Program Management Flashcards
Program management questions (28%)
How will you identify stakeholders and why do you need to know more about them?
The process of identifying the key stakeholders begins when a project starts.
To recognize the decision-makers, you ask the following questions:
Who will furnish funds for the project?
Who will supply resources for the seamless execution of the project?
Who are the end customers for the outcome of the project?
Who will offer other types of support?
Who will be giving guidelines/regulations that need to be followed while working on the project?
Who will provide specifications for the project?
Knowing about stakeholders and engaging them throughout the project lifecycle is crucial for project success. The reason being that the project is being undertaken to fulfill its objectives and expectations.
What is stakeholder analysis and Power-Interest Grid used for?
Stakeholder analysis involves preparing a list of all the potential stakeholders who will be associated with the project in some way or the other.
A power-interest grid is used for categorizing stakeholders and prioritizing them based on significance and impact.
Stakeholder analysis and power-interest grid help in prioritizing the positions of the stakeholders in the project for developing relevant stakeholder engagement strategies for different groups.
What kind of documents do you need during project initiation?
a. Business Case Document:
It acts as a reference point for the initiation of any internal project. This document offers a detailed financial analysis of the potential investments and benefits likely to come from the project along with the financial justification of whether the project should be done or not.
b. Agreement:
The agreement is one of the first documents a PM refers to understand more about the project. It is the contract signed with the client and outlines the scope, time, cost, and terms/conditions agreed between the performing and the requesting organization.
c. Project charter:
This document outlines the specific objectives of the project and establishes the formal authorization of the project. The project charter has the name of the PM and is signed by the sponsor.
d. Stakeholder register:
A stakeholder register includes the details about the interest and powers of different stakeholders, their current level of engagement. New stakeholders keep getting added to the register as they get identified during the project lifecycle.
What are the techniques that you can use to collect project requirements? (Mention techniques for collecting requirements + different classification of requirements.)
Requirement collection and final concurrence happen with the project stakeholders with the help of functional experts and business analysts.
The crucial techniques used for requirement gathering are:
Data gathering (pondering, standardization, focus groups, questionnaires, and surveys and interviews)
Data analysis (examining different project documents)
Observation (monitoring the performance of the team members)
Affinity diagram (grouping of requirements and ideas)
Prioritization of the requirements by using techniques like MoSCoW
Prototyping
Gathered requirements can be classified into different categories such as transition, reliability, functional, non-functional, security, quality, and regulatory and user-interface-drive. They help the team in visualizing different aspects of the project requirements and addressing them accordingly.
What is the importance of maintaining a requirement traceability matrix?
The purpose of designing a requirement traceability matrix is to track each requirement at every stage of development. The end goal is to make sure that no phase gets closed till all the requirements are taken into account. Additionally, it helps the team to avoid missing any requirements.
What are the details that a project plan should include? (Mention project baseline and who prepares project management plans.)
A project plan is a blueprint that includes detailed information about how the project will be executed, monitored, and closed. It comprises the project scope, schedule, cost estimates, and budget constraints known as project baselines. A project plan is prepared by the PM with the help of inputs given by the core team members involved in designing various components of the plan.
What is a WBS and how does it help in preparing a good plan?
WBS is referred to as Work breakdown structure which is a crucial technique for having a complete idea about the project scope. It entails breaking up the project work into smaller and manageable chunks known as work packages.
A well-thought WBS leads to the development of an accurate and robust project plan. WBS helps the PM and the team in refining and defining the specific project requirements and scope in detail for seamless execution and tracking of the project progress. The result is coherent project management.
How does the RACI matrix helps in resource management?
Once the project manager starts assigning roles and responsibilities among various team members, it becomes extremely important for a PM to chart a RACI matrix.
In simplest terms, the RACI matrix is a responsibility assignment chart used to map out every task, milestone, and key decision required to complete a project. As there are many stakeholders and involved in a project having clarity about the duties of every member helps in removing doubts for which the RACI matrix is crucial.
It’s one of the most popular responsibility based assignment charts with four possible roles “accountable”, “inform”, “responsible”, “consult”.
What is the role of a critical path in project planning?
The critical path is crucial for effective project planning as it helps in determining the best possible timeline for completing the project by outlining the sequence of dependent tasks that forms the longest duration. Identifying, managing, and monitoring the critical path and ensuring all its activities aren’t delayed is vital for completing the project within the deadline.
What are the steps that you will take to do risk planning?
Effective risk planning is central to the success of a project by minimizing threats and maximizing opportunities. The steps involved in risk planning are:
Discovering risks
Analyzing potential risks including their probability and anticipated impact
Prioritizing risks
Developing risk responses for opportunities and hazards
Maintaining a risk register
Risk planning compiles all the risk events, their probabilities, impact, and response plan that will serve as a reference point for establishing cost estimates and project schedules.
You will be using QA and QC for ensuring the quality of the final deliverables. What’s the difference between them?
Keeping the quality of project deliverables in check is highly important which is done using Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC).
QA involves the principles and processes to do the project work and sticking to these processes ensures the final deliverables will meet the expectations of the project. QA is done through seamless execution and development.
QC includes analyzing the final deliverables based on the laid down guidelines and leveraging inspection to check whether the outcomes meet the expected standards.
