issues to the sponsors or management
For the exam: (usually) NEVER reach out to management. Escalate to sponsor if: problem impacts funding, resources, or project success, lacks support in organization. A decision requires authorization to change scope
If you are an outside provider managing a project, what is a key step prior to closing the project?
Local team accepts and signs the transition plan
What are the three areas of the PMI Triangle?
Ways of Working (technical project management), Power Skills (leadership), Business Acumen (strategic and business management)
If a new project manager takes over a project, what should they first do?
Continue monitoring the project before taking any action (like changing the budget)
When a new project manager takes over a project, where should they look to understand the project?
Project charter and lessons learned
What role can functional managers play in a project besides providing resources?
Provide functional expertise
Who is responsible for obtaining funding, committing resources, and approving deliverables?
Project sponsor
What is an Operations Manager’s role?
Manage business operations efficiently
What is the difference between iterative and incremental methodologies?
Iterative allows feedback on unfinished work and delivers a single product at the end of the cycle. Incremental provides finished deliverables that the customer may use immediately (frequent, small deliveries). Both are good for unpredictable scope, but incremental is better when speed is important
What is the agile methodology?
Both iterative and incremental, meaning feedback is regularly given on work and there are multiple small deliverables
What are the primary goals of the following approaches: Predictive, Iterative, Incremental, Agile
Manage cost, correctness of solution, speed, customer value via frequent deliveries and feedback
What are some key differences between a project charter and a project management plan?
The charter is a high-level summary of the project outlining the goal, authority, and possible success metrics. Developed by the PM. It authorizes the project. The project management plan outlines the scope, timelines, budget, and methodology to be used. Developed with the project sponsors
What is a project business case?
Explains why a project is needed with analysis of costs and benefits (also called an economic feasibility study)
What is a project benefits management plan?
A document defining processes for creating, maximizing, and sustaining benefits, such as target benefits, timeframe for realizing benefits, metrics, assumptions and risks
What is a “weighted shortest job first (WSJF)” model used for?
A mathematical model used to objectively prioritize projects
Whose needs should be prioritized by a project: the customer or the business?
Customer
Lessons learned should include both explicit knowledge (charts, words, pictures) and tacit knowledge (belief, experience). True or false?
True
List the 5 steps in the Lessons Learned process
Identify recommendations, document and share findings, analyze and organize, store in a repository, retrieve for use on current projects
What is the triple constraint of a project? What does this affect/control?
Scope, Schedule, Cost –> Quality (quality is in the center of the triangle)
Define work performance data, information, and report
Data = measurement on project work (KPI’s, story points); information = information collected from the data (like the velocity); report = generate decisions or raise issues
What is a multicriteria decisions analysis?
Uses a decision matrix to provide a systematic analytical approach. Basically listing features and analyzing which/how much to implement (phone price, screen size, storage space, appearance). May use a voting process
What is Perform Integrated Change Control?
PM reviews all change requests to analyze and implement changes. Changes may be submitted by any stakeholder. Approved changes may require new cost estimates, schedule, etc. If there are no impacts to the baseline, then it is not a change request
What is a Change Management Plan
Document describing the process for submitting, evaluation, and implementing changes. How does a request start, who does it go to
What is the Configuration Management Plan?
Identifies items that require formal change control, i.e. items that affect the budget, schedule, scope, or work breakdown structure. Used to rebaseline project once change is executed.
What is a Configuration Management System?
Established methods, system, and procedures to control the change process (like SharePoint for version management)
Define Issue Log, Change Log, and Assumption Log
Issue log = tracks problems which are or could impact the project. Created after the risk happens; Change log = summarizes key details about changes (status); Assumption log = place to track the validity of each assumption
When a change is requested, who does the PM talk to first before implementing?
Change Control Board, not the product owner, sponsor or development team
Define enterprise environmental factors (EEF)
Conditions not under the control of the project team that impact project. May be internal or external
What is included in the Final Report?
After a project is formally closed, the final report provides a summary of the project performance and any products, services, or results that were delivered
What is the difference between Predictive Scope and Agile Scope?
Predictive scope is created at the beginning of the project. Agile Scope is created at the beginning of each iteration
What is the difference between a Scope Statement and a Scope Management Plan?
Scope statement documents the scope, acceptance criteria, deliverables, and exclusions. Scope Management outlines how the scope will be defined, developed, validated, monitored, controlled. This impacts how the schedule will be developed. It includes the scope statement, requirements, and deliverables
Essentially the scope statement outlines what is included/excluded and acceptance criteria. The Scope Management Plan takes this and adds requirements and deliverables.
What is the difference between product scope and project scope?
Product scope focuses on the end result (i.e. what needs to be done). Project scope is all the work needed for the project (i.e. how it will be done).
When defining scope, how do the project charter and scope statement correlate?
The project charter is a high-level outline of the scope which is used to guide the scope statement, which is a detailed description of the scope
What is the difference between validate scope and control scope?
Validate scope is concerned with acceptance by the client. Control scope is used check correctness/quality. Control happens before validate
What are the 7 steps to developing a Scope Baseline?
Create a WBS > define the project scope (I guess this comes after because you need to see what work you can handle or something?) > create scope statement > get WBS/dictionary and scope statement approved > baseline is ready > create scope management plan to monitor scope > create change management plan to control changes
What is the difference between a Work Breakdown Structure and a WBS Dictionary?
The WBS provides a breakdown of the work packages (groups of related tasks). The dictionary assigns responsibility and dates
What is the correlation between a scope statement, WBS, work package, and activity list?
Decomposed into Scope Statement > WBS > Work Package > Activity List
What is the requirements management plan?
Outlines all steps the project will take to collect, measure, test, and verify requirements
What is a requirements document?
Defines what is needed from the product
What is a requirement traceability matrix (RTM)?
Links the requirements to deliverables to prove that requirements are met. This outlines a use case, test case, and status (approved or not)
What is another term for “slack”?
Float
What is the difference between Lead and Lag times?
Lead is the overlap of tasks (like A finishes on Day 5 and B starts on Day 4, so overlap of 1 day). Lag is the delay from A finishing to B beginning
What is a Precedence Diagramming Method (PDM) or Activity On Node (AON)
Graphical tool for scheduling activities in a project plan (typical workflow diagram)
What is the difference between finish-to-start (FS) and finish-to-finish FF) scheduling methods?
FS = typical A -> B
FF = A and B can run in parallel, but A can’t finish until B finishes (you can edit a paper while it is being written, but can’t finish editing until it completely written)
What is the difference between start-to-start (SS) and start-to-finish (SF) scheduling methods?
SS = similar to FF. Activities can run in parallel, but B can’t start until A does (you can’t level concrete until the foundation has been poured, but it doesn’t have to be all the way poured to start)
SF = Task A cannot finish until task B starts. Like cutting over a new system - you can’t close out the legacy system until the new system is online. Not commonly used
What is Resource Optimization?
Method of flattening the schedule when resources are over-allocated or allocated unevenly. Resource Leveling and Resource Smoothing
What is the difference between resource leveling and resource smoothing?
Resource Leveling = start and finish dates are adjusted to accommodate critical resources, including changing the project start and end dates. Uses available float (slack)
Resource Smoothing = Used after resource leveling to optimize resources when you cannot extend the schedule. Tries to move around activities
What is bottom-up estimating for determining a schedule?
Work from the lowest items on the WBS on up. Time consuming but accurate
What is top-down/analogous estimating for determining a schedule?
Uses estimates from prior projects (assuming compared to top-level deliverables or milestones)
What is parametric estimating for scheduling?
Two or more parameters are used in an algorithm to determine schedule, like 1000 sqft/painter/day
That is three-point estimating (Triangular/PERT/Beta) for scheduling?
Gives three estimates: Most likely, optimistic, pessimistic. For Triangular, sum these and divide by 3 to get the average. For PERT or Beta, the M gets weighted by 4 (4M + O + P) / 6
On the PMP exam, what are clues for either a triangular estimate or PERT/Beta estimate?
Triangular: new projects, no experience, not much reliable data
PERT/Beta: team of experts, similar to triangular, but need more accurate estimate (since it uses weights)
Define the two types of schedule compression
Fast-tracking: activities are performed in parallel. May increase risk of rework, but does not inherently increase cost. This is used before crashing
Crashing: Additional resources added to project. Always increases cost and may increase risk. Use this when there is extra money (CPI is greater than 1). This could be overtime.
What is Brooks’ Law (scheduling)?
Adding more people later in a project can actually push out the date further due to increased coordination costs
What are the different components that make up a project budget (the breakdown of a project budget)?
Project Budget = Cost Baseline + Management Reserve
Cost Baseline = total of control accounts
Control accounts = work package costs + contingency
Work package costs = activity costs + activity contingency
Contingency reserves = identified risks
Management reserves = unidentified risks
What is Net Present Value (NPV)?
The difference between the value of cash now and the value of cash at a future date. Pick the value with the highest dollar amount - the years are taken into consideration. Complicated formula using discount rate.
What is a resource management plan?
Includes information on rates, travel costs, etc.
What is a benefits management plan?
Includes target benefits, including NPV calculations, timeframes for realizing benefits. Describes how and when benefits will be delivered
What is the benefit cost ration (BCR)?
Summarizes the relationship between a project cost and benefits. If greater than 1, the benefits outweigh the cost. If less than 1, costs outweigh benefits. Pick revenue over profit when calculating
What is wideband delphi?
Consensus-based estimation technique for estimating effort, such as questionnairs
Define: appraisal costs, internal failure cost, and sunk cost
AC = cost of auditing/checking work
IFC = defects before release
SC = wasted money.
What is the Schedule Performance Index? What does the number mean?
Shows how the schedule is progressing against the plan. Less than 1 = behind, greater than 1 = ahead
What is the Cost Performance Index (CPI)? What does the number mean? How is it calculated?
Measure financial performance. Less than 1 = over budget. Over 1 = under budget. CPI = Earned Value (completed features value to date; EV) / actual costs to date (AC)
A project has a baseline schedule of 180 days and a budget of $250,000. After 21 days, the project has spent US $60,000 and earned a value of $75,000. What is the CPI for this project?
75000 / 60000 > 1, so under budget
What is Earned Value Management (EVM)?
Takes the EVA (the numbers) and uses them to show trends and forecasts
What is Value Analsysis?
Attempts to decrease cost while maintaining the same scope