WGU - C722, WGU - C722

Three essential drivers that must be achieved to generate positive characteristics in project teams

Cohesiveness, Trust, Motivation

The five stages Dr. Bruce Tuckman (1965) introduced of group development

Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, Adjorning

Forming

In this stage, team members may be meeting for the first time. Often, no one really knows much about anyone else on the team. It may be premature to refer to this group of individuals as a team. It is a time of introduction and forming relationships and understanding from exchange of information.

Storming

Team members are beginning to know about each other, but they do not yet understand how to work together. Members may "jockey for position" within the team. The dynamics of working together beyond any written statement of "roles and responsibilities" are being established. Personalities surface, showing the strengths, weaknesses, and personal needs of each individual on the team. Integration into a team may come with some struggle and conflict.

Norming

Team members have "figured out" how they will interact with each other. Working relationships are beginning to form. Trust and understanding is beginning to form between team members. They are beginning to feel comfortable working together and openly and willingly sharing information.

Performing

Team members are fully comfortable working together. Trust has been developed. Working relationships have jelled. Work is being conducted and project progress is occurring.

Adjourning

This only occurs when all the team's work has been completed and the team is no longer required. This may occur at any time in the project life cycle.

Co-located Teams

involves team members physically working at the same location or holding project meetings together in a common setup.

Virtual Teams

are teams whose members interact primarily through electronic communications. Members of a virtual team may be within the same building or across continents.

Two common situations occur that may prompt a change to the baseline scope

The scope may be expanded to include additional functionality or the scope may be diminished due to changes in the project environment such as reduced funding or requirements or changing time/due date.

Scope creep

occurs when the project team integrates enhancements to the scope without proper evaluation and approval.

work performance data

will identify the work activities that are completed, partially completed, or not started.

risk register

is a list of potential risks, how the risks will be monitored, and what action will be taken should the risk event occur.

corrective action

is a document issued to identify quality failures and how they will be corrected. The deliverable itself may need to be reworked and the project plan may need to be revised to ensure that future deliverables do not include the same error.

The Four Categories of Change

Contingency plans, improvement changes, external events, scope change

The change management system

is in place to formally identify, evaluate, decide, and communicate project changes.

Recording

is the process of documenting and archiving project-related information.

Reporting

is a key nonverbal communications methodology used to inform and to document project information.

Weekly status reports that are often working documents for the team to communicate:

Accomplishments, Issues, Schedules, Resource utilization

Monthly status reports for senior stakeholders that would include:

Project overview bragging about progress, Issues including red light (critical) problems needing immediate resolution, yellow light items that are warning flags, and resolved issues, Current accomplishments, Future plans for the next month, Resource utilization and plans

Monthly Financial Report

showing progress against the budget quantifying monies spent and planned to be spent and identifying issues with recommendations for resolution

Change management reporting

showing changes identified, requiring approval, and resolution.

Project controls

are the data gathering, management, and analytical processes used to predict, understand, and constructively influence the time and cost outcomes of a project or program.

Three Aspects of Project Quality

quality management, quality assurance, and quality control.

Quality management

is the process of identifying the customer's requirements and how they will be measured.

Quality assurance

is the process of validating that the requirements and measurements are appropriate for the project environment.

Quality control

is the process of monitoring and changing project execution to ensure that activities are being executed as planned and will result in meeting the customer requirements. It is the monitoring and controlling process that occurs during project execution.

Standards

are requirements that are generally accepted by a group of firms that produce similar products or services.

Requirements

are what the customer needs to achieve from the completed project.

Quality audits

are rigorous reviews of the project performance. These reviews are often completed by groups of experts outside of the project team such as a company's quality assurance (QA) department or an outside consultant.

positive outcomes of the audit

Identifying issues before we go into production

Identifying best practices that can be adopted by future project teams

Identifying lessons learned that can improve performance on other projects

Identifying problems that can be corrected before additional costs are incurred

Checklists

are one way of monitoring that activities/tasks have been addressed and one method of assuring that all needed documents are written.

project charters

contain enough information to understand who the project sponsor and project manager are, the purpose the project, a general idea of the scope, budget, and schedule.

Statement of Work (SOW)

defines the project's outcomes in terms of objectives, specific deliverables, acceptance criteria, technical requirements, milestones, constraints, and assumptions.

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

is a methodical deconstruction of deliverables into activities and then tasks to be performed. It details each activity that must be completed.

living documents

are all planning documents

project scope

describes how the project outcomes will be created. Documents the customer's expectations with regard to when the project will be completed (the time/schedule constraint) and how much the completed project will cost (the budget or cost constraint).

Evolution of the Scope Statement

Initial Scope (defining phase), Approved Scope Statement (planning phase), scope management (executing phase), scope verification (closing phase)

product scope

is used to describe the portion of the scope statement that defines the features and functions of the project outcome or deliverables.

project scope statement

represents a mutual understanding between the customer and the project team.

project requirement

is a characteristic, function, or capability that must be present in the project final outcome.

Project deliverables

are the features and functions of the project outcome that form the product scope.

Resource Responsibility Matrix

the resources needed are identified and the roles and responsibilities are detailed

histogram

is a graph of a frequency distribution in which rectangles with bases on the horizontal axis are given widths equal to the class intervals and heights equal to the corresponding frequencies.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSAs)

skills required by the project team

resource leveling

The act of leveling the amount of resources needed to be constant over a period of time

deliverable

is a specific product or functionality that the project will provide.

Activities are connected to two types of deliverables:

Project management - communications, planning, execution, etc.

Project specific to the desired end result of this project

8/80 rule

do not assign anything that takes less than eight hours so we allow resources sufficient work to occupy them and we don't micromanage

Project management deliverables

the concrete items we need to manage this project. They are usually generic to a business or methodology adopted by a PM for use to manage the team and create sound communications.

Project specific deliverables

project specific deliverables are required tasks

Risk Appetite

is the degree of uncertainty an entity is willing to take on in anticipation of a reward.

Risk Tolerance

is the degree, amount, or volume of risk that an organization or individual will withstand.

Risk Threshold

refers to measurements along the level of uncertainty or the level of impact at which a stakeholder may have a specific interest. Below that risk threshold, the organization will accept the risk. Above that risk threshold, the organization will not tolerate the risk (PMBOK, 2015).

Risk Planning

is the process of reviewing every aspect of the project to identify what risks may occur.

Risk Breakdown Structure (RBS)

which follows the WBS and insures that each activity and task in the WBS is reviewed for risk and opportunity and documented as identified.

Risk Management Options

Avoid, mitigate, transfer and accept.

Risk Avoidance

During our planning, the team identifies the risk and sets a path to avoid the risk.

Transfer of the risk

transfer risk to someone else

Mitigation

is when the team acts in some fashion to reduce the impact or likelihood of the risk occurring.

Accepting

the risk is a response strategy where we recognize the risk and say that it is a part of the project, normal business practice and the team will plan to accept it accordingly.

Opportunity Management

Acceptance, Enhancing the opportunity and Sharing the opportunity

risk register

lists all risks (external, technical, or organizational) and assigns scores for probability and severity.

Probability Severity (P*S) score

helps us prioritize the risks appropriately.

top-down estimation methods

hese estimates are often provided by someone at the organization who has knowledge or experience from prior projects similar to the project being considered

Bottom-up estimation methods

require that estimates be made at the detailed work activity level of the WBS.

parametric estimating

top-down methods are based on the relationship between the current project and historical data

ratio method

uses experience from prior projects to estimate the overall cost of the current project.

apportion method

is based on the ratio method but takes into consideration specific functionality or types of work that will be required.

Cost management

is the process of measuring how close actual costs are to the budget and then making changes in project execution as needed.

baseline budget

is the approved budget and will be used as the standard for comparison of actual costs throughout the life of the project and identifying variances.

Direct costs

are costs that are directly attributable to completing the project work.

Direct overhead costs

are costs from the project that are shared across the work activities.

General and administrative costs (G&A)

are overhead costs from the project organization.

padding

people tend to add in extra time or money "just in case."

Contingency reserves

are costs included in the budget to cover situations that may occur. If the project requires the use of lumber, and lumber prices are known to fluctuate, then some portion of the lumber costs may be included in a contingency reserve. In a restaurant, food costs are very volatile and so the project must budget for those variances that can occur

management reserve

is an amount added to the overall project budget to cover unknown risks.

Realistic

Accurately reflects the way the organization does business.

Appropriate for the level of resources, capabilities, and external environment of the organization.

Capable

Uses factors that are relevant to the organization.

We would not expect one model to cover all dimensions of a project, we would want to use models that cover their dimension comprehensively.

Flexible

The model should provide accurate measures across a reasonable range of conditions.

Easy to use

Provide results in a reasonable amount of time.

Results should be easily understood by the decision makers.

Low cost

The costs of gathering data and running the model should be low relative to the scale of the project.

Comparable

The model should be usable across a range of projects such that the outcomes of the model can be used to compare projects.

Non-numeric project selection models

focus on selection criteria that are not limited to traditional numeric performance measures (return on Investment [ROI], profit, revenue, etc.).

competitive necessity model

require a project proposal, which includes justification, cost, and time estimates, as well as documented outcomes.

Operating necessity

evaluates a project based on whether it will ensure ongoing operations with the understanding that not executing the project will result in operations being interrupted.

Sacred cow projects

are suggested by senior leadership or a powerful constituent of the company.

Numeric project selection models

use financial and other quantitative measures to drive decision making. Types are: internal rate of return, net present value, payback period.

time value of money

suggests that money is worth more to an organization now than in the future.

payback period

calculates the amount of time required to earn back the cost of doing the project.

payback period formula

(months)=Estimated Project Cost / Monthly Return

(annual)=Cost / Savings

internal rate of return (IRR)

evaluates potential projects as if they were financial investments. It calculates the rate of return for a project.

Net present value (NPV)

is a financial measure of the total future benefits of a project minus the costs of the project.

future net cash flows

need to know the costs (cash outflows) and benefits (cash inflows) for the entire working life of the project outcome.

Checklist project selection model

use a series of questions to evaluate each potential project and then the answers to the questions would be compared to determine whether a project is accepted or rejected.

Profit/profitability-based

measure the financial returns of the project and include: payback period, net present value, and internal rate of return as possible measure.

Scoring project selection model

extends the benefits to the checklist approach and uses quantitative or qualitative criteria that are using a scale.

Weighted factor scoring model

senior management assigns a level of importance of each criterion which then assigns a value based on that level when calculating the total project score.

operations

are the ongoing, daily activities of an organization that produces revenue and expense.

project

is an activity or group of activities to generate a new, unique product, service, or results to support that program. However, it is possible that not all projects will be part of a larger program. There could, for example, be a project to develop a new battery that is more adaptable to more extreme temperature conditions. The product of this project could be applicable to all existing automobiles and not strictly a single program.