Working List Flashcards
5 alternative strategies may be considered for dealing with threats
Escalate. Escalation is appropriate when the project team or the project sponsor agrees that a threat is outside the scope of the project or that the proposed response would exceed the project manager’s authority.
Avoid. Risk avoidance is when the project team acts to eliminate the threat or protect the project from its impact. It may be appropriate for high-priority threats with a high probability of occurrence and a large negative impact.
Transfer. Transfer involves shifting ownership of a threat to a third party to manage the risk and to bear the impact if the threat occurs. Risk transfer often involves payment of a risk premium to the party taking on the threat.
Mitigate. In risk mitigation, action is taken to reduce the probability of occurrence and/or impact of a threat.
Accept. Risk acceptance acknowledges the existence of a threat, but no proactive action is taken. Acceptance can be either active or passive. The most common active acceptance strategy is to establish a contingency reserve, including amounts of time, money, or resources to handle the threat if it occurs. Passive acceptance involves no proactive action apart from periodic review of the threat to ensure that it does not change significantly.
5 alternative strategies may be considered for dealing with opportunities
Escalate. This risk response strategy is appropriate when the project team or the project sponsor agrees that an opportunity is outside the scope of the project or that the proposed response would exceed the project manager’s authority.
Exploit. The exploit strategy may be selected for high-priority opportunities where the organization wants to ensure that the opportunity is realized.
Share. Sharing involves transferring ownership of an opportunity to a third party so that it shares some of the benefit if the opportunity occurs.
Enhance. The enhance strategy is used to increase the probability and/or impact of an opportunity.
Accept. Accepting an opportunity acknowledges its existence but no proactive action is taken.
Secondary risks
Secondary risks are risks that arise as a direct result of implementing a risk response. A contingency reserve is often allocated for time or cost. If developed, it may include identification of the conditions that trigger its use.
Independent cost estimates
Independent cost estimates are developed either internally or by using external resources and provide a reasonableness check against the proposals submitted by bidders.
Rough order of magnitude (ROM)
Rough order of magnitude (ROM) estimate in the range of −25% to +75%
Problem Solving
Problem solving may use a set of tools that helps the project manager to solve problems that arise during the control resource process.
Identify the problem. Specify the problem.
Define the problem. Break it into smaller, manageable problems.
Investigate. Collect data.
Analyze. Find the root cause of the problem.
Solve. Choose the suitable solution from a variety of available ones.
Check the solution. Determine if the problem has been fixed.
Sequence of actions
Create project charter, create stakeholder register, inform stakeholders of the approved project charter.
Requirements traceability matrix
The requirements traceability matrix is a grid that links product requirements from their origin to the deliverables that satisfy them.
Typical attributes used in the requirements traceability matrix may include: a unique identifier, a textual description of the requirement, the rationale for inclusion, owner, source, priority, version, current status (such as active, cancelled, deferred, added, approved, assigned, completed), and status date.
Mind mapping
Mind mapping is a diagrammatic method used to visually organizing information. A mind map in quality is often created around a single quality concept, drawn as an image in the center of a blank landscape page, to which associated representations of ideas such as images, words, and parts of words are added. The mind-mapping technique may help in the rapid gathering of project quality requirements, constraints, dependencies, and relationships.
Trial engagements
Trial engagements. Not every seller is well suited for an organization’s environment. Therefore, some projects will engage several candidate sellers for initial deliverables and work products on a paid basis before making the full commitment to a larger portion of the project scope. This accelerates momentum by allowing the buyer to evaluate potential partners, while simultaneously making progress on project work.
Work performance reports
Work performance information is combined, recorded, and distributed in a physical or electronic form in order to create awareness and generate decisions or actions. Work performance reports are the physical or electronic representation of work performance information intended to generate decisions, actions, or awareness. They are circulated to the project stakeholders through the communication processes as defined in the project communications management plan.
Quality assurance departments
The project manager and project team may use the organization’s quality assurance department, or other organizational functions, to execute some of the Manage Quality activities such as failure analysis, design of experiments, and quality improvement. Quality assurance departments usually have cross-organizational experience in using quality tools and techniques and are a good resource for the project.
Retrospectives
Recurring retrospectives regularly check on the effectiveness of the quality processes. They look for the root cause of issues then suggest trials of new approaches to improve quality. Subsequent retrospectives evaluate any trial processes to determine if they are working and should be continued or new adjusting or should be dropped from use.
Retrospectives/lesson learned. A meeting held by a project team to discuss:
- Successful elements in the project/phase,
- What could be improved,
- What to incorporate in the ongoing project and what in future projects,
- What to add to the organization process assets.
Risk breakdown structure (RBS)
Risk breakdown structure (RBS), which is a hierarchical representation of potential sources of risk. An RBS helps the project team consider the full range of sources from which individual project risks may arise. This can be useful when identifying risks or when categorizing identified risks.
Benefits management plan
Development of the benefits management plan begins early in the project life cycle with the definition of the target benefits to be realized. The benefits management plan describes key elements of the benefits and may include but is not limited to documenting the following:
Target benefits (e.g., the expected tangible and intangible value to be gained by the implementation of the project; financial value is expressed as net present value);
Strategic alignment (e.g., how well the project benefits align to the business strategies of the organization);
Timeframe for realizing benefits (e.g., benefits by phase, short-term, long-term, and ongoing);
Benefits owner (e.g., the accountable person to monitor, record, and report realized benefits throughout the timeframe established in the plan);
Metrics (e.g., the measures to be used to show benefits realized, direct measures, and indirect measures);
Assumptions (e.g., factors expected to be in place or to be in evidence); and
Risks (e.g., risks for realization of benefits).
Business Documents
Project business case. A documented economic feasibility study used to establish the validity of the benefits of a selected component lacking sufficient definition and that is used as a basis for the authorization of further project management activities.
Project benefit management plan. The documented explanation defining the processes for creating, maximizing, and sustaining the benefits provided by a project.
Representations of uncertainty
Quantitative risk analysis requires inputs to a quantitative risk analysis model that reflect individual project risks and other sources of uncertainty.
Where the duration, cost, or resource requirement for a planned activity is uncertain, the range of possible values can be represented in the model as a probability distribution. This may take several forms. The most commonly used are triangular, normal, lognormal, beta, uniform, or discrete distributions. Care should be taken when selecting an appropriate probability distribution to reflect the range of possible values for the planned activity.
Work package - Code of accounts
The lowest level of the WBS is a work package with a unique identifier. These identifiers provide a structure for hierarchical summation of costs, schedule, and resource information and form a code of accounts. Each work package is part of a control account. A control account is a management control point where scope, budget, and schedule are integrated and compared to the earned value for performance measurement.
Resource optimization techniques
Resource optimization is used to adjust the start and finish dates of activities to adjust planned resource use to be equal to or less than resource availability.
Resource leveling. A technique in which start and finish dates are adjusted based on resource constraints with the goal of balancing the demand for resources with the available supply. Resource leveling can be used when shared or critically required resources are available only at certain times or in limited quantities, or are overallocated, such as when a resource has been assigned to two or more activities during the same time period or there is a need to keep resource usage at a constant level. Resource leveling can often cause the original critical path to change.
Resource smoothing. A technique that adjusts the activities of a schedule model such that the requirements for resources on the project do not exceed certain predefined resource limits. In resource smoothing, as opposed to resource leveling, the project’s critical path is not changed and the completion date may not be delayed. In other words, activities may only be delayed within their free and total float. Resource smoothing may not be able to optimize all resources.
Schedule compression techniques
Schedule compression techniques are used to shorten or accelerate the schedule duration without reducing the project scope in order to meet schedule constraints, imposed dates, or other schedule objectives.
Crashing. A technique used to shorten the schedule duration for the least incremental cost by adding resources. Examples of crashing include approving overtime, bringing in additional resources, or paying to expedite delivery to activities on the critical path.
Fast tracking. A schedule compression technique in which activities or phases normally done in sequence
are performed in parallel for at least a portion of their duration. An example is constructing the foundation for a building before completing all of the architectural drawings.
Risk management plan
Risk register
Risk report
The risk management plan shows the risk categories, risk appetite, and reporting formats.
The risk register records the agreed-upon risk responses for each individual risk and the nominated owners for each response plan.
The risk report includes an assessment of the current overall project risk exposure, as well as the agreed-upon risk response strategy. It also describes the major individual project risks with their planned responses.
Project management information system (PMIS)
Project management information systems (PMIS) can include schedule, resource, and cost software to ensure that agreed-upon risk response plans and their associated activities are integrated into the project alongside other project activities.
Basis of estimates
Basis of Estimates. Supporting documentation outlining the details used in establishing project estimates such as assumptions, constraints, level of detail, ranges, and confidence levels.
Brainstorming
Brain writing
Brainstorming. A general data-gathering and creativity technique that elicits input from groups such as team
members or subject matter experts.
Brain writing. A refinement of brainstorming that allows individual participants time to consider the question(s)
individually before the group creativity session is held. The information can be gathered in face-to-face groups or using virtual environments supported by technology
Bidder conferences
Bidder conferences (also called contractor conferences, vendor conferences, and pre-bid conferences) are meetings between the buyer and prospective sellers prior to proposal submittal. They are used to ensure that all prospective bidders have a clear and common understanding of the procurement and no bidders receive preferential treatment.
Fairness is the most important.
Decision-making techniques
Voting. Voting is a collective decision-making technique and an assessment process having multiple alternatives with an expected outcome in the form of future actions. These techniques can be used to generate, classify, and prioritize product requirements. Examples of voting techniques include:
- Unanimity. A decision that is reached whereby everyone agrees on a single course of action.
- Majority. A decision that is reached with support obtained from more than 50% of the members of the group. Having a group size with an uneven number of participants can ensure that a decision will be reached, rather than resulting in a tie.
- Plurality. A decision that is reached whereby the largest block in a group decides, even if a majority is not achieved. This method is generally used when the number of options nominated is more than two.
Autocratic decision making. In this method, one individual takes responsibility for making the decision for the group.
Multicriteria decision analysis. A technique that uses a decision matrix to provide a systematic analytical approach for establishing criteria, such as risk levels, uncertainty, and valuation, to evaluate and rank many ideas.
