Project Management
101 flashcards by MentisLibrary
Scope, schedule, cost, risk, and the earned value maths that tells you which one is slipping. Covers the PMP vocabulary alongside Scrum and Kanban, and flags the traps that quietly sink projects.
- What is a project?
- A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result
- What distinguishes a project from operations?
- A project is temporary and produces something unique; operations are ongoing and repetitive
- What is a program in project management?
- A group of related projects managed together to obtain benefits not available from managing them individually
- What is a portfolio in project management?
- A collection of projects, programs, and operations grouped together to achieve strategic objectives, not necessarily interdependent
- What are the five process groups in the PMBOK Guide?
- Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closing
- What is a project charter?
- The document that formally authorizes a project, names the project manager, and states high level objectives, scope, and constraints
- What is a project sponsor?
- The senior individual who funds the project, owns the business case, and clears organizational obstacles
- What is a stakeholder?
- Any individual or group that can affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by the project
- What is a stakeholder register?
- A document listing stakeholders with their interests, influence, expectations, and communication needs
- What is a power interest grid?
- A stakeholder mapping tool plotting influence against interest to decide engagement level: manage closely, keep satisfied, keep informed, or monitor
- What is scope in project management?
- The sum of the products, services, and results to be provided by the project, and the work required to deliver them
- What is the difference between product scope and project scope?
- Product scope is the features and functions of the deliverable; project scope is the work needed to deliver it
- What is a scope statement?
- A written description of the project deliverables, acceptance criteria, exclusions, assumptions, and constraints
- What is scope creep?
- The uncontrolled expansion of project scope without adjustments to time, cost, and resources
- What is gold plating?
- Delivering more than the requirements ask for, on the team's own initiative and without authorization
- What is a work breakdown structure, or WBS?
- A hierarchical decomposition of the total scope of work into smaller, manageable deliverables
- What is a work package?
- The lowest level component of the WBS, small enough to be estimated, scheduled, and assigned to one owner
- What is the 100 percent rule in a WBS?
- The WBS must include 100 percent of the work defined by the scope, and no more
- What is a WBS dictionary?
- A companion document giving detail for each WBS element: description, deliverables, acceptance criteria, owner, and estimates
- What is the triple constraint?
- The interdependent limits of scope, time, and cost, with quality affected by any change to them
- What is a milestone?
- A significant point or event in a project, with zero duration
- What is the critical path?
- The longest sequence of dependent activities through a project, determining the shortest possible project duration
- What is float or slack?
- The amount of time an activity can be delayed without delaying the project or a successor
- What is the difference between total float and free float?
- Total float is delay possible without delaying the project end; free float is delay possible without delaying any successor activity
- What is the critical path method, or CPM?
- A schedule analysis technique that calculates early and late start and finish dates through a forward and backward pass to find the critical path and float
- What is PERT?
- Program Evaluation and Review Technique, a schedule method using three point estimates to model uncertainty in activity duration
- What is the PERT three point estimate formula?
- Expected duration equals optimistic plus four times most likely plus pessimistic, divided by six
- What is a Gantt chart?
- A bar chart showing activities against a calendar, with bar length representing duration and links representing dependencies
- What is a network diagram?
- A schematic showing project activities and their logical dependencies as nodes and arrows
- What are the four dependency types?
- Finish to start, start to start, finish to finish, and start to finish