Term
| The prime objectives of project management are what? |
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Definition
| Scope (Specified deliverables), Time (A specific deadline), and Cost (Budget) |
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Term
| The most crucial attribute of a project is that it must be important in the eyes of what or whom? |
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Definition
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Term
| Earned value is based on the concept that the percentage of project completion is closely correlated with what? |
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Definition
| The cost or the use of resources |
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Term
| An example which would not usually be considered a project is what? |
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Definition
| An example that would not be considered a project is checking emails and assembly lines. If a project is not unique, a one-time occurrence, or does not have a finite duration it is considered a nonproject or quasi-project. |
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Term
| Seven attributes that characterize a project are what? |
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Definition
| Importance, Specific end results, a definite lifecycle, complex interdependences, sore or all unique elements, limited resources, and an environment of conflict |
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Term
| Desired outcomes or results of a project are called what? |
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Definition
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Term
| What are the four dimensions of project success? |
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Definition
| Project efficiency, Impact on the customer, The business impact on the organization, and Opening new opportunities for the future. |
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Term
| Projects often interact with other projects being carried out simultaneously within the organization and these interactions take the form of competition for scarce resources between projects. This is an example of what? |
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Definition
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Term
| The process of creating artificial deadlines and budgets to accomplish specific, though routine, tasks within a functional departments is called what? |
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Definition
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Term
| The military uses a tem to refer to an exceptionally large, long-range objective that is broken down into a set of projects. What is the term? |
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Definition
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Term
| The two basic types of project selection models are what? |
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Definition
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Term
| A project selected using the sacred cow model will be maintained until successfully completed or until when? |
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Definition
| Management recognizes the project as a failure and terminates it |
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Term
| The drawback of a certain model is that it fails to consider cash flows obtained once the initial investment has been recovered. What is it? |
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Definition
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Term
| If the NPV for a project is <0, it indicates that the project will what? |
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Definition
| Fail to cover its required rate of return |
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Term
| Scoring models are used to overcome this disadvantage of profitability models. What is it? |
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Definition
| The inability to account for multiple decision criteria |
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Term
| What are the advantages of using weighted scoring models |
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Definition
Factors selected
– Listed on a preprinted form
Raters score the project on each factor
Each project gets a total score
Main advantage is that the model uses multiple criteria |
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Term
| Real options seek to reduce risks in projects such as? |
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Definition
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Term
| Firms often have two or more projects; this collection of projects is referred to as what? |
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Definition
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Term
| Project proposals should include what? |
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Definition
Cover Letter
Executive Summary
The Technical approach
The Implementation plan
The plan for logistic support and administration
Past experience |
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Term
| Another name for benefit-cost ratio? |
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Definition
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Term
| What are types of non-numeric models? |
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Definition
Sacred Cow: Often suggested by the top management, that has taken on a life of its own
b. Operating Necessity: Required in order to protect lives or property or to keep the company in operation
c. Competitive Necessity: Required in order to maintain the company’s position in the marketplace
d. Product Line Extension : Often, projects to expand a product line are evaluated on how well the new product meshes with the existing product line rather than on overall benefits
e. Comparative Benefit: Projects are subjectively rank ordered based on their perceived benefit to the company |
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Term
| If a system is being updated due to operating necessity, why was the project selected? |
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Definition
| Operating necessity is used as the model when a project is required in order to protect lives or property or to keep the company in operation. |
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Term
| Analytical method, when applied to systems, focuses on what? |
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Definition
| Analytic approach is breaking problems into their constituent parts to understand the parts better and thereby solve the problem. When applied to a systems it allows the PM to better understand how that system works within the overall project. |
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Term
| The ideal PM should be what? ( i.e. Key characteristics thereof) |
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Definition
a. Compared to a functional manager, a PM is a generalist rather than a specialist, a synthesizer rather than an analyst, and a facilitator rather than a supervisor.
b. Credible-
i. Technical credibility. The PM must be perceived by the client, senior executives, the functional departments, and the project team as possessing sufficient technical knowledge to direct the project.
ii. Administrative credibility. Administrative responsibilities must be performed with apparently effortless skill. It goes without saying that effective time management and organizational skills are critical
c. Sensitive-
i. Political- Working through the undercurrents in the workplace
ii. Interpersonal conflict on the project team or between team members and outsiders. Successful PMs are not conflict avoiders. Quite the opposite, they sense conflict early, then confront and deal with it before the conflict escalates into interdepartmental and intradepartmental warfare.
iii. Technical sensors. It is common, unfortunately, for otherwise competent and honest team members to try to hide their failures. Individuals who cannot work under stress would be well advised to avoid project organizations. In the pressure-cooker life of the project, failure is particularly threatening. Remember that we staffed the team with people who are task-oriented. Team members with this orientation may not be able to tolerate their own failures (though they are rarely as intolerant of failure in others), and may hide failure rather than admit to it. The PM must be able to sense when things are being “swept under the rug” and are not progressing properly. |
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Term
| What are the three major questions that face the PM with respect to synthesizing the requirements of a project? |
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Definition
a.What needs to be done?
b. When must it be done (if the project is not to be late)?
c. How are the resources required to do the job to be obtained? |
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Term
| When managing a project, the PM is responsible for what? |
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Definition
| As the leader, this person will take responsibility for planning, implementing, and completing the project, beginning with the job of getting things started. Basically they typically prepare a preliminary budget and schedule, help select people to serve on the project team, get to know the client (either internal or external), make sure that the proper facilities are available, ensure that any supplies required early in the project life are available when needed, and take care of the routine details necessary to get the project moving. |
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Term
| The PM’s responsibilities are broad and fall primarily into three separate areas. What are these responsibilities and these areas? |
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Definition
a. Parent organization: proper conservation of resources, timely and accurate project communications, and the careful, competent management of the project. To also inform senior management if the project has become doubtful due to its inability to meet the strategic needs of the organization as well as any issues that may cause delays or prospective problems.
b. Project and the client: ensuring that the integrity of the project is preserved in spite of the conflicting demands made by the many parties who have legitimate interests in the project.
c. Members of the project team: Dictated by the finite nature of the project itself and the specialized nature of the team. Because the project is, by definition, a temporary entity and must come to an end, the PM must be concerned with the future of the people who serve on the team.
d. The unique demands on a PM concern seven areas:
i. Acquiring adequate physical resources
ii. Acquiring and motivating personnel
iii. Dealing with obstacles
iv. Making goal trade-offs
v. Maintaining a balanced outlook in the team
vi. Communicating with all parties
vii. Negotiating |
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Term
| The PM must make trade-offs between project progress and process. Conceptually, this involves trade-offs between which functions? |
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Definition
| Technical and managerial functions. Sacrificing smoothness of running the project team for technical progress. Near the end of the project, it may be necessary to insist that various team members work on aspects of the project for which they are not well trained or which they do not enjoy, such as copying or collating the final report. |
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Term
| PM’s should be more skilled at what? |
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Definition
a. Valuable skills for the PM are technical and administrative credibility, political sensitivity, and an ability to get others to commit to the project, a skill otherwise known as leadership.
b. Communication skills, especially listening and persuading, are the most important skills in successfully managing projects. As is the case with any manager, most of the PM’s time is spent communicating with the many groups interested in the project. Running a project requires constant selling, reselling, and explaining the project to outsiders, top management, functional departments, clients, and a number of other such stakeholders to the project, as well as to members of the project team itself. The PM is the project ’ s liaison with the outside world, but the manager must also be available for problem solving in the lab, for crises in the field, for threatening or cajoling subcontractors, and for reducing interpersonal conflict between project team members. |
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Term
| Important and desirable characteristics in a PM? |
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Definition
A strong technical background
· A hard-nosed manager
· A mature individual
· Someone who is currently available
· Someone on good terms with senior executives
· A person who can keep the project team happy
· One who has worked in several different departments
· A person who can walk on (or part) the waters |
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Term
| Project managers deal with creating a project team, and coming up with adequate human resources. How can they deal with resource allocation? |
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Definition
| Borrowing employees from other functional departments |
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Term
| The project functional approach; as contrasted with the PM who uses which approach? |
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Definition
| Functional = analytical approach; PM = systems approach |
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Term
| When resource conflicts arise between two high-priority projects, precedence is typically given to which project? |
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Definition
| The project with the soonest completion date |
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Term
| During the project build-up, the project should move from a general concept to what? |
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Definition
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Term
| Organizational structure (type of) has a major impact on the ways in which conflicts are handled. Lack of clarity about the relative power/influence/authority of the PM and the functional managers is a major component of all conflicts involving what? |
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Definition
| Resource allocation and scheduling |
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Term
| During the project build-up, when a strong matrix organizational form is used, the project manager seeks a commitment of what from the functional departments? |
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Definition
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Term
| What types of problems are comparatively rare during project phaseout? |
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Definition
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Term
| Negotiation, as it applies to project management, is the realization that few of the conflicts arising in projects have to do with what? |
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Definition
| Whether or not the task will be done |
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Term
| When addressing conflict between parties, how can we avoid the conflict from becoming interpersonal? |
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Definition
| Define the substantive problem |
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Term
| Who (which entities) are parties to the chartering process? |
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Definition
| Stakeholders: PM, senior management, functional managers, people specific to a project, clients |
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Term
| Most of the conflicts that involve the organization and outsiders have to do with what? |
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Definition
| Property rights and contractual obligation |
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Term
| A major purpose of the project management office should be to serve as what? |
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Definition
| A link between project management and strategic management |
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Term
| If the project manager controls when and what people do while the functional managers control who will be assigned to the project and what technology will be used, then what organizational form is probably being used here? |
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Definition
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Term
| In the systems approach to design, one organization would have to take responsibility for what? |
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Definition
| The integrity of the project design |
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Term
| The process of dealing with uncertainties in projects has come to be known as what? |
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Definition
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Term
| The project management office is created to perform what functions |
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Definition
| Establish consistent project management standards and methods |
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Term
| What type of behavior in a project manager would be highly correlated with unsuccessful project management? |
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Definition
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Term
| One of the main technical problems faced by the project manager is meeting which type of goals or targets without compromising performance? |
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Definition
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Term
| An organization structure that is based on the Financial, Human Resources, and Operational departments rather than by projects is termed as what? |
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Definition
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Term
| The key to conflict resolution is what? |
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Definition
| To turn a win-lose situation into a win-win situation |
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Term
| If the work can cross time, space, organizational, and cultural boundaries, then the project is what? |
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Definition
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Term
| Project priorities are more of a concern in which stage of the project life cycle? |
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Definition
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Term
| The project plan must be designed in such a way that the project outcome meets what? |
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Definition
| The criteria used to justify its selection |
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Term
| What item is a specialized view of the action plan that focuses on who has what responsibility for each project task? |
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Definition
| Linear responsibility chart |
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Term
| The success of the project launch meeting is dependent upon the existence of what? |
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Definition
| A well defined set of objectives for the project |
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Term
| This project plan element describes both the managerial and the technical approaches to the work. The technical discussion describes the relationship of the project to available technologies. |
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Definition
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Term
| This project plan element should include profit and competitive goals as well as technical goals. |
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Definition
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Term
| This project plan element lists all milestone events. It identifies the estimated time for each task and is used to construct the master project schedule. |
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Definition
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Term
| This element of the project plan contains a brief description of the procedure to be followed in monitoring, collecting, storing, and evaluating the history of the project. |
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Definition
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Term
| The process of coordinating the work and timing of the different groups working on multidisciplinary teams is called __________. |
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Definition
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Term
| What element of a project includes the objectives of the project as well as the time and cost required to complete the project to the customer’s satisfaction? |
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Definition
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Term
| The tendency for the project objectives to be changed with little or no discussion with other parties actively engaged in the project is known as what? |
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Definition
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Term
| What represents a list of the project activities with major activities broken down into subactivities. |
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Definition
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Term
| The project plan must include what? |
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Definition
| Any constraints on activities and input materials prescribed by law and society; methods to ensure integrity; means of controlling the work it prescribes |
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Term
| Risk management sub-processes include what? |
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Definition
| Risk management planning, risk identification, qualitative risk analysis, quantitative risk analysis, risk response planning, risk monitoring and control, the risk management register |
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Term
| Examples of quantitative risk analysis include |
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Definition
Failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA)
Decision Tree Analysis
Monte Carlo Simulation
Sensitivity analysis |
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Term
| In risk response planning, where the goal of the project manager is to increase the probability the opportunity will occur, the project manager must __________ |
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Definition
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Term
| A type of risk response planning where the idea is to soften the danger of the threat, by reducing the likelihood it will occur, or through reducing its impact if it does occur, implies that the project manager must __________. |
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Definition
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Term
| If a project budget is over funded, it will often __________ |
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Definition
| produce waste and encourage slack management |
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Term
| A project's budget should do what? |
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Definition
| Associate resource use with the achievement of organizational goals |
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Term
| When developing a budget, the PM must forecast what? |
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Definition
| The type, quantities, prices/rates of resources and when they will be used, the expected monetary value and relevant uncertainty |
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Term
| The traditional organizational budget is oriented how? |
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Definition
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Term
| What are two types of generic estimation errors? |
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Definition
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Term
| The pattern of deviations in cost and usage for exception reporting to management is called what? |
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Definition
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Term
| What costs vary with output? |
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Definition
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Term
| What costs are not associated with any specific product or class or products and are typically charged as a fixed percentage of some direct cost? |
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Definition
| General and Administrative Cost (G&A) |
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Term
| If a project budget is under-funded it will often result in what? |
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Definition
| Inhibit accomplishment and frustrate committed stakeholders |
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Term
| A project budget serves as what? |
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Definition
| a plan for allocating resources. The allocation of resources indicates the degree to which different activities of an organization are fully supported |
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Term
| What type of budgeting allows income and expenditures to be aggregated across projects? |
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Definition
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Term
| If projects include repetitive tasks with significant human input, what rate should be factored into the cost estimate? |
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Definition
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