Project Management Flashcards

1
Q

What are the 10 Project Management Knowledge areas?

A

Integration, Scope, Time, Cost, Quality, Human Resources, Communications, Risk, Procurement, and Stakeholder

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2
Q

What is a project?

A

Something which brings about a unique product, service, or result and has a definite beginning and end

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3
Q

What’s the difference between project and ongoing ops?

A

Project is temporary and creates unique product or service. Ops work is ongoing and repetetive

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4
Q

What are 3 types of organizational structure?

A

functional, matrix (strong, weak and balanced), and projectized

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5
Q

What is role of project manager?

A

Project integration. Leads the team and oversees all work required to complete the project goals to satisfaction of stakeholders

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6
Q

What are most common project selection methods?

A

cost-benefit analysis, scoring models, payback period, and economic models (discounted cash flow, NPV, and IRR), and expert judgement

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7
Q

What skills are needed to manage a project beyond technical knowledge?

A

leadership, communication, problem-solving, negotiation, organization, and time management

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8
Q

What is a stakeholder?

A

a person or organization that has a vested interest in your project. They have something to gain or lose as a result of performing the project. They work to determine project requirements and provide direction throughout the life of the project and review and approve the final end product, service, or result. Also includes the customer

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9
Q

What are some typical responsibilities of a project sponsor?

A

Provide or obtain financial resources,
Approve the project charter,
Approve project baseline,
Help define and approve the high-level requirements,
Define business case and justification,
Authorize assignment of human resources,
Assign project manager and describe their authority,
Serve as final decision maker for project issues,
negotiate support from key stakeholders,
Communicate or market benefits of project
Monitor and control delivery of major milestones,
Run interference and remove roadblocks

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10
Q

What is the role of the project coordinator?

A

assist project manager in all aspects of project. usually assist in administrative support function

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11
Q

What is the role of the project scheduler?

A

developing and maintaining the project schedule, communicating the timelines and due dates, reporting schedule performance, and communicating any schedule changes to the stakeholders and team members

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12
Q

What is a key role of team members?

A

contributing deliverables according to the schedule including time and duration estimates for tasks, cost estimates for deliverables, status updates for their tasks, and dependencies related to their tasks

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13
Q

What is the PMO (project management office)

A

provides guidance to project managers and helps present a consistent, reliable approach to managing projects across the organization. maintain standards, processes, procedures, and templates

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14
Q

What are the key activities of the Initiation process?

A

Creating the project charter,
Creating a business case and justification,
Defining a high level scope definition,
Identifying high-level risks

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15
Q

What are the key activities of the Planning process?

A
Develop a project schedule,
Create a work breakdown structure,
Determine resources,
Identify and lan for detailed risk
Determine project requirements
Write a communication plan
Develop a procurement plan
Develop a change management plan
Define project budget
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16
Q

What is the purpose of the project charter and in which phase is it created?

A

authorize the project to begin; initiating

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17
Q

What is the purpose of the project management plan and in which phase is it created?

A

consists of all the project planning documents such as charter, scope statement, schedule, etc.;

Planning

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18
Q

What is the purpose of the issues log and in which phase is it created?

A

a list of issues, containing list numbers, descriptions, and owners

Executing

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19
Q

What is the purpose of the organizational chart and in which phase is it created?

A

describes project team members organization and reporting structures

Planning

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20
Q

What is the purpose of the scope statement and in which phase is it created?

A

documents the product description, key deliverables, success and acceptance criteria, key performance indicators, exclusions, assumptions, and constraints

Planning

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21
Q

What is the purpose of the communication plan and in which phase is it created?

A

Documents the types of information needs the stakeholders have, when the information should be distributed, and how the information will be delivered

Planning

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22
Q

What is the purpose of the project schedule and in which phase is it created?

A

Determines the start and finish dates for the project activities and assigns resources to the activities

Planning

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23
Q

What is the purpose of the Status report and in which phase is it created?

A

a report to stakeholders on the status of the project deliverables, schedule, risks, issues, and more

Executing

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24
Q

What is the propose of the Dashboard information and in which phase is it created?

A

An electronic reporting tool that lest users choose elements of the project to monitor project health and status

Executing

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25
Q

What is he purpose of the Action items and in which phase are they created?

A

a list of project actions what should be resolved in order to fulfill deliverables

Executing

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26
Q

What is the purpose of the meeting agenda/meeting minutes and in which phase are they created?

A

describe the items to be discussed and addressed at upcoming meetings, and recap what was discussed at decisions made at the meeting

Executing

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27
Q

What are the key activities of the Executing Process?

A

deliverables produced and verified

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28
Q

What are the key activities of the Monitoring and Controlling processes?

A
Monitoring the risks/issues log
Performance measuring and reporting
Performing QA/Governance activities
Administering change control process
Monitoring the budget
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29
Q

What are the key activities of the closing process?

A

Transition/integration plan to the maintenance/operations team,
Training for those who will support the product, services, or result of the project once its turned over to ops,
Project acceptance and sign-off,
Archiving project docs,
Documenting lessons learned,
Releasing resources,
Closing Contract

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30
Q

What is the end result of the initiating process?

A

project charter

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31
Q

Who publishes, signs, and approves the project charter?

A

project sponsor

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32
Q

What are some key elements to include in the project charter?

A
Purpose or justification for project,
Problem statement,
Project goals and objectives,
project description,
key deliverables,
stakeholder identification,
High-level list of requirements,
high-level milestones,
high-level budget,
high-level assumptions,
high-level constraints,
high-level risks,
name of the project manager and their authority level,
name of the sponsor,
criteria for project approval
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33
Q

What are known as the “triple constraint”?

A

time, scope, and cost

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34
Q

What is the scope management plan?

A

describes how the team will define project scope, validate the work, and manage and control scope. should contain the following:
process used to prepare the scope statement,
process for creating, maintaining, and approving the work breakdown structure,
definition of how the deliverable will be validated for accuracy and the process used for accepting deliverables,
description of the process for controlling scope change requests, including the procedure for requesting changes and how to obtain a change request form

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35
Q

What is scope creep?

A

changing the project or product scope without having approval to do so and without considering the impacts that will have on the project schedule, budget, and resources

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36
Q

What are some common project constraints?

A
budget
scope
deliverables
quality
environment
resources
requirements
scheduling
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37
Q

What are some common project influences?

A
change request,
scope creep,
constraint reprioritization,
interaction between constraints
stakeholder/sponsors/management
other projects
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38
Q

Describe business requirements

A

the big-picture results of fulfilling a project and how they satisfy business goals, strategy, and perspective

Can be anything from planned increase in revenue to a decrease in overall spending to increased market awareness

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39
Q

Describe functional requirements

A

the product characteristics needed for the product to perform

typically behavioural in nature or performance oriented and may also describe elements such as color, quantity, and other specifications

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40
Q

Describe non-functional requirements

A

the characteristics of functional requirements. Not performance or behavioural based. For example, a green button should be 1.5 in in diameter and a red button should be 2 in in diameter.

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41
Q

What are the minimum requirements to include in the requirements document?

A

Business need for the project and why it was undertaken,
Project objectives,
Project deliverables,
Requirements

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42
Q

What is the WBS?

A

Work breakdown structure.

A deliverables-oriented hierarchy that defines all the work of the project

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43
Q

What is decomposition?

A

The process of breaking down the high-level deliverables into smaller, more manageable work units

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44
Q

What is the lowest level of the WBS?

A

work package level - where resources, time, and cost estimates are determined

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45
Q

What is the WBS dictionary?

A

Where the WBS levels and work component descriptions are documented. Includes:
Code of accounts identifier,
description of the work of the component,
Organization responsible for completing the component,
Resources,
Cost Estimates,
Criteria for acceptance

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46
Q

What are some typical steps when constructing a project schedule?

A
Determine tasks,
Sequence tasks,
Allocate resources,
Determine task durations including start and end dates,
Determine milestones,
Construct a schedule,
Determine the critical path,
Set the baseline and obtain approval,
Set quality gates,
Establish the governance process
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47
Q

What are the types of task dependencies?

A

Mandatory, Discretionary, External, and Internal

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48
Q

What is a mandatory dependency?

A

directly related to the type of work being performed. Ex: utility crew can’t lay cable until trench has been dug

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49
Q

What is a discretionary dependency?

A

defined by project management team and is usually process or procedure driven. Ex: a process that requires approvals and sign-off on planning docs before proceeding

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50
Q

What is an external dependencyi?

A

relationship between a project task and some factor outside the project

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51
Q

What is an internal dependicy?

A

relationship between tasks within an individual project

52
Q

What are the four logical relationships that can exist between a predecessor activity and a successor activity?

A

Finish to start (FS), Start to finish (SF), Finish to finish (FF), and start to start (SS)

53
Q

What is a FS relationship?

A

successor activity cannot begin until the predecessor is completed

54
Q

What is a SF relationship?

A

predecessor activity must start before the successor can finish

55
Q

What is a FF relationship?

A

predecessor activity must finish before the successor activity finishes

56
Q

What is a SS relationship?

A

Predecessor activity must start before successor can start

57
Q

What is the PDM?

A

Precedence Diagramming Method

Most commonly used network diagramming method which uses boxes to represent project activities and arrows to connect them

58
Q

What are the task duration estimation techniques?

A

Analogous estimating, expert judgement, parametric estimating, and PERT (program evaluation and review technique)

59
Q

What is analogous estimating?

A

top-down estimating. uses actual durations from similar tasks on a previous project

60
Q

What is expert judgement?

A

people most familiar with the work determine the estimate

61
Q

What is parametric estimating?

A

quantitatively based estimating method that multiplies the quantity of work by the rate

62
Q

What is PERT?

A

program evaluation and review technique. Similar to 3 point estimate. Uses an expected value (weighted average) calculated using the 3 point estimates for activity duration and then finds the weighted average of those estimates

63
Q

What is a PERT chart?

A

a network diagram with nodes representing milestones, lines between them representing the sequence of tasks, and numbers by the lines representing the duration of the tasks

64
Q

What is the most common way to display project schedules?

A

Gantt chart

65
Q

What is a Gantt chart?

A

shows milestones, deliverables, and all the activities of the project including their durations, start and end dates, and resources assigned

Typically displays tasks using horizontal bar chart format across a timeline

66
Q

What is CPM?

A

Critical Path Method

determines the amount of float time for each activity on the schedule by calculating the earliest start date, earliest finish date, latest start date, and latest finish date for each task.

67
Q

What are critical path tasks?

A

tasks with the same early and late start dates and the same early and late finish dates, meaning they have zero float

68
Q

What is the critical Path?

A

the longest full path on the project

69
Q

What is duration compression?

A

techniques used during planning to shorten the planned duration of the project or during project execution to help resovlve schedule slippage

70
Q

What are the two duration compression techniques?

A

crashing and fast tracking

71
Q

What is crashing?

A

technique that looks at cost and schedule trade-offs. typically implemented by adding more resources to the critical path tasks in order to complete the project faster. Can also require mandatory overtime for team members working on critical path tasks

72
Q

What is fast tracking?

A

performing multiple tasks in parallel that were previously scheduled to start sequentially

73
Q

What is the schedule baseline?

A

the final approved version of the project schedule that includes the baseline start and finish dates and resource assignments

74
Q

What are quality gates?

A

similar to milestones. used to determine quality checks at strategic points and ensure that the work is accurate and meets quality standards

75
Q

What are governance gates?

A

approval points in the project. can be used as additional approval checkpoints or go/no-go decision points

76
Q

What are the 3 governance gates?

A

client sign-off, management approval, and legislative approval

77
Q

What are interproject dependencies?

A

when the completed deliverables from one project are needed in order to work on the current project

78
Q

What are the primary ways to manage conflict?

A

smoothing, forcing, compromising, confronting, avoiding, and negotiating

79
Q

What is smoothing?

A

temporary way to resolve conflict. areas of agreement are emphasized over areas of difference. lose-lose conflict resolution style.

80
Q

What is forcing?

A

one person forces a solution on the other parties. permanent solution, win-lose

81
Q

What is compromising?

A

each of the parties give up something to reach a solution. neither side wins or loses, but can be a permanent solution

82
Q

What is confronting?

A

problem solving - best method to resolve conflict. involves fact-finding mission to find the right solution. leads to permanent solution, win win technique

83
Q

What is avoiding?

A

withdrawal - no solution. one party gets up and leaves/refuses to discuss conflict. worst technique, lose-lose

84
Q

What is negotiating?

A

both parties communicate, listen, and ask questions. sometimes 3rd party is involved. helps all parties reach an agreement. can be win-win, win-lose, or lose-lose

85
Q

When is the project kickoff meeting held and what is its purpose?

A

after project charter is signed. formally introduce team members and stakeholders and convey same message to everyone

86
Q

What are the key components of a kickoff meeting?

A
welcome,
introductions,
project sponsor and key stakeholders,
project overview,
stakeholder expectations,
roles and responsibilities,
Q&A
87
Q

What is resource allocation?

A

identifying resource availability and skill sets and assigning them to project tasks

88
Q

What is a RACI chart?

A

responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed chart.

shows the resource role and responsibility level for the work product

89
Q

What are the 5 stages of team development?

A

forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning.

90
Q

What is bottom-up estimating?

A

most precise cost-estimating technique .assigns a cost estimate to each work package on the project

91
Q

What is earned value management?

A

a performance measurement technique that compares what your project has produced to what you’ve spent by monitoring the planned value, earned value, and actual costs expended

92
Q

What is the PV?

A

planned value. cost of work that has been authorized and budgeted

93
Q

What is AC?

A

actual cost. the actual cost of completing the work component

94
Q

What is EV?

A

earned value. the value of the work completed to date. typically expressed as a percentage of work completed compared to the budget.

95
Q

What is CV?

A

cost variance. tells you whether yoru costs are higher than budgeted (negative number) or lower than budgeted (positive number). CV=EV-AC

96
Q

What is SV?

A

Schedule variance. compares an activity’s actual progress to date to the estimated progress, represented in terms of cost. SV=EV-PV
negative = behind schedule, positive = ahead of schedule

97
Q

What is CPI?

A

cost performance index. measures the value of work completed to the actual cost. if > 1, spending less than anticipated. < 1 = spending more than anticipated. CPI=EV/AC

98
Q

What is SPI?

A

schedule performance index. measures the progress against progress planned. >1, performance better than expected. < 1 = behind schedule. SPI = EV/PV

99
Q

What is burn rate?

A

the rate you are spending money over time.

100
Q

What are the strategies used to deal with negative risks?

A

avoid, transfer, mitigate, and accept

101
Q

What are the strategies associated with positive risk?

A

exploit - look for opportunities to take advantage
share - assign the risk to a 3rd party better able to bring about the opportunity
enhance - monitor the probability or impact of the risk event to ensure realized benefits
accept - choose to accept the consequences of the risk

102
Q

What are the key components of the project management plan?

A
scope statement,
project schedule,
communication plan,
resource plan,
procurement plan,
project budget,
quality management plan,
risk management plan
103
Q

What are the 3 types of change requests?

A

corrective actions - bring work of project into alignment w/ project management plan
preventive actions - implemented to help reduce the probability of a negative risk event
defect repairs - corrects or replaces components that are substandard or malfunctioning

104
Q

What are the key parts of the change management system

A

identify and document the change request,
track requests in the change request log,
evaluate the impact and justification,
disposition the request at the change control board and approve/deny,
implement the change,
validate the change and perform quality check,
update the project management plan,
coordinate and communicate w/ stakeholders

105
Q

what should be kept in the change request log?

A

assigned ID number for tracking,

other info depending on needs of projec

106
Q

What are the types of organizational change?

A
merger/acquisition - merger is when two businesses come together as one organization. acquisition is when one business takes over another.
demerger/split - opposite of merger,
business process change,
internal reorganization,
relocation,
outsourcing
107
Q

What is Agile Project Management?

A

method of managing projects in small, incremental portions of work

108
Q

Who is the scrum master?

A

coordinates the work of the Agile sprint. run interference between team and distractions. assist product owner in maintaining the backlog, prioritizing work, and defining when work is done

109
Q

Who is the product owner?

A

represents the stakeholders and is a liaison between stakeholders and scrum master

110
Q

What is the waterfall approach?

A

an approach where each phase of the project is completed in its entirety before moving on to the next phase. can be an iterative approach

111
Q

What is PRINCE2?

A

Projects in Controlled Environments version 2. incorporates quality management into project management processes.

112
Q

What is a histogram?

A

displays frequency distributions of variable data

113
Q

What is a fishbone diagram?

A

cause and effect diagram showing relationship between the effects of problems and their causes

114
Q

What is a pareto chart?

A

displayed as histogram that rank-orders the most important factors by frequency which cause problems in a project

115
Q

What is a run chart?

A

displays data observed or collected over time as plots on a line

116
Q

What is a scatter diagram?

A

plots two numerical variables on a chart to determine correlation

117
Q

What is SWOT analysis?

A

analysis completed to assess or justify why a project is important

118
Q

What are KPIs?

A

key performance indicators. show whether the project is reaching its intended goals

119
Q

What are KPPs?

A

key performance parameters. set operational goals or performance levels for systems. represented as the minimum acceptable value for the system

120
Q

What are the 4 types of formal project endings?

A

addition, starvation, integration, and extinction

121
Q

What is addition?

A

project evolves into ongoing operations

122
Q

What is starvation?

A

resources are cut off from the project or no longer provided, leaving an unfinished project

123
Q

What is integration?

A

when resources of the project are distributed to other areas in the organization or are assigned to other projects

124
Q

What is the difference between starvation and integration?

A

starvation is a result of staffing, funding, or other resource cuts, while integration is the result of reassignment or redeployment of resources

125
Q

What is extinction?

A

project has been completed and accepted by stakeholders

126
Q

What are the steps to closing out a project?

A

obtain formal sign-off and acceptance of project,
transfer results of project to ops and maintenance,
release project resources,
close out contracts,
perform admin closure,
document historical info for future projects,
conduct lessons learned,
preparing the project close report

127
Q

What are the 10 PMBOK guide knowledge areas?

A
scope,
time,
cost,
quality,
human resources,
communications,
risk,
procurement, 
integration,
and stakeholder