Project Basics
This defines the overall goals, deliverables, and boundaries of a project.
What is Scope?
A visual timeline of tasks often shown with bars across a calendar.
What is a Gantt chart?
A potential event that could negatively impact a project.
What is a risk?
People who are affected by or have an interest in the project.
Who are stakeholders?
A team member misses deadlines repeatedly. The BEST first step is this.
What is have a one-on-one conversation to understand the issue?
This document formally authorizes a project and gives the project manager authority.
What is a project charter?
Tasks that must be completed before others can begin are called this.
What are dependencies?
A problem that is currently happening (not just a possibility) is called this.
What is an issue?
Assigning roles like Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed refers to this tool.
What is a RACI matrix?
A stakeholder keeps adding “small” requests. The PM should document and manage this through:
What is a change control process?
The three main constraints in project management are time, cost, and this.
What is quality?
The amount of time a task can be delayed without affecting the overall timeline.
What is slack (or float)?
Transferring risk to another party (like buying insurance) is this strategy.
What is risk transfer?
The method or channel used to share information (email, meeting, etc.) is called this.
What is a communication channel?
Double Jeopardy:
A project fails due to unclear goals from the start. This phase was likely weak.
What is the initiation phase?
This phase focuses on tracking progress and making adjustments during execution.
What is the monitoring and controlling phase?
Breaking a project into smaller, manageable pieces is called this.
What is a work breakdown structure (WBS)?
Double Jeopardy:
Completely changing a plan to eliminate a risk is called this.
What is risk avoidance?
Adjusting communication style based on your audience (executives vs team) is known as this skill.
What is audience awareness (or adaptive communication)?
Only 45% of projects actually meet the goals they’re supposed to meet.
What is true?
A project team delivers all final outputs, but the client later disputes expectations because success criteria were never formally confirmed. This failure most directly points to a weakness in this closing activity.
What is formal acceptance/sign-off?
A project manager overlaps tasks that were originally planned to be done sequentially in order to save time. This scheduling strategy is called:
What is fast tracking?
A backup plan used if a risk actually occurs is known as this.
What is a contingency plan?
A project fails because critical risks were known by team members but never shared openly. This failure is most directly tied to a lack of:
Trust-based environment
This equation showcases the main focus of our textbook.
What is people+process=success?