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20 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Which roles should be determined in the roles and responsibilities document?
Everyone involved in the project The project sponsor's and the project steering committee's The project stakeholders' and the project steering committee's The project stakeholders' and the project sponsor's The project sponsor's and the project manager's |
Everyone involved in the project
The roles and responsibilities document defines the roles and responsibilities of everyone that is involved in the project. The project manager is the leader of the project. To manage the project effectively, the project manager must have leadership ability and the authority to make decisions. His responsibilities include: * Estimating the project timeline and budget * Leading the team to produce the product on time, within budget, and to quality standards * Motivating the team * Mitigating risks and responding to crises * Communicating with the stakeholders * Maintaining the "big picture" view of the project The project sponsor is the individual or organization that is initiating the work and providing the resources for the project. A sponsor may be internal (a member of upper management) or external (someone outside of the organization). His responsibilities include: * Maintaining interest in the progress * Sharing in decision making * Monitoring the project for quality, budget, and schedule slippage * Advising and consenting to the project scope * Deciding if a project should proceed The project team works on deliverables. Their responsibilities include: * Creating deliverables that meet project requirements and scope * Monitoring and managing time * Communicating risks to the project manager The project scope does not need to describe the roles of the steering committee (which guides the project) and stakeholders (who are people with a vested interest in the project). Project Strategy Development and Preliminary Planning Sub-Objective: 2.19 Demonstrate the ability to identify project team organization roles and responsibilities required for the execution of the project including: the role of the customer (sponsor) of the project as it relates to the project manager's role, the major skills required in the project team, the type of team structure; e.g., part-time matrix, full-time matrix, confirm the role of the project manager including any or all of the following: responsibilities, accountabilities, authority; formal and informal, percentage of time available to this project, performance appraisal process relative to this project. |
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What do you use as the performance baseline for the monetary funds on a project?
The actual budget The remaining money for the project The planned budget The planned schedule |
The planned budget
The planned budget acts as the baseline for monetary funds. It is compared with the actual budget to see if you are over or under budget. If you are over the baseline, then you are spending too much money. If you are under the baseline, then you are spending less money than expected. The planned schedule is the baseline for the time planned to complete tasks or produce deliverables. The remaining money for the project is not the baseline used for the budget. The actual budget is how much you are really spending. It is a variable measurement, not a baseline measurement. |
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Which formula is used to calculate the Schedule Performance Index (SPI)?
Budgeted cost of work performed (BCWP)/actual cost of work performed (ACWP) Budgeted cost of work performed (BCWP)/budgeted cost of work scheduled (BCWS) Budgeted cost of work performed (BCWP) - actual cost of work performed (ACWP) Budgeted cost of work performed (BCWP) - budgeted cost of work scheduled (BCWS) |
Budgeted cost of work performed (BCWP)/budgeted cost of work scheduled (BCWS)
The formula for the schedule performance index (SPI) is BCWP/BCWS. The SPI is the ratio of the project's work performed on the project to the work scheduled. The formula for the schedule variance is BCWP - BCWS. The formula for cost variance is BCWP - ACWP. The formula for the cost performance index (CPI) is BCWP/ACWP. Project Execution, Control and Coordination Sub-Objective: 3.1 Identify the following as tasks that should be accomplished on a weekly basis in the course of tracking an "up and running" project. Explain the rationale for performing these tasks and explain how to adapt these tasks to different situations: Check the project's scope status to determine "in scope" versus "out of scope" status of project elements, Check the evolution and status of project deliverables, Check the project schedule, Analyze variances (deviations from plan) by comparing "estimated" to "actual" resource time expenditures, dollar expenditures, milestones and elapsed duration of activities, Handle scope changes, if needed, List, track, and try to resolve open issues, Report project status, Look for opportunities to and "push" for close out of activities and sign-off of deliverables, Decide whether it is appropriate to continue the project. Discontinue the project if appropriate. |
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Jay interviewed subject matter experts (SMEs) to get time estimates on the software development for the key phase of his current project. After reviewing their estimates, he determined that 200 hours of programming is sufficient. This phase of the project is planned to last for one week. The following chart lists the programmers and the number of hours they are able to work on the project each week.
Programmer Number of Hours per Week ------------------- ----------------------------------------- Melissa 40 Chad 40 Craig 20 Suzy 20 Nate 30 Wally 20 Taryn 30 How many FTEs should you plan for this phase? 7 2 5 4 |
5
The effort estimate is the total number of person-hours needed to complete a task. Except under special project conditions, you divide effort estimate by 40 to report effort in full-time employees (FTEs). Therefore, 200 hours divided by 40 results in five FTEs. Two FTEs represents 80 hours. Four FTEs represents 160 hours Seven FTEs represents 280 hours. |
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Which section of your project plan displays information about the updating and maintenance of the project plan?
Document information Implementation plan Executive summary Table of contents |
Document information
The document information is an administrative component that displays information about the updating and maintenance of the project plan. The table of contents displays how the information in the project plan is organized and allows users to easily find the information in the plan. The executive summary contains high-level, non-technical information and is intended to communicate with executives of the company the overview of the project. The implementation plan is an overview of the methods used to put the project's schedule in place. |
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Generally, when is the best time to provide performance appraisal feedback to a team member?
Once every six months Immediately after a performance appraisal Whenever management requires it On a periodic basis |
Immediately after a performance appraisal
As a project manager, you should provide timely and appropriate feedback to your team. The best time to provide performance appraisal feedback is immediately following a performance appraisal. The reason for this is that you and the team member might forget the particulars of a situation or one of you may be upset and hold a grudge. Therefore, it is best to deal with anything that arises immediately. A project manager should schedule performance appraisals on a periodic basis, not whenever management requires it. |
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J.C. needs to develop his budget estimates for the project he is managing. He has distributed portions of the work breakdown structure (WBS) to his managers and asked them to estimate the cost associated with each item on the WBS. After they returned their cost estimates, he added the cost to his WBS and rolled up the costs into a total.
What method of budgeting did J.C. use? Bottom-up Top-down Itemized Measured |
Bottom-up
Two accepted methods for planning a budget are the top-down and bottom-up approaches. The bottom-up approach to budgeting works from the work breakdown structure (WBS). Required funding is determined for each task listed in the WBS. The funding is then rolled-up into an overall project budget. J.C. used the bottom-up approach to obtain his budget estimate. The top-down approach relies on experience and past data from similar projects. In this type of estimation, upper management decides the overall budget for a project. The project manager breaks the budget down by component. Tasks of each component receive a portion of the overall budget for the component. This approach assumes that if funding is insufficient for any area, the team leader for that area will ask for more funding. The itemized budgeting process is not a typical budgeting technique for project management. The measured budgeting process is not a typical budgeting technique for project management. |
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What must you do before you create a work breakdown structure?
Make the project team assignments Make the stakeholder assignments Identify the deliverables and divide them into tasks and subtasks. Conduct the sponsor review of requirements |
Identify the deliverables and divide them into tasks and subtasks.
A work breakdown structure (WBS) is a hierarchical list of tasks that you must complete to deliver project components or complete a project. Each task should have a specific duration and a clearly defined deliverable, and should be familiar. You can use a WBS to provide input to resource planning, to illustrate the timeline for the project, and to provide an organized representation of the entire project. To create a WBS, you need to identify the project deliverables and divide them into tasks and subtasks. Creating the WBS is unrelated to making project team assignments because team assignments are specified in the project charter. Additionally, the sponsor review of requirements is specified in the project charter. The stakeholders' assignments are not specified in the WBS. |
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During which phase does the feasibility study occur?
Planning Closing Initiation Controlling |
Initiation
The initiation process group contains the planning, formal business unit request, and a complete feasibility study phase. The closing process group contains the operation and support phase, the training phase, the maintenance phase, and the enhancement phase. The controlling and executing process groups are where the implementation and development defined by the system development life cycle (SDLC) occur. The planning process group contains the design and analysis phase, the model requirements, and the documentation of the system requirements. |
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You are creating a project schedule for a small application development project. How do you compute the estimated number of person-hours required to complete a project?
Add the person-hours estimated for all critical path tasks. Multiply the estimated elapsed time by the estimated average people assigned. Add the person-hours estimated for all project tasks. Divide the estimated elapsed time by the estimated average people assigned. |
Add the person-hours estimated for all project tasks.
During the planning phase of a project, you need to estimate effort, time, and cost. The effort estimate is the total number of person-hours needed to complete a task. To arrive at an estimate of how long it will take to complete the entire project, you add the estimated person-hours required for each individual task involved in the project. Typically, you divide this number by 40 to report the effort in Full-Time Employees (FTEs). Adding the person-hours for critical path tasks only allows for enough person-hours to complete the critical path tasks, not all tasks. Dividing elapsed time by people assigned or multiplying elapsed time by people assigned does not result in the number of person-hours needed to complete a project. |
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What should you verify during a project requirements review with a customer?
Product performance and resource skill levels A list of activities and resource skill levels Budget requirements and resource skill levels Budget requirements and product performance |
Budget requirements and product performance
During a project requirements review, you should review the budget requirements and product performance to see if you need to adjust the project plan. Reviewing project requirements should be an iterative process. The end of every phase is an appropriate time to review the project requirements. You do not need to review a list of activities or resource skill levels. These are not important to the customer and are internal issues your company defines. The customer is more concerned with the end product and usually does not care what means are used to get to the end result. |
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Which three elements relating to resource skill level must you consider when establishing an activity time estimate? (Choose three.)
FTEs per task Total FTEs for the project Need for additional training Task requirements Resource assignments to tasks Resource expenses |
--FTEs per task
--Need for additional training --Resource assignments to tasks The effort or project time estimate is the total number of person-hours needed to complete a task. Typically, you divide this number by 40 to report effort in full-time employees (FTEs). To complete a project time estimate, you need a list of all tasks, the number of FTEs per task, the resources assigned to each task, and the resource skill level for each resource. The resource skill level will help you determine if you need to allow time for additional training. You do not need to know the total FTEs for the project to complete a project time estimate. You just need to know the FTEs per task and the resource assignments per task. The task requirements are too broad to make an adequate schedule with. Therefore, the resource assignment per task is a much better value. The resource expenses are not important in a time estimate. However, they are crucial in a cost or budgeting estimate. |
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What is the budget at completion (BAC)?
All money allocated for the project budget for its completion. All estimated costs to complete the project. All amounts spent on a project through a particular date. All amounts spent on a project through a particular phase. |
All money allocated for the project budget for its completion.
The budget at completion (BAC) takes into account all money allocated for the project budget for its completion. The ETC is the cost estimate for the work that remains to be completed for the project. The actual cost (AC) includes all amounts spent on a project through a particular date or phase. |
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A remote site delivers coding specifications to the programming team at another location. The programmers complain that the specifications are incomplete.
What is the best way to avoid this problem in the future? Establish interpersonal relationships between the programmers. Establish a SOW procedure for all programmers at the remote site. Establish WBS standards Establish timely status reports. |
Establish a SOW procedure for all programmers at the remote site.
The statement of work (SOW) clearly outlines the requirements the programmer is required to meet. Reviewing the SOW as the deliverable is turned-over (from the remote site programmer to the main programming team) and evaluating the deliverable eases tension throughout the whole team and prevents internal team members from shifting the blame of problems to external team resources. Quality is more difficult to manage when you have a large multi-site project. Miscommunications, varying work standards, and the difficulties in maintaining interpersonal relationships can contribute to lower quality deliverables. Timely status reports indicate that work is on schedule, but they do not ensure quality work. Interpersonal relationships can affect quality, but in this case, a review of the SOW has a greater impact. Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) standards do not exist since the WBS breaks down the work load into deliverables and tasks. |
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What is the most complete description of the purpose of performance reporting?
To provide progress and forecast information on the project's scope, schedule, cost, and quality To compare the planned project results with the actual results To provide the actual amount spent on the project to date To estimate costs for the remaining project work |
To provide progress and forecast information on the project's scope, schedule, cost, and quality
Performance reporting provides progress and forecast information on the project's scope, schedule, cost, and quality. A variance analysis is a type of performance reporting. A variance analysis is a comparison of the planned results with the actual results. The actual cost is the actual amount spent on the project to date. The estimate to complete is the cost estimate for the remaining project work. |
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You call a team meeting to discuss the strategy of fulfilling a project's task to increase the company's Web site escalation on search engines. You have a budget of $50,000.00 to get them to be in the top three on the major search engines.
Which path should you take? Attempt to accomplish this by using an outside vendor for $100,000 where all results are guaranteed. Attempt to accomplish this by using an outside vendor for $45,000.00 but with no guarantee. Attempt to accomplish this by selecting a company with a good reputation but they do not guarantee the search engine results and cost $50,000. Attempt to accomplish this using a team member who thinks he can do as good a job as any of the companies for about $10,000.00. Attempt to accomplish this by using an outside vendor for $50,000.00 by a company that guarantees these listings on two search engines. |
Attempt to accomplish this using a team member who thinks he can do as good a job as any of the companies for about $10,000.00.
Using the team member's proposal keeps the task under your control and potentially saves a considerable amount of budgeted money. Since the other choices do not provide a guarantee except for the one that extends the budget by 100%, it is better to save the money and accomplish the task in-house. If there is a problem, you still have $40,000.00 of the budgeted amount to address the task. Therefore, you should allow the team member to attempt the task. |
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After evaluating the project scope for an accounting application project, you have broken down the deliverables, their dependencies, and their costs as shown in the exhibit.
The client's spending plan requires no more than $11.5 million on this project. Your client requires that you not exceed this budget and has given you the freedom to eliminate a single deliverable subcomponent. Which subcomponent impacts the project the least? (see chart#1) D2 D3 B1 D1 A1 |
D3
The critical path of this project is A2-B1-A1-C1-D1-D2-D3. B2 can be completed at any stage in the critical path. None of the components in the critical path can be deleted except for the last one since it has no dependencies on the other tasks. Therefore, the only two expendable tasks on this project are B2 and D3. Since B2 is not an answer option, D3 is the only expendable task that can be deleted without severely affecting the project. Project Strategy Development and Preliminary Planning Sub-Objective: 2.21 Given a project scope, timeline, cost, project team, and dependencies, demonstrate the ability to: create and manage a high level (top down) budget based on assumptions / estimates, identify and budget the level, cost, and duration of resources and dependencies (internal and external), create and manage a detailed bottom up budget, containing actual / scheduled expenses, identify, implement, and budget all project trade-offs, while understanding the implications, and impacts of the trade-offs, install and maintain systems for tracking budgetary expenses against the plan based on the existing enterprise systems, align the budget with the spending plan of the organization. |
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You are scheduling a project's timeline. Upon investigating the project, you find several tasks are dependent on the completion of other tasks before they are initiated. The dependencies are listed below:
Tasks D and F are dependent on the completion of Tasks A and C. Task C is dependent on Task B. Tasks E and G are dependent on the completion of Task A. What is the effect on the project of a delay in the completion date of Task B? Task C will be delayed. Tasks A, C, D, E, F, and G will be delayed. Tasks C, D, and F will be delayed. Tasks A, C, D, and F will be delayed. |
Tasks C, D, and F will be delayed.
Task B must occur on schedule in order for Task C to occur. In turn, Tasks D and F depend on Tasks A and C to be completed. If the completion of Task B is delayed, then Tasks C, D, and F will be delayed. Task B does not affect Tasks A, E, and G. Project Strategy Development and Preliminary Planning Sub-Objective: 2.18 Given a scenario with necessary project documents, and given enterprise holiday and individual resource calendars, demonstrate the ability to develop a project schedule by doing the following: define and sequence project tasks, activities, and phases which are needed to bring about the completion of given interim or finished project deliverables, estimate durations for project tasks, activities, and phases, estimate work effort for project tasks, assignments, specify resources required for the completion of each phase, identification of the project critical pat |
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You are the project manager on a major software development project that is falling behind schedule. You have the necessary funding to complete the project. You cannot push back the delivery date for this mission-critical application.
What can you do to mitigate the risk? Hire more programmers Re-evaluate the scope Alert the sponsors of a time slip Re-evaluate the approach |
Hire more programmers
The risk of this project is schedule slippage. Therefore, you can supplement resources to the project by hiring more programmers. Since this is a mission-critical application, it is unlikely that you can re-evaluate the scope or change the approach. Alerting the sponsor to a time slip should not occur until after you have tried to mitigate the risk. Risk management is the process of identifying, measuring, and lessening risk factors in a project. The first step in managing risks is to identify possible internal and external risks. You can measure risks by identifying how likely they are to happen and the severity of the impact. You control risks by mitigating (lessening) them using appropriate strategies. Finally, you perform risk management regularly throughout the project. You can identify risks through either a top-down or bottom-up approach. When you identify risks from the top down, you look at project requirements and determine how you could fail to meet them. To identify risks from the bottom up, you should list risk drivers (such as customers, technology, resources, estimating, and organization) and look for ways that the project is open to those factors. |
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What is the difference between a project cost estimate and an effort estimate?
A project effort estimate does not include any labor estimates. A project cost estimate involves budgetary concerns, and a project effort estimate involves scheduling matters. A project effort estimate includes other budgetary concerns than the labor involved. A project cost estimate involves budgetary concerns, and a project effort estimate involves labor required. |
A project cost estimate involves budgetary concerns, and a project effort estimate involves labor required.
A project cost estimate involves budgetary concerns, and a project effort estimate involves labor resources required to complete the project. Project cost estimates take the estimate of the cost of labor and any other costs of the project and estimate the overall costs. Project effort estimates give an estimate of the labor required for the project from beginning to end. |
