Project Management Exam (Chapters 5-8)

Activities in identifying and selecting a project 

1. Identifying information systems projects

2. Assessing Project Feasibility 

3. Comparing Alternative Projects 

Corporate Strategic Planning

An ongoing process of determining goals and defining a strategy to achieve these goals. Current enterprise —> Future Enterprise —> Strategic Plan

Mission Statement

A statement that defines a companies purpose.

Objective Statements

A series of statements that express an organizations qualitative and quantitative goals for reaching a desired future position.

Competitive Strategy 

A plan of action and organization that pursues to achieve its mission and objectives. 

Examples of competitive strategies

1. Low-cost producer: Focus on cost reductions to compete on price.

2. Product differentiation: Focus on differentiating the product offerings from the competitors. (e.g., in terms of features, quality, design, or performance.)

3. Product focus or niche: Focus on niche markets (while pursuing a low-cost or product differentiation strategy within that niche).

Value Chain Analysis

The process of analyzing an organizations activities to determine where value is added to products and/or services that the costs incurred for doing so.

Information Systems Planning

A structured process of assessing the information needs of an organization and defining the systems, databases, and technologies that will best satisfy those needs.

Systems Service Request

A formal request for correcting problems with an existing system, adding features to the system, or developing a new system. 

Feasibility Factors for assessing projects

1. Economic

2. Technical

3. Operational

4. Schedule

5. Legal and Contractual

6. Political

Business Case

The justification that presents the economic, technical, operational, schedule, legal and contractual, and political factors influencing a proposed project.

Economic Feasibility 

The degree to which the benefits of the development project outweigh the costs. 

Tangible Benefits

A benefit that can be quantified with relative certainty.

Intangible Benefits

A benefit that cannot be easily quantified with relative certainty.

One-time cost

A cost associated with project start-up and development or system start-up

Recurring Cost

A cost resulting from the ongoing evolution and use of a system

Cost-benefit analysis

The use of a variety of analysis techniques for determining the financial feasibility of a project.

Discount rate 

The rate of return used to compute the present value of future cash flows.

Present Value

The current value of the cash flow

Break-Even Analysis

A type of cost-benefit analysis used to identify when (if ever) benefits will equal costs

Technical feasibility

The degree to which the development organization is able to construct a proposed system

Operational Feasibility 

The degree to which a proposed system will solve business problems or take advantage of business opportunities. 

Schedule Feasibility

The degree to which the potential time frame and completion dates for all major activities within a project meet organizational deadlines and constraints affecting change.

Legal and contractual feasibility

The degree to which potential legal and contractual ramifications due to the construction of a system influence project success.

Political Feasibility 

The degree to which any key stakeholders within the organization can affect project success. 

Multicriteria Analysis

A project selection method that uses weighted scoring for a variety of criteria to contrast alternative projects or system features.

Project Initiation

The process of authorizing a new or continuing an existing project.

Project Charter

A short document that serves as the foundation of the project, describes what the project will deliver, and authorizes the use of resources to complete the project.

Assumption Log

Document used to capture any project-related assumptions or contraints. 

Project Management Plan

A plan specifying how the project will be performed, and guides to the execution, monitoring and controlling, and closing of a project. 

Baseline

Approved version of a project management plan component serving as a standard for measuring project progress and performance that can only be changed through formal change management processes.

Project Scope

The work needed to deliver the final product based on the specifications.

Product Scope

The actual features or functionalities of the product or services delivered. 

Project Scope Statement

A document that describes in detail what the project will deliver and outlines generally all work required to complete the project.

Validate Scope

The process of obtaining the project stakeholders’ formal acceptance of a projects deliverables.

Control Scope

a formal process for ensuring that only agreed-upon changes are made to the projects scope. 

Scope Creep

A progressive, uncontrolled increase in project scope.

Project Scheduling

The process of defining project activities, determining their sequence, and estimating their duration.

Cone of Uncertainty 

A progressively more detailed and accurate projection of the project schedule and duration as the project manager or project team specifies project deliverables and activities in more detail.

Schedule Management Plan

Component of the project management plan that provides guidance on how the schedule will be managed throughout the project.

Decomposition

The process of subdividing tasks to make them more easily manageable

Product Breakdown Structure (PBS)

The output from the process of dividing a product into its individual components.

Rolling Wave Planning

A scheduling technique in which the team defers breaking down components until they are further clarified and the decomposition takes place as the project progresses.

Work Packages 

The lowest-level units illustrated in the WBS, used to estimate project schedule and budget. 

Templates

List of activities from previous projects

Scope Baseline

A document containing the WBS and the WBS dictionary that specifies the deliverables and components of a project and serves to measure any deviations from that baseline during project execution.

WBS Dictionary 

A document that accompanies the WBS and provides additional information about the individual components of the WBS

Milestones

Important dates within a project schedule that are meaningful in terms of completion of specific sets of project events.

Define Activities

The process of identifying and defining activities that must be performed to product project deliverables.

Activity 

Small component used to plan, schedule, execute, monitor, and control the project. 

Sequence Activities

The process of determining relationships and logical sequence among activities.

Dependency

The logical relationship among activities

Constraints of a projects activities 

1. Technical requirements and specifications 

2. Safety and efficiency 

3. Preferences and policies 

4. Resource avalibility 

Precedence Diagramming Method

A network diagramming technique that uses boxes connected by arrows to represent activities and their precedence relationships.

Dummy Activity 

An activity of zero duration that is used to show a logical relationship or dependency in a network diagram. 

Arrow diagramming method

A network diagram consisting of arrows to represent activities and their precedence relationships and nodes to represent project milestones

Mandatory Dependencies

Relationships of activities that cannot be performed in parallel

Discretionary Dependencies 

Relationships of activities based on the preferences of project managers; often based on best-practices procedures. 

External Dependencies

Relationships of project activities and external events, such as the delivery of project components

Internal Dependencies

Relationships between project activities

Lead time 

The amount of time by which a successor activity can be accelerated 

Lag Time

The time delay between the completion of one task and the start of the successor

Resource

A source of supply or support, such as money, people, materials, technology, and space. 

Human Resources

All personnel involved in a project, including project team members and support staff.

Capital Resources

The tools and infrastructure to produce other goods and services.

Opportunity cost

The measure of the alternative opportunities forgone in the choice of one good or activity over others.  

Effort

Actual time spent working on an activity

Duration

Elapsed time between the start and finish of an activity

Expert Judgement 

Estimation based on the experience of one or more experts on the particular activity or project. 

Published estimating data

Publicly available data from specific activities carried out on previous projects that may be used to more accurately estimate resource needs.

Bottom-up estimating

An estimating technique in which estimates are made at the activity level, and then aggregated to arrive at an overall estimate

Analogous estimating 

The estimating of activities costs, durations, or resource requirements based on the historical data of similar activities. 

Parametric estimating

The estimating of activities’ costs, durations, or resource requirements based on known relationships and project parameters.

Alternatives analysis

An estimating technique in which trade-offs between time needed, the resources invested, and the desired quality of the final deliverable are examined.

Activity Resource Requirements 

A very detailed listing of the resource requirements for the individual activities. 

Resource Breakdown Structure 

A hierarchical, graphical representation of all needed resources ordered by type or category. 

Resource Calendar

A specific type of project calendar that is used to track the hours when certain resources are available.

Estimate Activity Durations

The process of estimating the duration of the project activities using both project scope and resource information

Three-point estimates 

The estimation of activities’ durations by averaging the optimistic, pessimistic, and most likely estimates. 

PERT

A specific form of three-point estimation that uses weighted average method to estimate activity durations.

Reserve analysis

A technique used to establish contingency reserves during a project to guard against potential risk.

Develop Schedule 

The process of determining start and finish dates for project activities. 

Imposed Dates

Dates imposed to meet some type of development deadlines

Schedule Network Analysis

The process of calculating expected, early, and late start and finish dates of a project.

Critical Activity 

Any activity on the critical path 

Free Float (Free Slack)

The time an activity can be delayed without affecting the immediately following activity

Total Float (Total Slack)

The time an activity can be delayed without affecting the overall completion date of a project.

Resource Leveling 

Any form of network analysis where the resource management issues drive scheduling decisions.

Resource Leveling Heuristics

Rule of thumb used to allocate resources to project activities

Critical Chain Method

A technique to develop a critical path using resource availability to determine activity sequences. 

Critical Chain

The longest path through a network diagram, considering both task dependencies and resource dependencies. 

Simulation

A process of evaluating different scenarios and their effects on the project.

What-if analyses

A process of evaluating alternative strategies by observing how changes to selected factors affect other factors and outcomes.

Schedule compression techniques 

Techniques used to shorten the project schedule while adhering to the overall project scope.

Crashing 

Dedicating extra resources to a particular activity in an attempt to finish the activity sooner than the schedule completion date. 

Fast-Tracking

Performing activities parallel that would normally be performed in sequence, in an attempt to shorten the duration of a project. 

Schedule model

Data and information that are complied and used in conjunction with manual methods or project management software to perform schedule network analysis to generate the project schedule.

Schedule Baseline

A document that contains the set of original start and finish dates, activity durations, as well as work and cost estimates, and serves as a basis for comparison during project execution.

Control Schedule 

The process of monitoring project progress as compared to the schedule baseline. 

Cost baseline

A document that contains the approved project budget for all schedule activities and serves as a basis for comparison during project execution.