What is a project?
A project is a new, time-bound effort that has a definite beginning and a definite ending with several related and/or interdependent tasks to create a unique product or service.
What is project management?
The art and science of using knowledge, skills, tools, and tech-niques efficiently and effectively to meet stakeholder needs and expectations.
→ includes work processes that initiate, plan, execute, control, and close work during which trade-offs must be made among the following factors:
- Scope (size and features)
- Quality (acceptability of the results)
- Cost
- Schedule
- Resources
- Risks
How can project work be defined?
Projects are temporary and unique, while other work, commonly called operations, is more continuous.
Project managers need certain soft skills and hard skills to be effective.
Project managers frequently have more responsibility than authority.
Projects go through predictable stages called a life cycle.
How are projects different from ongoing operations?
Projects: Temporary, no two are identical, and can have both unique and routine aspects.
Operations: Consist of the ongoing work needed to ensure that an organization continues to function effectively.
What types of constraints are common to most projects?
-Time and cost (customers)
-Resources available
-Decision maker’s risk tolerance from an internal perspective
What are the three components of the Talent Triangle?
- Technical
- Leadership
- Strategic business management
What is the project life cycle?
The series of phases that a project goes through from its initiation to its closure.
- Selecting
- Initiating
- Planning
- Executing
- Closing
- Realizing
At what stage of a project life cycle are the majority of the hands-on tasks completed?
Execution stage
During which stage of the project life cycle are loose ends tied up?
Closing stage
What are the five process groups of project management?
- Initiating: define a project or a new phase by obtaining authorization
- Planning: establish the project scope, refine objectives and define actions to attain objectives
- Executing: complete the work defined to satisfy project specifications
- Monitoring: track, review, and regulate progress and performance,
identify changes required, and initiate changes - Controlling and closing: finalize all activities to formally close project of phase
Which process group defines a new project or phase by obtaining authorization?
Initiating group
What are the 10 project management knowledge areas?
- Integration management: processes and activities to identify, define, combine, unify, and coordinate the various processes and project management activities
- Scope management: processes to ensure that the project includes all the work required, and only the work required, to complete the project successfully
- Schedule management: processes to manage timely completion of the project
- Cost management: processes involved in planning, estimating, budgeting, financ- ing, funding, managing, and controlling costs so that the project can be completed within the approved budget
- Quality management: processes to incorporate the organization s quality policy
regarding planning, managing, and controlling quality requirements to meet stakeholder expectations - Resource management: processes to identify, acquire, and manage resources
needed to successfully complete the project - Communications management: processes to ensure timely and appropriate planning, collection, creation, distribution, storage, retrieval, management, control, monitoring, and ultimate disposition of project information
- Risk management: processes of conducting risk management planning, identification, analysis, response planning, response implementation, and monitoring risk on a project
- Procurement management: processes to purchase or acquire products, services, or results from outside the project team
- Stakeholder management: processes to identify the people, groups, or organizations, that could impact or be impacted by the project, analyze their expectations and impact, and develop strategies for engaging them in project decisions and execution
What two project dimensions are components of project performance?
Scope and quality
How do you define project success?
Project success is creating deliverables that include all of the agreed-upon features
- Meeting Agreements
Cost, schedule, and specifications met
- Customer s Success
Needs met, deliverables used, customer satisfied Performing
- Organization s Success
Market share, new products, new technology
- Project Team’s Success
Loyalty, development, satisfaction
How do you define project failure?
Project failure can be described as not meeting the success criteria (agreement, customer, organization, team)
List four common causes of project failure.
- Incomplete or unclear - requirements
- Inadequate user involvement
- Inadequate resources
- Inadequate executive support
- Inadequate planning
- Unrealistic time demands
- Unclear or unrealistic expectations
- Changing requirements
What are three common ways of classifying projects?
- Industry
- Size
- Application
What is predictive or plan-driven planning, and when should it be used?
When all planning precedes all executing
Used when the product is well understood
What is adaptive or change-driven planning, and when should it be used?
When early results lead to planning later work
The extreme of adaptive is sometimes called Agile.
What makes someone a project stakeholder?
A project stakeholder is someone who can impact the project or might be impacted by either the work or results of the project. The stakeholder may affect, be affected by, or perceive themselves to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of a project
What are the three project executive-level roles?
- Sponsor
- Customer
- Steering team
