PMP Exam Notes 22

A Fallback plan is prepared in advance for a situation, where the primary plan needs to be abandoned, so it is planned before, but as a secondary plan
A workaround is not planned in advance, but developed when the risk has already occurred or the planned response has not worked. Workaround is used when an unexpected issue occurs which is not identified until it occurs.Its like an emergency mode. in workarounds you will use the management reserve, because the contingency reserve is reserved for identified risks.

A fallback plan is implemented when the contingency plan fails or is not fully effective. In other words, you can say that the fallback plan is generally made for residual risks. It is a backup plan for the contingency plan.

Contingency plans are the plans describing the specific actions that will be taken if an opportunity or a threat occurs.
Contingency response strategy will be executed if there is a sufficient warning sign (risk trigger).

There is no difference between the contingency plan and fallback plan. In fact, the fallback plan compliments the contingency plan and it only comes into use when the contingency plan fails.

To manage the contingency plan and fallback plan, a contingency reserve is used.

Control Limits are there to indicate whether the process/system is under control or not. Results falling outside the Control Limits would mean the process is unstable and root cause analysis is needed. Specification Limits are imposed by agreement with customers on strictly quality requirements, i.e. Specification Limits must be within the Control Limits.

Cost Baseline = Project Cost Estimates + Contingency Reserves
Cost Budget = Project Cost Estimates + Contingency Reserves + Management Reserves

Fast Tracking is the preferred method for schedule compression

Both Fast Tracking and Crashing must be applied to activities on the Critical Path in order to really shorten the project duration. When applied on activities not on the critical path, it would only increase Floats which will not shorten the project duration

Fast Tracking is to carry out activities originally in sequence to be in parallel (partial or whole) while Crashing is to add extra resources to shorten the normal duration of the activities.

Fast Tracking is preferred over Crashing as the former does not involve extra resources and costs which would affect the project budget performance. However, it is important to note that both Fast Tracking and Crashing creates risks for rework (otherwise this would have actually been incorporated into the Project Plan at the very beginning) which needs to be carefully balanced with the benefits of schedule compression.

 just need to remember that common cause is “common” and that is not considered a defect while special cause is caused by a “special” reason (defect) which must be resolved in order for the process to run probably. The use of control charts can bring the matters into light and help the project manager to differentiate between Common Cause and Special Cause variance.

Residual Risks are risks that are left over after implementing a risk response
Secondary Risks are risks that are created directly by implementing a risk response

Project -> Project Phases -> Project Deliverables -> Work Packages -> Activities

Work Package: a work package is the lowest level element of the WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) through decomposition of the project scope in the “Create WBS” process. The Work Package is the lowest level in the sense that meaningful estimation of cost and duration for the scope of work included can be achieved.
One Work Package can contain many activities which are to be performed by one or more project team members.
For Project Scope Management

Activity: an activity is a small enough unit of work that need to be carried out to fulfil the project scope.
The Work Package is further decomposed into activities (which are to be entered into the “Activity List”).
The activity list is to be used to develop the project schedule.
Every activity has a start and end day (duration), there may be some sort of logical relationship between the activities.
For Project Time Management

“Quality Control Measurements” are an input to the Perform Quality Assurance process

Quality Control is concerned about the quality of the “products/deliverables“. Its major aim is to ensure the correctness of and check for defects in the products/deliverables.

Quality Assurance is concerned about the “processes“. Its major aim is to avoid defects in products/deliverable at all by assessing the effectiveness of current quality control processes and issue change requests as necessary to correct any defects in the processes.

Preventive actions are proactive actions. These are actions taken to prevent issues/problems from occurring in future.
Corrective actions are reactive actions. These are actions taken when non-conformances have already been detected to rectify the cause of the issue.

Statement of Work (SOW) contains high level information of the project deliverables
Project Scope Statement contains more details of the deliverables plus assumptions and constraints

following documents need to be developed in sequence:

Project Statement of Work (SOW) – documenting the very first ideas for the project
Project Charter – formally authorising the project and project manager (= SOW + Business Case + Contract)
Project Scope Statement – when the project manager is collecting requirements and defining scope

The Procurement Statement of Work includes the following elements:
performance (describe what can be accomplished)
functional (convey the end purpose or result)
design (convey precisely what are to be done)

The Procurement Statement of Work may be developed by either the seller or buyer. You will just need to remember that the Project Statement of Work (SOW) is mostly intended for internal use while the Procurement Statement of Work (SOW) is for always for external use.

PMP Exam Notes 21

Present Value = FV / [(1 + r)^n], where r is the rate of return and n is the number of years = $2 million / [(1 + .05)^5].

For project evaluation dealing with internal rate of return (IRR), return on investment (ROI), and net present value (NPV), simply pick the greatest value. Easy!

Cost Reimbursable (a.k.a. Cost Plus) — risk on buyer, for complex/not well-defined projects
Fixed Price — risk on seller, for simple/well-defined projects
Time and Material (a.k.a. Unit Price) — risk similar on both sides, usually for small projects or there is trust between the two parties

Cost Plus Incentive Fee (CPIF) – the buyer would need to pay the actual cost of the work plus an incentive fee if the performance of seller meets mutually agreed pre-defined performance targets (objective evaluation)

Cost Plus Award Fee (CPAF) – the buyer would need to pay the actual cost of the work plus an award based on subjective evaluation on the seller’s performance by the buyer

Activity Types:
- Discrete Effort also called “Measurable Effort”: Discrete Effort is work that can be planned and measured with specific output.
e.g. the coder has already finished 500 lines of code for the component with an estimated length of 1000 lines — 50% completion

- Non-discrete Effort: Opposite of Discrete Effort
1. Apportioned Effort: Apportioned Effort is work which cannot be divided into discrete efforts and is allotted proportionately to other discrete effort(s).
the work is directly associated with a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) component/deliverable, usually cannot be separated from the discrete efforts.
e.g. inspection, quality assurance, verification, validation activities

2. Level of Effort (LoE): Level of Effort is supportive work that do not produce definitive output but is measured with (passage of) time.
the work is not associated with a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) component/deliverable
e.g. project management, meetings, administrative work, accounting, maintenance

Quality control: concerned with the activities and measures taken to achieve quality requirements
Quality assurance: a process based approach to ensure the processes and methodology associated with the production of the final deliverables/products are defect free

Product Quality is concerned about the conformance of the deliverables to pre-defined requirements and standards.
Project Quality is about the conformance of the management/execution of the project to pre-approved processes. Project Quality is not to be tested in the PMP® Exam.

https://edward-designer.com/web/free-float-vs-total-float-for-pmp-exam/

Though both Fallback and Workaround are used to deal with risks when they occur, Aspirants would need to remember that:
Fallback is pre-developed risk response strategies for identified risks in order to protect the original project plan (the costs deal with identified risks are included in the contingency reserve)
Workaround is immediate risk response strategies for unidentified risks (or identified risks that have been accepted passively) in order to contain the damages to the project plan (the costs deal with unidentified risks can be obtained from the management reserve upon management approval)

PMP Exam Notes 20

In addition, for all unidentified risks (unknown unknowns), workaround would be carried out:

Workaround: the immediate risk response strategies for unidentified or passively accepted risks occur in order to contain the damages against the project plan (the costs dealing with identified risks can be obtained from the management reserve upon management approval)
Note: the costs dealing with unidentified risks are included in the management reserve

The idea behind net present value (or NPV) is that you can compare potential projects by figuring out how much each one is worth to your company right now. A project's NPV is figured out by coming up with how much the project is worth, and then subtracting how much it will cost. If you're asked to choose between projects and given the NPV of each of them, choose the one with the biggest NPV. That means you're choosing the one with the most value!

Administer Procurements is the Monitoring & Controlling process for Procurement Management. It's when you run into a change that has to be made to a specific contract. You use work performance information to determine how the contract is going, and the contract and procurement documents to see exactly what everyone's on the hook for. But you don't actually see the Procurement Management Plan as an input to administer procurements.

Since the CFO is affected by your project, that means he's a stakeholder. The best thing you can do in this situation is get the new stakeholder's opinion incorporated in the project up front. It's important that all of the project stakeholders understand the needs and objectives that the project is meant to address. The worst case is to have the stakeholder's opinion incorporated at the end of the project -- that could mean a lot of re-work or even an entirely unacceptable product.

This project is not in good shape. The client has needs that aren't being met, but there may not be enough time or money to meet them. What's the project manager going to do? Well, the first thing that you should do any time you have a problem is try to figure out what's causing it. All of the other answers involved taking some sort of action, and you should never take action until you've figured out the root cause of the problem.

Residual risks are risks that remain even after you have planned for and implemented all of your risk response strategies. They don't need any further analysis because you have already planned the most complete response strategy you know in dealing with the risk that came before them.

The Project Manager is mitigating the risk by backing up the data so that it doesn't get lost. He is transferring it to the insurance company by insuring the company for the cost of re-keying the information

Diagramming Techniques (including Ishikawa diagrams and Flowcharts) are a tool of the Identify Risks process. You use them to find the root cause of defects in Quality Management processes but they can also be useful in finding the risks that can lead to trouble in Risk Management. Don't assume that every time you see a fishbone diagram the question is talking about Perform Quality Control.

By the time the Close Project or Phase process happens, you should have already gotten formal written acceptance for the deliverables. That's what the Verify Scope process is for, and you verify that formal acceptance in the Close Project or Phase process.

The two main outputs of Direct and Manage Project Execution are Deliverables and Work Performance Information. Deliverables are the documents and other work products your project produces, and Work Performance Information is a name for all of the performance metrics and reports you can generate to track how your project is doing versus your plan.

The configuration management system is there to be sure that everybody on the team has the most updated version of all of the project documents. Whenever a project document is changed, it is checked into the Configuration Management System so that everyone knows where to go to get the right one.
The “document repository” sounded good, but you won't find that term any where in the PMBOK® Guide.. Watch out for made-up terms on the exam!

Forecasting is a cost monitoring tool that helps you predict how much more money you'll need to spend on the project. So which of the cost metrics would you use to do that? There are two useful numbers that you can use for forecasting. One of them is called Estimate to Complete (ETC), which tells you how much more money you'll probably spend on your project. And the other one, Variance at Completion (VAC), predicts what your variance will be when the project is done.

Kaizen is a Japanese word that means “improvement” - and it's also a management technique that helps your company use problem-solving to constantly find new ways to improve. Kaizen focuses on making small improvements and measuring their impact. It's is a philosophy that guides management, rather than a particular way of doing quality assurance.
Ishikawa diagrams - or fishbone diagrams - are an important tool that's used in Kaizen.

Smoothing is minimizing the problem, and it can help cool people off while you figure out how to solve it. But it's only a temporary fix, and does not really address the root cause of the conflict.

One effective way to deal with a risk is to pay someone else to accept it for you. This is called transference. The most common way to do this is to buy insurance. Insurance is just a contract that you use to pay a company to take on some of your risk.

Pareto charts plot out the frequency of defects and sort them in descending order. The right axis on the chart shows the cumulative percentage. This helps you figure out which root cause is responsible for the largest number of defects. The 80/20 rule states that 80% of defects are caused by 20% of the root causes you can identify. So if you do something about that small number of causes, you can have a big impact on your project.
The bars in the Pareto chart show the number of defects in each category, with a line overlaid that shows the percentage of the total defects found.

Stakeholder Analysis is one of the tools and techniques of the Identify Stakeholders process. And that shouldn't really be a surprise. After all, the goal of stakeholder analysis is to write down the needs of your stakeholders. Identify Stakeholders is one of the processes in the Communications Management knowledge area, and answer A is the definition of Communications Management.

When you're performing the Close Procurements process, you're closing out work done by a seller for a contract. To do that, you do a few things: you verify that all of the work and deliverables are acceptable, you finalize any open claims, and in case of early termination, you follow the termination clause in the contract. On the other hand, when you're performing the Close Project or Phase process, you're finalizing all of the various activities that you do across all of the process groups, and you're also verifying that the work and deliverables are complete.

The Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle is a way of making small improvements and testing their impact before you make a change to the process as a whole.

The project scope management plan is a really important tool in your project. It tells you exactly how you'll create the project scope, define the WBS, verify that the work has been done, and make changes to the scope. But it doesn't tell you about specific assumptions that you and the team have made, or constraints on your project. To find those, you should look in the requirements documentation and the project scope statement.
The Scope Baseline contains the WBS and project scope statement, so you'll find constraints and assumptions there, too!

PMP Exam Notes 19

- Subject Matter Experts (SME) are first used in Develop Project Charter
- Saying that the work must be “better” is subjective. Requirements gathered in stakeholder analysis need to be quantifiable. That way, the team has a goal they can shoot for and you can always tell how close or far from it you are.
- The Project Charter is often created without the project manager’s involvement. Sometimes it is handed to the Project Manager by the sponsor or high level manager.
- When a change has been approved you always need to update the baseline and then implement the change. That way, you will be sure to track your performance versus new scope and schedule expectations and not the old ones.
- the better approach is to always do an analysis of the impact to scope , time and cost and then submit the change request.
- The Control Chart is a run chart including the upper/lower specification limits and upper/lower control limits which are thresholds indicating whether the process is under control / meets the quality specified by the project.
- Near the end of the development of the system, most of the costs of the system have already been known. The only variable is that “final component”. It could be inferred that the cost estimate for the whole system at this point should be well within +5% to -10% (i.e. Definitive Estimate)

# 1. Analogous Estimating is considered a top-down approach which is much less accurate than parametric estimating in which Analogous Estimating is based on simple “analogy”;
  2. Parametric Estimating is more accurate for projects/activities with components which are similar and “scalable”, it is based on a unit cost/duration of historical data which is scaled  to give the estimation;
  3. Analogous Estimating is used early in the project where there are only limited amounts of information available while Parametric Estimating is used if the project/activity is “scalable”.

Analogous Estimating: the estimation is made by making an analogy with similar project from the past; however, the accuracy is quite low
Parametric Estimating: the estimation is based on adjusting “parameters” from historical information; the estimation is more reliable

- David makes use of the “Avoid” strategy to shift the construction time to early winter as typhoons normally come in summer and early autumn. There is no way to reduce the likelihood of the occurrence of typhoons so “Mitigate” is not the answer.

- Enhance will increase the % of occurrence of the opportunity or to increase the benefits from the realization of the opportunities
- Exploit will make the occurrence 100%

#
Contingency Plan: the pre-developed risk response strategies to be taken if the actively accepted risks occur
Fallback Plan: the pre-developed risk response strategies to be taken if the primary risk response is not effective
Note: the costs dealing with identified risks are included in the contingency reserve

For all unidentified risks (unknown unknowns), workaround would be carried out:

Workaround: the immediate risk response strategies for unidentified or passively accepted risks occur in order to contain the damages against the project plan (the costs dealing with identified risks can be obtained from the management reserve upon management approval)
Note: the costs dealing with unidentified risks are included in the management reserve

EAC = AC + (BAC - EV)/CPI = AC + ETC
ETC = EAC - AC
TCPI = (BAC - EV)/(EAC - AC)
CV = EV - AC
AC = EV - CV

EEF - Project Management Information System (PMIS)
— The project templates and configuration control stored in PMIS are OPA
Skills of human resources - EEF

Nominal Group Technique: brainstorming + group ranking / prioritization
Brainstorming: generating as many ideas as possible in a safe environment without any judgement from others

# The WBS Dictionary is an output of the Create WBS process. It is created along with the WBS and gives all of the details about each work package in the WBS.

Examples of Push Communication
Letters
Memos
Emails
Reports
Voice mails

Examples of Pull Communication
websites
wiki / knowledge repositories
bulletin board (e-bulletin board)
dashboard

Examples of Interactive Communication
Meetings
Phone Calls / Conference
Video Calls / Conference
Workshops

- “Assessing the likelihood of occurrence and their impact” is the very activity carried out in the “Perform Qualitative Risk Analysis” process. After this, the project manager will then perform Quantitative Risk Analysis to calculate the risks in terms of possible money costs.

- Project scope statement is the output of Define Scope

Control Cost -> Cost Forecast
Control Schedule -> Schedule Forecast

Cost Forecast, Schedule Forecast >> Monitor & Control Project Work

- Develop is to bring out the best of the project team (as a team and individually) through training and better environment;
- Manage is to resolve issues and conflicts that impede the performance of the team through interpersonal skills and appraisals.

Develop Project Team:
Major tools and techniques to be employed include:
training
colocation
reward scheme
team building (note: forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning)
ground rules
A performing team can be expected when the project manager is doing a good job in Develop Project Team.

Manage Project Team: The core aim of manage project team is to track performance, resolve issues and conflicts (e.g. performance issues and interpersonal conflicts).
Major tools and techniques to be employed include:
performance tracking
appraisals
conflict management
conversation and dialogue
If soft skills are not useful, disciplinary actions (including termination of employment) may need to be taken to control the damage to the overall performance of the team.

Manage Project Team is more difficult than Develop Project Team as the project manager is required to deal with the most difficult factor of project success — i.e. human. The interpersonal soft skill of the project manager is put to test when dealing with conflicts and issues.

Change Control is about protecting the project from undocumented changes to the project baselines by addition/changing requirements, etc.
Configuration Control is about managing the specifications/versions of the deliverables, processes and related documents throughout the lifecycle of the project.

Project Expeditors are NOT given the authority (or very low authority) to make or enforce decisions.
Project Coordinators are given some sort of limited authority to make decision.

- Project Requirements are the expectations from the stakeholders that the project need to address. The requirements are usually written in the form of capabilities (what things can be done).
- Project Scope lists out all the work that need to be done in order to deliver products, services and/or results that provide the capabilities to fulfil the user requirements. The scope is usually written as the detailed activity list.

- Creating WBS requires the tool of “Decomposition” and yet “Decomposition” will also break down the lowest level of WBS (i.e. Work Packages) into Activities and Tasks. Creating the WBS is a process for project scope management while the tool “Decomposition” is used in both project scope and time management.

- Business Case: The Business Case includes the business needs of the project with respect to high-level strategic goals of the performing organization, reasons and grounds (including information on cost benefit analysis) for identifying and selecting the project. Cost benefit analysis information is often presented as:
net present value (NPV)
internal rate of return (IRR)
return on investment (ROI)

The Project Charter includes:
Project purpose / justification
High-level project objectives and product characteristics
Project success criteria
High-level requirements
High-level schedule and budget
Name the Project manager
List out the project approval requirements and approval authority

Project Calendar is concerned about the Project
Resource Calendar is concerned about human resource (team members)

- A hammock activity is one that “covers” a group of activities.
- Kaizen —[Project Quality Management] a management theory promoting incremental changes for continuous improvement, originated in Japan.

- Process Decision Program Charts — [Project Quality Management] a decision tree to systematically identify what might go wrong in the plan under development.

PMP Exam Notes 18

Multi-criteria Decision Analysis: To select team members based on a no. of factors: availability, cost, experience, ability, knowledge, skills, attitude, etc.

2 of the Perform Quality Assurance Tools & Techniques are
-Quality Audit - "Quality Audits are reviews of your project by your company. They figure out whether or not you are following the company's process."
-Process Analysis - "Process Analysis is when you look at your process to find out how to make it better. You use your Process Improvement plan to do this one."

halo effect: a cognitive bias (if he is good at one thing, he will be good at everything)

recognition should focus on win-win reward for the team (NOT competitive-based)

# Team Building Activity

Milestone parties
Outdoor activities, eg. work trips, basketball match, soccer match, etc
Creating WBS
Planning the project by getting everyone involved in some way.

Co-location

A reward and recognition System


Quality Function Deployment (QFD) - A type of facilitated workshop that aims in determining the critical features to develop a new product.It begins by collecting the needs of the customer (also known as Voice of the Customers). Once the VOCs are collected, they are then sorted and prioritized objectively so that the goals can be set to achieve them.

- The 8/80 Rule states that the work package should not equate to less than eight hours of labor to create and no more than 80 hours of labor to create.

- Sunk costs are costs that are already incurred in the project. These costs should not be taken into account during project evaluation.

- EMV = (Probability) x (Impact)

PMP Exam Notes 17

Direct and Manage Project Work includes which of the following activities except?
1) Perform activities to accomplish project objectives;
2) Create project deliverables to meet the planned project work;
3) Control project deliverables to meet the planned project work
4) Provide, train, and manage the team members assigned to the project;

Ans: 3

REFERRENT power= PM’s PERSONALITY POWER

A project expediter works as staff assistant and communications coordinator. The expediter cannot personally make or enforce decisions

Project coordinators have the power to make some decisions, have some authority, and report to a higher-level manager.

It is not true that expediters exist in functional organizations and coordinators exist in matrix types of organizations. They both can exist in strong matrix and projectized organizations as well. However, in this case, both will be reporting to the project manager. The expediter can help him in dealing with non-technical jobs such as material management and logistics handling, and the coordinator helps them manage the project.

??? Correspondence
Highest risk for the buyer - CPFF (Cost plus fixed fee)

??? Composite Organization

A hospital is installing a new management system to computerize the hospital functions. For this purpose, representatives from
several departments are selected to create a task force assigned to implement the project. This organization structure is called - Composite Organization

PRINCE = Project in Controlled Environment

??? Anticipatory Breach

??? Budget tampering

Procurement Negotiations/ Negotiated settlements

Make payment to seller is done in Control Procurements

The review of key deliverables and project performance at the conclusion of a project phase is called:
1) Phase exit
2) Kill point
3) Stage gate

Discount Rate on an investment which makes Present value of cash inflows = Present value of cash outflows

Phase-end reviews are called:
1) Phase exits
2) Stage gates
3) Kill points

## Bill of lading

Acquisition implies a cost of resources, and is not necessarily financial.
Activity attributes include activity codes, predecessor activities, successor activities, logical relationships, leads and lags, resource requirements, imposed dates, constraints, and assumptions.
Adaptive life cycle - Agile, iterations are rapid in nature (2-4 weeks) and are fixed in time and resources
Additional quality planning tool - Force field analysis, brainstorming, nominal group discussion
Attribute sampling - method of measuring quality
Backward pass - For calculating late start and late finish date from the project end date
Bar Chart - A graphic display of Schedule related information. Also known as Gantt  chart
Bidder conference - prior to the preparation of bid, proposal. Also known as contractor conference, vendor conference, pre-bid conference
Code of accounts - A numbering system to uniquely identify each component of WBS
Colocation - An organizational placement strategy where the project team members are physically located close to one another
Configuration Management System - Subsystem of overall project management system.
Conformance work - Work is done to compensate for imperfections
Context diagram - A visual depiction of the product scope showing a business system and how people and other systems/actors interact with it
Control Account - A mgt. control point where scope, budget, actual cost, and schedule are integrated and compared to earned value for performance measurement
Control limits / specification limit - ?
Data date - A point in time when the status of the project is recorded.
Decision tree analysis - ?

PMBOK identifies a subset of project management body of knowledge that is generally recognized as good practice
PMO - An organizational structure that standardizes the project related governance processed and facilitates the sharing of resources, methodologies, tools, and techniques.
Project management process groups are not project phases
Quality function deployment (QFD) - A facilitated workshop technique that helps to determine critical characteristics for new product development.
Regression Analysis - An analytic technique, a series of input variables are examined in relation to their corresponding output results in order to develop a mathematical or statistical relationship
Regulation - Requirements imposed by governmental body.
RFI, RFQ, RFP - A type of procurement document
Residual Risk - A risk that remains after risk responses have been implemented
Resource Leveling - A technique in which start and finish dates are adjusted based on resource constraints with the goal of balancing demand of resources with the available supply
Resource Smoothing - Adjusts the activities of a schedule model such that the requirement of resources on the project do not exceed certain predefined resource limits
RAM (Responsibility Assignment Matrix) - A grid that shows the project resources assigned to each work package
Risk - Has a +ve or -ve effect on one or more project objectives
Risk Acceptance - Acknowledge the risk and not taking any action unless the risk occurs
Risk can either be an opportunity or a threat
You must find the risk attitude of your stakeholders. Risk attitude can be broadly divided into three categories:
- Risk appetite - The degree of uncertainty an entity is willing to take on in anticipation of a reward. Some organizations might be willing to take a high risk if the reward is high; others may want to play safe or go conservatively.
- Risk tolerance - It shows the risk attitude of stakeholders or an organization in measurable units.High tolerance means people are willing to take a high risk, and low tolerance means people are not willing to take many risks.
- Risk threshold - The risk threshold is a further step in the risk tolerance; you can say that it quantifies the risk tolerance with a more precise figure. An amount of risk that an organization or individual is willing to accept.Below the risk threshold, the organization will accept the risk, and above the risk threshold, the organization will not tolerate the risk.
Scatter Diagram -
Secondary Risk - A risk that arises as a direct result of implementing a risk response.
Work Package - Lowest level of WBS for which cost and duration can be estimated and managed.
Weighted milestone method - EVM, work package --> measurable segments each ending with a observable milestone --> assigns a weighted value to the achievement of each milestone
Voice of the customer - A planning technique
Verification - Often an internal process
Velocity - A measure of team's productivity rate, A capacity planning approach frequently used to forecast future project work.
VAC (Variance at Completion) = Difference between BAC and EAC
Value Engineering -
Validation - Meets the need of customer
Validate scope - The process of formalizing acceptance of the completed project deliverables
Sensitivity analysis - comparing the relative importance of variables. For example, if you need to visually compare 100 budgetary items, and identify the largest ten items, it would be nearly impossible to do using a standard bar graph. However, in a tornado chart of the budget items, the top ten bars would represent the top ten largest items.
Tornado diagram - a special type of Bar chart, where the data categories are listed vertically instead of the standard horizontal presentation, and the categories are ordered so that the largest bar appears at the top of the chart, the second largest appears second from the top, and so on.
TCPI (To complete performance index) - Ratio of the cost to finish the outstanding work to the remaining budget

Failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA)
Fast tracking - activities of phases perform in parallel
Fixed formula method - An EVM, % budget value - at the start of milestone work, remaining % budget - when the work is complete
Funding limit reconciliation - identify any variances between the funding limits and planned expenditures
Hammock Activity -
Hard logic -
Histogram - A special form of bar chart used to describe the central tendency, dispersion, and shape of a statistical distribution
Imposed date - A fixed date. For example: "start no earlier than" and "Finish no later than"
Incremental life cycle - Scope determined early, time and cost estimates are routinely modified as the project's team understanding of the product increases, increments successively add to the functionality of the product
Influence diagram - Shows causal influences, time ordering of events, and other relationships among variables and outcomes
Interrelationship Diagraphs - A quality management planning tool, provide a process for creative problem-solving in moderately complex scenarios that possess intertwined logical relationships
Lead, Lag -
Level of efforts - An activity that doesn't produce definitive end product and measured by the passage of time. One of the three EVM types of activities used to measure work performance.
Logical Relationship - A dependency between two activities, or between an activity and a milestone.
Mandatory Dependency - A relationship that is contractually required or inherent in the nature of work.
Master Schedule - A summary level project schedule
Near-Critical Activity - A schedule activity that has low total float
Network Logic - The collection of schedule activity dependencies that makes up a project schedule network diagram
Pareto diagram - A histogram, ordered by frequency of occurrence, that shows how many results were generated by each identified cause
Phase Gate - A review at the end of a phase
Planning Package - A work breakdown structure component below the control account with known work content but without detailed schedule activities
Predictive Life Cycle - Project scope, and the time and cost required to deliver that scope, are determined as early in the life cycle as possible.
Prioritization Matrices - A quality mgt. planning tool.
Probability and Impact Matrix - A grid for mapping the probability of each risk occurrence and its impact on project objectives if that risk occurs.
Process Decision Program Chart (PDPC) - To understand a goal in relation to the steps for getting to the goal.

Product work, project work and project management work should all be included in the WBS
At a minimum, the issue log should contain: An owner name and a target resolution date.

Important Control Quality Terms:
Prevention - Keeping errors out of the process
Inspection - Keeping errors out of the hands of the customer
Attribute sampling - The result either conforms or does not conform
Variables sampling - The result is rated on a continuous scale that measures the degree of conformity
Tolerances - Specified range of acceptable results
Control  limits - Identify the boundaries of common variation in a statistically stable process or process performance

For repetitive processes, the control limits are generally set at ±3 s around.

A process is considered out of control when:
(1) a data point exceeds a control limit
(2) seven consecutive plot points are above the mean (Although can be within upper limit)
(3) seven consecutive plot points are below the mean (Although can be within lower limit)

Process decision program charts (PDPC) - Anticipating intermediate steps that could derail achievement of the goal.

Check Sheets / Tally sheets (not Check List)

Design of experiments (DOE) - A statistical method for identifying which factors may influence specific variables of a product or process under development or in production. It provides a statistical framework for systematically changing all of the important factors, rather than changing the factors one at a time.

Quality control measurements (Output of Control Quality) -  are the documented results of control quality activities. They should be captured in the format that was specified through the Plan Quality Management process

Verified deliverables (output of control quality) are an input to validate scope for formalized acceptance.

PMP easily confused terms:
https://edward-designer.com/web/pmp-easily-confused-terms/

Your company’s quality assurance department has performed a quality audit on your project. They have found that your team has
implemented something inefficiently, and that could lead to defects. What’s the NEXT thing that should happen on your project?
1) You work with the quality department to implement a change to the way your team does their work
2) You document recommended corrective actions and submit them to the change control board
3) You add the results of the audit to the lessons learned
4) You meet with the manager of the quality assurance department to figure out the root cause of the problem
2
Quality Audits are when your company reviews your project to see if you are following its processes. The point is to figure out if there are ways to
help you be more effective by finding the stuff you are doing on your project that is inefficient or that


You are a project manager and your team is preparing for the internal quality audit cycle. However, you feel that the team is a little
apprehensive about the audit process. You decide to give them an overview of the process. Which of the following would be
INCORRECT about quality audits?
1) Quality Audits are used to identify all the best practices implemented in the project
2) Quality audits help to share best practices in one project with other projects in the organization
3) Quality Audits aims to asses project team effectiveness and suggest improvements
4) Quality Audits helps to improve process implementation and team productivity
1

The objectives of a quality audit may include all of them except?
1) Identify all good and best practices being implemented;
2) Identify all conformity, gaps, and shortcomings;
3) Share good practices introduced or implemented in similar projects in the organization and/or industry;
4) Proactively offer assistance in a positive manner to improve implementation of processes to help the team raise productivity;
2

After quality planning, you have created a component-specific tool to verify that the required steps have been performed to test
your product. This can also be referred to as:
1) Checklist
2) Operational definition
3) Quality management plan
4) Design of experiments (DOE)
1
A checklist is a structured tool, usually component-specific, used to verify that a set of required steps has been performed. PMBOK® Guide - Fifth
Edition, page 242

The team is in the process of performing quality activities and quality audits to determine which processes should be utilized to meet
the project quality requirements. Which process is the team performing?
1) Plan Quality
2) Control Quality
3) Validate Scope
4) Perform Quality Assurance
4

You are working as a project manager in an automobile company. Recently the government has amended the regulations to enforce
stricter emission requirements for automobiles. As a project manager, you are concerned that your project quality norms may not
satisfy the revised quality standards. So, you do an audit and try to remedy this problem through:
1) Quality control
2) Quality planning
3) Quality assurance
4) Modifications to quality management plan
3

Isabelle is a project manager on an industrial design project. She has found a pattern of defects occurring in all of her projects over
the past few years and he thinks there might be a problem in the process his company is using that is causing it. She uses Ishikawa
diagrams to come up with the root cause for this trend over projects so that she can make recommendations for process changes to
avoid this problem in the future. What process is he doing?
1) Plan Quality Management
2) Perform Quality Assurance
3) Control Quality
4) Qualitative Risk Analysis
2
Isabelle is doing root-cause analysis on process problems, that’s Quality Assurance. Remember, Quality control is when you are trying to find
problems in your work products through inspection. Quality Assurance is when you are looking at the way your proc

All of the statements about the Arrow Diagramming Method (ADM) or Activity-on-Arrow (AOA) are true EXCEPT
1) The nodes are used to represent activity and arrows show activity dependency
2) Uses only Finish to Start relationship between activities
3) May use dummy activities
4) It's a popular method of drawing network diagram
1
The nodes are used to represent activity and arrows show activity dependency. In the arrow diagramming method (ADM), the arrows are used to
represent activities. The nodes represent activity dependency. PMBOK 5th Edition Page 246


One of the major difficulties for a project manager is getting people to cooperate and perform. This is a major issue in a matrix organization. The different types of power for the project managers include:

Formal (legitimate): This power is based on the position of the project manager
Reward: This power stems from giving rewards
Penalty (Coercive): This power comes from the ability to penalize team members
Expert: This power comes from being the technical expert or even the project management expert
Referent: Referent is the power of charisma and fame. This power comes from another person liking the project manager, respecting him, or wanting to be like him.

HALO EFFECT:
The halo effect is something to be aware of when dealing with team members. There can be a tendency to rate the team members high or low on all factors due to the impression of a high or a low rating on some other specific factor.

Difference between checksheet and quality checklist:
- Although a checksheet is a type of checklist, its primary purpose is to gather data.
- The quality checklist is intended to help verify a required action has taken place or item has been included.

Powers of Project Manager:
Formal (legitimate): This power is based on the position of the project manager
Reward: This power stems from giving rewards
Penalty (Coercive): This power comes from the ability to penalize team members
Expert: This power comes from being the technical expert or even the project management expert
Referent: Referent is the power of charisma and fame. This power comes from another person liking the project manager, respecting him, or wanting to be like him.

Edward Deming:
Created the “Total Quality Management” (TQM) concept Key points:
- Be proactive, not reactive (in ensuring quality)
- Utilize leadership and accountability
- Measure and strive for constant improvement
- Continuous Improvement
- Testing early on, to identify problems early-on

Philip Crosby:
Created “Zero Defects” concept (Do it right the first time to avoid re-work and extra cost in the long run)

McGregor’s Theory X and Y:
X - old school, top-down specific direction, labor does not want to work.
Y - newer, management provides big picture and direction, labor wants to work and enjoys it

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:
• Self Actualization
• Esteem
• Belonging
• Safety
• Physiological

Herzberg Motivational Theory:
He says two main areas for workplace success:
(1) Hygiene (safe environment, steady pay, stable job) - These factors do not improve motivation
(2) Motivating Agents (non-financial in nature -- opportunity to improve, education, responsibility) - Help in motivation

Expectancy Theory:
People "in expectation of positive results" are motivated.

- Smoothing/Accommodate may have the problem resurface later. In Compromise the problem will not resurface since there was at least some solution for the issue.
- In smoothing, PM focus on areas of agreement to smooth members but never reaches any solution. So, it's NO-SOLUTION technique. But in compromising, PM reaches solution but is LOSE-LOSE situation for both parties.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs five-stage model includes:
1. Biological and physiological needs - air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, sleep.
2. Safety needs - protection from elements, security, order, law, stability, freedom from fear.
3. Love and belongingness needs - friendship, intimacy, trust, and acceptance, receiving and giving affection and love. Affiliating, being part of a group (family, friends, work).
4. Esteem needs - which Maslow classified into two categories: (i) esteem for oneself (dignity, achievement, mastery, independence) and (ii) the desire for reputation or respect from others (e.g., status, prestige). Maslow indicated that the need for respect or reputation is most important for children and adolescents and precedes real self-esteem or dignity.
5. Self-actualization needs - realizing personal potential, self-fulfilment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences. A desire “to become everything one is capable of becoming”

As per Rita's, the 7 sources of conflict are (in this order):

1. Schedules
2. Project priorities
3. Resources
4. Technical opinions
5. Administrative procedures
6. Cost
7. Personality

In the PMBOK however, on Pg 282 "Sources of conflict include scarce resources, scheduling priorities, and personal work styles."

# Agressor - Criticizes everything and everybody on PM
# Dominator - Professes to know everything about project management.
# Devil's Advocate - Finds fault in all areas of PM

# The work authorization system is a part of your company’s Enterprise Environmental Factors. It defines how work is assigned to people to ensure that the work
is done at the right time and in a proper sequence.

# Confronting (Collaborate, Problem Solve) means figuring out the cause of the problem and fixing it.

# Some questions on the exam might ask you about how to operate in another country. In this case, the question is about whether or not something is a bribe. Clearly, if it is a bribe, you can’t pay it. But is it? If a payment to a government official (or anyone else) is customary, then it’s not a bribe. You should go ahead and pay the police—as long as it is acceptable and legal in that country.

# The project scope management plan may be important in your project. It tells you exactly how you’ll create the project scope, define the WBS, validate that the work has been done, and make changes to the scope. But it doesn’t tell you about specific assumptions that you and the team have made, or constraints on your project. You find those in the scope baseline (which contains the scope statement), in the requirements documentation and in the charter.

# Validated Changes aren’t an input—they’re the output. The most important part of the  Control Quality process is that your team has to inspect each deliverable in order to verify that it meets its requirements. What do you need to do that? First you need the deliverables. And Quality Checklists are really useful too, because they help you inspect each deliverable. You need Work Performance Data, because that tells you how well the team is doing the job.

PMP Exam Note 16

- Cost estimates and time estimates are derived from the WBS in the Scope Definition process, not from the scope statement. It won't neccessarily be difficult to derive the cost and time estimates though they may be incorrect.
- Although changes may be initiated verbally, they should be recorded in written form and entered into the change management and/or configuration management system.
- Every documented change request needs to be either approved or rejected by a responsible individual, usually the project sponsor or project manager.
- Some of the configuration management activities included in the Perform Integrated Change Control process are as follows:
1. Configuration identification
2. Configuration status accounting
3. Configuration verification and audit

- A project manager is in the final closure phase of the project. At first, he should measure project scope against project management plan .

- The code of accounts is the unique numbering system for each element in the WBS. The WBS is finalized by assigning each work package to a control account and establishing a unique identifier for that work package from a code of accounts.

- Configuration management is a procedure to identify and document the functional and physical characteristics of an item or system and ensure the deliverable reflects all implemented changes.

- The change log is used to log all change requests - approved and rejected changes.Along with the changes their impact to cost , time and risk details are also documented.

- Go through PMI PMP Exam Outline

- Phase-end lessons learned sessions provide a good team building exercise for project staff members.

- Customer or sponsor approval may be required for certain change requests after CCB approval, unless they are part of the CCB.

- Change control board is:  Group of stakeholders, team leads, executives who decide on which changes to accept/reject

- Project selection tool - 1) Net Present Value 2) Payback period 3) Scoring Model

- Cost benefit Analysis - Tools used in Plan Quality process.

- Facilitation Techniques - Tools for integrating knowledge area - Develop project charter; Develop project management plan
- Facilitated Workshop - Tools for Scope Knowledge area - Collect requirements; Define scope

- Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is an example of "Facilitated workshop"

- Document Analysis is TT of Collect Requirements

Scope validation: formalizing acceptance of the completed project deliverables
Scope control: monitoring the status of the project & product scope, and making sure the changes to the scope baseline are done through the formal change control process

- The focus of validating scope is accepting the deliverables; controlling quality is concerned with the correctness of the deliverables (i.e., meeting the quality requirements for the deliverables).

# Similarities between Control Quality and Validate Scope
Both processes belong to the monitor and control process group.
Both processes involve inspection and review of deliverables.

# Differences between Control Quality and Validate Scope
Control quality is performed internally by the project manager with the quality management team, while validate scope is performed by the client with the project manager.
Control quality checks whether the product is produced in the right way, and validate scope is concerned with producing the right product.
The control quality process is performed to ensure that product is ready to be delivered while validate scope process gets the formal acceptance from the client after delivering the product.
Control quality is usually performed during the project execution, and validate scope is performed at the end of the phase or project.
The objective of the control quality process is to make sure the product is defect free, and fulfills all its requirements. On the other hand, the purpose of the validate scope process is to get formal acceptance of the product from the client.

# Since there are limited resources such as human, time, money, etc., we cannot work on infinite number of projects at the same time.
Opportunity cost is a concept to help you judge which project(s) to take and which project(s) NOT to take based on the relative potential returns of the project(s).

For example:
Project A has a potential return of $25,000
Project B has a potential return of $20,000
Project C has a potential return of $10,000
The opportunity cost for selecting Project A for completion over Project B and C will be $20,000 (the “potential loss” of not completing the second best project).

- Phase exits, Phase gates, Decision gates, Stage gates, and Kill points are one and the same.  It is the point in time during the execution phase of the project where the stakeholders or the sponsor review the progress and decide on whether to continue or kill the project.

Project Selection (NPV, CBR) etc.:
https://edward-designer.com/web/pmp-benefit-analysis-concepts/
https://edward-designer.com/web/pmp-benefit-analysis-concepts-2/

- Administrative closure is done only once per phase or once for the project - while Procurement closure can be done as many times as needed depending on the number of contracts

- Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA)
FMEA is a very simple qualitative technique which involves brainstorming with experts and listing their comments in a table format.
It is similar to the process of creating a probability and impact matrix.
In this technique, experts identify possible causes for product failure, the chances of these failures happening, the impact of these failures, how easy it is to detect failure, etc.
FMEA is a proactive technique which helps you identify potential defects and failures before they occur. This is a fantastic qualitative technique, and if used correctly and consistently can bring many benefits to your organization.

Value Analysis - Cost reduction tool that considers whether function is really necessary and whether it can be provided at a lower cost without degrading performance or quality. Finding the least expensive way to do the scope of work.

Regression Analysis - Statistical technique graphically represented on scatter diagram