PM 4

  • Different types of project costs (scenario) 

    • Fixed Costs: costs that remain the same regardless of the size or volume of work

    • Variable costs: costs that vary directly with the volume of use

    • Direct costs: costs that only occur because of the project and are often classified as either direct labor or other direct costs

    • Indirect costs: costs that are necessary to keep the organization running, but are not associated with one specific project. Salaries of company executives 

    • Recurring costs: costs that repeat as the project work continues, such as the cost of writing code or laying bricks

    • Nonrecurring costs: costs that happen only once during a project, such as developing a design that, once approved, guides the project team

    • Regular: progress can be made by normal work hours and purchasing agreements

    • Expedited: occurs when project must be completed faster than normal

    • Estimate: Quantified assessment of the likely amount

    • Reserve: A provision to mitigate cost and or schedule risk 

  • How risk events, if they occur what kind are they

    • Known knowns: can be planned and managed with certainty; therefore, it is not a risk. An example is that cement will harden. 

    • Known unknowns: risks that can be identified as risk but the likelihood of them is not known. In other words, a known unknown may or may not happen. These risks should be identified, and an analysis must be made to identify a mitigation strategy before a contingency reserve is established to pay for them.

    • Unknown Unknowns: Since they cannot even be envisioned, it is hard to know how much reserve time and money are needed to cover them. They are usually covered by a management reserve, and the amount of this reserve is often negotiated based upon the confidence level the project manager and key stakeholders have regarding how well they understand the project

    • Unknown Knowns: Others know but you don’t, 

  • DMAIC

    • Define, measure, analyze, improve, control

    • Process to plan and manage improvement projects 


  • Different kinds of estimating 

    • Analogous: an estimating technique that uses the values of parameters on a scale, such as scope, cost, budget, and duration or measures of scale such as size, weight, and complexity from a previous and similar activity or project as the basis for estimating the same parameter or measure for a future activity or project respectively.

    • Parametric: an estimating technique that uses a statistical relationship between historical data and other variables (e.g., square footage in construction, lines of code in software development) to calculate an estimate for …scope, cost, and duration.

    • Bottom up estimating: a method of estimating what is needed to meet the requirements of each of the lower, more detailed pieces of work, preferably the lowest level of WBS work elements, and these estimates are then aggregated into a total quantity.

    • Three Point: Uses 3 estimates and averages them to get final estimate. Can estimate both duration and cost. Most accurate. More time consuming than other two. 

  • Difference between reserve costs

    • Reserve costs:  extra money in the project budget to be used if necessary—usually if a risk event occurs

    • Management reserves: money assigned to the project for unknown possible costs and money that senior management controls.

    • Contingency reserve: money assigned to the project and allocated for identified risks for which contingent responses are developed.

  • Risk register, determine priorities 

    •  the document containing the results of the qualitative risk analysis, quantitative risk analysis, and risk response planning. It details all identified risks, including description, category, cause, probability of occurring, impact(s) on objectives, proposed responses, owners, and current status.

  • Different kinds of risks and what you do with them

    • Known Unknowns: These risks should be identified, and an analysis must be made to identify a mitigation strategy before a contingency reserve is established to pay for them

    • Unknown unknowns are usually covered by a management reserve

  • How do you identify a risk 

    • Identifying risk is the process of determining which risks may affect the project and documenting their characteristics.

    • Gather information: Facilitator asks what could go wrong multiple times. This could be another person or the project manager. 

    • Brainstorming risks are assessed. Even if the risk is not important it could lead to other risks one might not have thought of originally

    • We could interview stakeholders 

    • SWOT: a detailed analysis of the project’ s and project management’ s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, might be used.

    • Delphi technique: information gathering technique used as a way to reach a consensus among experts on a subject, with the experts participating anonymously in order to avoid groupthink and prejudice.


  • Why shouldn’t you design quality into a process, which is not a reason why you should design quality

    • The three main reasons it is better to design quality into a process than to find problems upon inspection, first it costs more to make junk then to remake to obtain good outputs. Then the next reason is having to rework issues makes things worse and aggravates the time pressure that already exists on many projects. The last reason is that the best inspectors don't catch all the mistakes, and some mistakes even reach customers.

  • Quality management plan and its purpose 

    • describes which quality standards the project will use and how the project team will implement them

    • may include a description of the quality baseline by which the project will be judged

    • Is a portion of the overall project management plan

    • Identifies quality objectives 

  • PDCA

    • Plan, do, check, act 

    • Processes can be improved with this model