Project Management – Midterm – Flashcards
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What does PMBOK stand for?
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Project Management Body of Knowledge
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What is WBS?
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Work Breakdown Structure
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What is Brook's Law?
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Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later
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What is the definition of a project?
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a temporary endeavor undertaken to accomplish a unique purpose.
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What is project management?
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The application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities in order to meet or exceed stakeholder needs and expectations
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What are attributes of a project?
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Time Frame Purpose Ownership Resources Roles Risks and assumptions Tasks Project Impact on the organization
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What is PLC?
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Project life cycle
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What is the project life cycle?
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a collection of logical stages or phases that maps the life of a project from its beginning to its end.
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Explain the importance of phases in a project
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Projects are broken up into phases to make the project more manageable and to reduce risk. Each phase should focus on producing a deliverable
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What is a deliverable?
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a tangible and verifiable project of work
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List a generic project life cycle phases
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(1) defining the project goal (2) planning the project (3) executing the project (4) closing the project (5) evaluating the project
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What is the SDLC?
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Systems Development Life Cycle
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What are the phases of the SDLC?
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(1) planning (2) analysis (3) design (4) implementation (5) maintenance and support
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What is Extreme Project Management?
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XPM is a new approach to project management that focuses on the human element of projects and embraces the reality that projects often operate in an uncertain and high-speed environment. XPM also takes a more holistic view of planning and managing projects in which changing requirements are inevitable; planning thus becomes an iterative and self-correcting process that supports innovation
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What are the nine knowledge areas for understanding project management according to the PMBOK?
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(1) project integration management (2) project scope management (3) project time management (4) project cost management (5) project quality management (6) project human resources management (7) project communications management (8) project risk management (9) project procurement management
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What does MOV stand for?
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Measurable organization value
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What is an MOV?
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an important tool for defining a project's goal and value to the organization. the MOV becomes the project's measure of success and must be measurable, agreed upon, and verifiable at the end of the project. It also must align with the organization's goals and strategies in order to provide value to the organization
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What is a business case?
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A business case defines the problem or opportunity, MOV, feasibility, costs and benefits of several alternatives that an organization may choose in order to achieve its goals and strategies
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What is the balanced scorecard approach?
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a popular method for determining value to an organization that focuses on four perspectives - financial, customer, internal processes, and innovation and learning.
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What is IT governance?
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provides a framework of processes and controls to help organizations make the right IT investment decisions.
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What are product-oriented processes?
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processes that focus on the development of the application system itself and require specific domain knowledge, tools and techniques
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What are project management processes?
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processes needed to manage and coordinate all of the activities of the project.
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What are the 5 project management process groups?
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(1) initiating (2) planning (3) executing (4) controlling (5) closing
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What is the purpose of project integration management?
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to coordinate and integrate all other knowledge areas and project processes.
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Project integration management focuses on what 7 processes?
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(1) develop project charter (2) develop preliminary project scope statement (3) develop project management plan (4) direct and manage project execution (5) monitor and control project work (6) integrated change control (7) close project
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What is a project charter?
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A project charter serves as an agreement and as a communication tool for all the project stakeholders. The project charter documents the project's MOV and describes the infrastructure needed to support the project. It also summarizes many of the details found in the project plan.
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How is the project charter and project plan different?
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The project plan provides the details of the tactical plan and the project charter is more generalized and summarizes parts of the plan.
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What is a scope boundary?
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acts as a fence to ensure that what needs to get done, gets done - and only what needs to get done, gets done
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The PMBOK identifies five processes that support project scope management:
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(1) scope planning (2) scope definition (3) create work breakdown structure (4) scope verification (5) scope control
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What is scope grope?
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a common occurrence in the early stages of a project - the project team struggles to define what the project is all about and what work needs to be done.
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What is scope creep?
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a common occurrence in many projects - entails adding additional features or functions to the scope once the scope has been set and approved.
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Why is the WBS useful?
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It is a useful tool for bridging the project's scope with the detailed project plan. It provides a logical hierarchy that decomposes the project scope into work packages.
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What are work packages?
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focus on a particular deliverable and include the activities required to produce the deliverable.
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What are milestones?
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provides a mechanism for ensuring that project work is not only done, but done right.
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The Delphi technique
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this approach involves multiple experts who arrive at a consensus after a series of round-robin sessions in which information and opinions are anonymously provided to each expert.
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Time-boxing
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a technique where a box of time is allocated to a specific task. (a team many be given two weeks to develop a prototype of a user interface)
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Top-down estimating
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involves estimating a schedule or budget based upon how long the project should last or how much it should cost.
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Bottom-up estimating
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an approach that uses the WBS to outline the activities that must be completed, and an estimate is made for each of the activities. The various durations are then added together to determine the total duration of the project.
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Lines of Code (LOC)
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may provide an idea of the size of a project it does not consider the complexity, constraints, or influencers that must be taken into account.
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Function points
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introduced by Allen Albrecht of IBM in 1979 - synthetic measures that take into account the functionality and complexity of the software.
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COCOMO
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The COnstructive COst MOdel - Barry Boehm (1981) - estimates for a software systems effort are determined by an equation based on the project's complexity
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Heuristics
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rules of thumb that are applied to estimating a software project. The basic premise is that the same activities will be repeated on most projects
