Project Management and Quality Assurance
Domain 7 tests schedule and cost control arithmetic, risk and configuration management, and the vocabulary of quality assurance and testing. Case questions frequently give project status data and ask for a forecast.
Schedule and cost
- A WBS is deliverable-oriented and follows the 100% rule: child work packages sum to the parent's full scope.
- In a precedence diagram, total float = LS − ES = LF − EF. The critical path has zero float and the longest duration; delays there delay the project.
- Crashing adds resources to shorten duration and raises cost; fast tracking overlaps activities and raises risk.
- PERT expected duration = (O + 4M + P)/6; activity standard deviation = (P − O)/6; path variance is the sum of activity variances.
- Earned value: SV = EV − PV, CV = EV − AC, SPI = EV/PV, CPI = EV/AC, EAC ≈ BAC/CPI, ETC = EAC − AC, TCPI = (BAC − EV)/(BAC − AC).
Risk and configuration
- Risk management: identification, qualitative and quantitative analysis (probability × impact), response planning (avoid, mitigate, transfer, accept), monitoring.
- Configuration management: identification, baselines, change control board, status accounting, configuration audit. Functional, allocated and product baselines correspond to requirements, design and delivered software.
Quality and testing
- SQA is process-oriented and preventive; testing is product-oriented and detective. Reviews run from informal walkthroughs to formal Fagan inspections with defined roles and defect logs.
- Verification asks whether we built the product right; validation asks whether we built the right product.
- Levels: unit, integration (big-bang, top-down with stubs, bottom-up with drivers, sandwich), system, acceptance (alpha in-house, beta at customer sites).
- Black-box techniques: equivalence partitioning, boundary value analysis, decision tables, state transition testing. White-box techniques: statement, decision and condition coverage, basis path testing.
- McCabe cyclomatic complexity V(G) = E − N + 2 = P + 1, where P is the number of decision points; it equals the number of independent paths.
Worked example
BAC is 100,000; at month four PV is 40,000, EV 30,000, AC 36,000. SV = −10,000 and CV = −6,000, so the project is behind schedule and over budget. SPI = 0.75 and CPI = 0.833; EAC = 100,000/0.833 ≈ 120,000. To finish on the original budget, TCPI = (100,000 − 30,000)/(100,000 − 36,000) ≈ 1.09, meaning the remaining work must run about 9% more efficiently than plan.
Traps
- Computing cost variance as EV − PV.
- Confusing float with duration.
- Applying V(G) = E − N + 2 and then adding 1 again.
- Treating a walkthrough as a formal inspection.