PKMC Module III cheat sheet

Project: a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result; temporary means it has a defined start and end, and unique means the deliverable differs in some way from prior work.

Operations are ongoing and repetitive; projects are temporary and unique. A work effort that produces the same output repeatedly on an indefinite basis is an operation, not a project.

A program is a group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits not available from managing them individually; a portfolio is a collection of projects, programs, and operations managed as a group to achieve strategic objectives.

Predictive (waterfall) life cycle: scope, time, and cost are determined early and changes are controlled through formal change requests; adaptive (agile) life cycle: scope is refined iteratively and time and cost boxes are fixed per iteration.

Project life cycle phases are typically: starting the project, organizing and preparing, carrying out the work, and closing the project. Cost and staffing levels are low at start, peak during execution, and drop rapidly at closure.

Stakeholder influence is highest and cost of changes is lowest at the start of the project; as the project progresses, stakeholder influence decreases and the cost of implementing changes increases.

Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet requirements, performed through integrating the five process groups: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closing.

A project manager balances competing constraints: scope, schedule, cost, quality, resources, and risk. A change to one constraint generally requires adjustment to at least one other.

Business case: documents the business need and the justification for investing in the project; it is the primary input to the project charter and is often owned by the sponsor.

Project charter: a document issued by the sponsor that formally authorizes the project and the project manager to apply organizational resources; it names the PM, states high-level scope, and records high-level risks and success criteria.

Project manager is assigned as early as possible, ideally during charter development; the charter is the document that gives the PM authority, not the project management plan.

Stakeholder register: records identification information, assessment information (influence, interest, power), and classification of each stakeholder; it is a project document, not part of the project management plan.

Power/interest grid: high power-high interest = manage closely; high power-low interest = keep satisfied; low power-high interest = keep informed; low power-low interest = monitor.

Requirements traceability matrix links each requirement to its source (business need, stakeholder) and to the deliverables, test cases, and design components that satisfy it; it supports verifying that all requirements are met.

Requirements are documented in the requirements documentation and classified as business, stakeholder, solution, functional, or nonfunctional; only requirements that are approved and funded are baselined into scope.

A stakeholder is any individual, group, or organization that may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of the project.

Scope management sequence: plan scope management, collect requirements, define scope, create WBS, validate scope, control scope. Validate scope is the formal acceptance of completed deliverables; control scope manages changes to the scope baseline.

Scope baseline = project scope statement + WBS + WBS dictionary. The scope statement includes product scope description, acceptance criteria, deliverables, exclusions, and constraints/assumptions.

WBS: a hierarchical decomposition of the total scope of work into deliverables-oriented work packages. The 100% rule: the WBS captures all work required to complete the project, and no work outside the WBS is performed.

Work package: the lowest level of the WBS, where cost and duration can be reliably estimated and managed; the WBS dictionary describes each component's deliverables, acceptance criteria, and responsible party.

Decomposition: the process of dividing deliverables into progressively smaller components until work packages are reached; the level of decomposition is driven by the needed degree of control and cost of management.

Critical path: the longest path through the network, which determines the shortest possible project duration; it has zero total float, and any delay on it delays the project finish date.

Total float = LS - ES or LF - EF; a task with total float greater than zero can slip by that amount without delaying the project finish. Free float is the amount a task can slip without delaying the early start of any successor.

Schedule compression: crashing adds resources to critical path activities, usually increases cost, and only works when duration is resource-dependent; fast tracking overlaps activities, increases risk, and only works when activities can overlap.

Cost baseline = the time-phased approved budget, excluding management reserve. Total project budget = cost baseline + management reserve. Contingency reserve is included in the cost baseline and covers identified risks.

Estimate types by accuracy: rough order of magnitude (-25% to +75%), budgetary (-10% to +25%), and definitive (-5% to +10%); accuracy improves as the project progresses and design detail increases.

Analogous estimating uses historical data from similar projects, is fast and low cost, and is least accurate; parametric estimating uses a statistical relationship between historical data and variables (e.g., cost per unit) and is more accurate.

PV (planned value) = authorized budget for scheduled work; EV (earned value) = budget associated with work actually completed; AC (actual cost) = actual cost incurred for work performed.

SV = EV - PV (positive = ahead of schedule); CV = EV - AC (positive = under budget); SPI = EV / PV (greater than 1 = ahead of schedule); CPI = EV / AC (greater than 1 = under budget).

EAC forecast: EAC = BAC / CPI when current cost performance is expected to continue; EAC = AC + (BAC - EV) when remaining work is expected to proceed at the budgeted rate; EAC = AC + ETC.

TCPI = (BAC - EV) / (BAC - AC) for the budget-to-complete target; TCPI = (BAC - EV) / (EAC - AC) when a revised EAC is the target. TCPI greater than 1 means the remaining work must be performed more efficiently than planned.

VAC = BAC - EAC; a negative variance indicates the project is forecast to exceed its approved budget.

Quality planning identifies quality standards and how to satisfy them; quality assurance (manage quality) audits processes; quality control inspects deliverables and records results. Quality is conformance to requirements and fitness for use.

Cost of quality: prevention costs and appraisal costs are conformance costs; internal and external failure costs are nonconformance costs. The cost of preventing defects is generally lower than the cost of correcting them.

Seven basic quality tools: cause-and-effect (fishbone) diagram, flowchart, check sheet, Pareto diagram, histogram, control chart, and scatter diagram. Pareto analysis applies the 80/20 rule to prioritize the vital few causes.

Control charts use upper and lower control limits, typically set at plus or minus three sigma, to distinguish common-cause variation from special-cause variation. A process is out of control when a point falls outside a control limit or shows a nonrandom pattern.

Risk management sequence: plan risk management, identify risks, perform qualitative risk analysis, perform quantitative risk analysis, plan risk responses, implement risk responses, monitor risks.

Risk register contents: identified risks, causes, potential responses, risk owners, probability and impact ratings, risk score, and status. Risk score = probability x impact in qualitative analysis.

Negative risk responses: escalate, avoid, transfer, mitigate, accept. Positive risk (opportunity) responses: escalate, exploit, share, enhance, accept. Contingency plans address identified risks; fallback plans address risks whose contingency plan fails.

An issue is a risk that has occurred and is now affecting the project; it is tracked in an issue log with an owner, and management reserve is used for unplanned, unidentified work.

Make-or-buy analysis determines whether work is performed internally or purchased externally; it considers direct and indirect costs, capacity, and core competency.

Fixed-price (lump-sum) contracts place cost risk on the seller and are suitable when scope is well defined. Cost-reimbursable contracts place cost risk on the buyer and are suitable when scope is uncertain.

Time and materials contracts blend fixed-price and cost-reimbursable features; they are often used for staff augmentation and usually include a not-to-exceed cap.

Procurement sequence: plan procurement management, conduct procurements, control procurements, close procurements. The procurement statement of work describes the work to be performed by the seller.

Source selection criteria include price, technical capability, past performance, financial capacity, and production capacity; they are documented in the procurement management plan and used to score proposals.

Bidder conferences ensure all prospective sellers have a clear, common understanding of the procurement requirements; all questions and answers are communicated to every seller to maintain fairness.

Independent cost estimates are prepared by the buyer to validate seller proposals and to set a realistic budget before evaluating bids.

Contract change control system: all changes to a contract must be documented, approved, and incorporated through a formal written amendment; verbal agreements are not binding changes.

Communication model: sender encodes, message travels through a medium, receiver decodes, and feedback confirms understanding; noise is anything that interferes with the transmission or reception of the message.

Number of communication channels = n(n - 1) / 2, where n is the number of stakeholders; adding stakeholders increases channel count and communication complexity nonlinearly.

Communication methods: interactive (meetings, calls) is most effective for complex or ambiguous topics; push (email, reports) sends to specific recipients; pull (shared repositories) requires recipients to retrieve information.

Tuckman's stages of team development: forming (orientation), storming (conflict about roles and approach), norming (agreement and cohesion), performing (productive collaboration), and adjourning (release of the team).

Sources of power: legitimate (formal authority), reward, penalty/coercive, expert (technical knowledge), referent (respect and personal trust), and informational. Expert and referent power tend to be most effective with knowledge workers.

Conflict management approaches: collaborate/problem-solve (win-win, generally preferred), compromise, force, smooth/accommodate, and withdraw/avoid. The approach chosen depends on the situation and the importance of the issue.

Servant leadership focuses on serving the team by removing impediments and enabling growth; transformational leadership inspires shared vision and motivates beyond transactional exchange.

Motivation theories: Maslow's hierarchy (physiological, safety, social, esteem, self-actualization); Herzberg's two factors (hygiene factors prevent dissatisfaction, motivators drive satisfaction); McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y assumptions about workers.

Integrated change control: every change request is logged, assessed for impact on scope, schedule, cost, quality, and risk, then approved, rejected, or deferred by the change control board or delegated authority.

Only the approved change request is implemented; the change log records all change requests and their disposition, and approved changes update the relevant baselines and project documents.

Configuration management ensures that the versions and configuration of deliverables and documents are controlled and that changes are tracked against the correct baseline.

Performance reviews compare actual performance to the baselines using variance analysis, trend analysis, and earned value metrics; corrective action realigns performance with the plan, preventive action reduces the probability of future deviations.

Validate scope obtains formal acceptance of completed deliverables from the customer or sponsor; control quality verifies correctness before acceptance. Both should occur before the deliverable is handed over.

Close project or phase: confirm all work is complete, obtain final acceptance, archive project documents, release team resources, and update organizational process assets.

Lessons learned are captured throughout the project and consolidated at closure; they are stored in the organizational process assets for use by future projects.

Benefits realization is measured after project closure; the project manager may not see the benefits, and handover of the product to operations or the customer is a closure activity.

Project: a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result; temporary means it has a defined start and end, and unique means the deliverable differs in some way from prior work.

Operations are ongoing and repetitive; projects are temporary and unique. A work effort that produces the same output repeatedly on an indefinite basis is an operation, not a project.

A program is a group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits not available from managing them individually; a portfolio is a collection of projects, programs, and operations managed as a group to achieve strategic objectives.

Predictive (waterfall) life cycle: scope, time, and cost are determined early and changes are controlled through formal change requests; adaptive (agile) life cycle: scope is refined iteratively and time and cost boxes are fixed per iteration.

Project life cycle phases are typically: starting the project, organizing and preparing, carrying out the work, and closing the project. Cost and staffing levels are low at start, peak during execution, and drop rapidly at closure.

Stakeholder influence is highest and cost of changes is lowest at the start of the project; as the project progresses, stakeholder influence decreases and the cost of implementing changes increases.

Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet requirements, performed through integrating the five process groups: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closing.

A project manager balances competing constraints: scope, schedule, cost, quality, resources, and risk. A change to one constraint generally requires adjustment to at least one other.

Business case: documents the business need and the justification for investing in the project; it is the primary input to the project charter and is often owned by the sponsor.

Project charter: a document issued by the sponsor that formally authorizes the project and the project manager to apply organizational resources; it names the PM, states high-level scope, and records high-level risks and success criteria.

Project manager is assigned as early as possible, ideally during charter development; the charter is the document that gives the PM authority, not the project management plan.

Stakeholder register: records identification information, assessment information (influence, interest, power), and classification of each stakeholder; it is a project document, not part of the project management plan.

Power/interest grid: high power-high interest = manage closely; high power-low interest = keep satisfied; low power-high interest = keep informed; low power-low interest = monitor.

Requirements traceability matrix links each requirement to its source (business need, stakeholder) and to the deliverables, test cases, and design components that satisfy it; it supports verifying that all requirements are met.

Requirements are documented in the requirements documentation and classified as business, stakeholder, solution, functional, or nonfunctional; only requirements that are approved and funded are baselined into scope.

A stakeholder is any individual, group, or organization that may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of the project.

Scope management sequence: plan scope management, collect requirements, define scope, create WBS, validate scope, control scope. Validate scope is the formal acceptance of completed deliverables; control scope manages changes to the scope baseline.

Scope baseline = project scope statement + WBS + WBS dictionary. The scope statement includes product scope description, acceptance criteria, deliverables, exclusions, and constraints/assumptions.

WBS: a hierarchical decomposition of the total scope of work into deliverables-oriented work packages. The 100% rule: the WBS captures all work required to complete the project, and no work outside the WBS is performed.

Work package: the lowest level of the WBS, where cost and duration can be reliably estimated and managed; the WBS dictionary describes each component's deliverables, acceptance criteria, and responsible party.

Decomposition: the process of dividing deliverables into progressively smaller components until work packages are reached; the level of decomposition is driven by the needed degree of control and cost of management.

Critical path: the longest path through the network, which determines the shortest possible project duration; it has zero total float, and any delay on it delays the project finish date.

Total float = LS - ES or LF - EF; a task with total float greater than zero can slip by that amount without delaying the project finish. Free float is the amount a task can slip without delaying the early start of any successor.

Schedule compression: crashing adds resources to critical path activities, usually increases cost, and only works when duration is resource-dependent; fast tracking overlaps activities, increases risk, and only works when activities can overlap.

Cost baseline = the time-phased approved budget, excluding management reserve. Total project budget = cost baseline + management reserve. Contingency reserve is included in the cost baseline and covers identified risks.

Estimate types by accuracy: rough order of magnitude (-25% to +75%), budgetary (-10% to +25%), and definitive (-5% to +10%); accuracy improves as the project progresses and design detail increases.

Analogous estimating uses historical data from similar projects, is fast and low cost, and is least accurate; parametric estimating uses a statistical relationship between historical data and variables (e.g., cost per unit) and is more accurate.

PV (planned value) = authorized budget for scheduled work; EV (earned value) = budget associated with work actually completed; AC (actual cost) = actual cost incurred for work performed.

SV = EV - PV (positive = ahead of schedule); CV = EV - AC (positive = under budget); SPI = EV / PV (greater than 1 = ahead of schedule); CPI = EV / AC (greater than 1 = under budget).

EAC forecast: EAC = BAC / CPI when current cost performance is expected to continue; EAC = AC + (BAC - EV) when remaining work is expected to proceed at the budgeted rate; EAC = AC + ETC.

TCPI = (BAC - EV) / (BAC - AC) for the budget-to-complete target; TCPI = (BAC - EV) / (EAC - AC) when a revised EAC is the target. TCPI greater than 1 means the remaining work must be performed more efficiently than planned.

VAC = BAC - EAC; a negative variance indicates the project is forecast to exceed its approved budget.

Quality planning identifies quality standards and how to satisfy them; quality assurance (manage quality) audits processes; quality control inspects deliverables and records results. Quality is conformance to requirements and fitness for use.

Cost of quality: prevention costs and appraisal costs are conformance costs; internal and external failure costs are nonconformance costs. The cost of preventing defects is generally lower than the cost of correcting them.

Seven basic quality tools: cause-and-effect (fishbone) diagram, flowchart, check sheet, Pareto diagram, histogram, control chart, and scatter diagram. Pareto analysis applies the 80/20 rule to prioritize the vital few causes.

Control charts use upper and lower control limits, typically set at plus or minus three sigma, to distinguish common-cause variation from special-cause variation. A process is out of control when a point falls outside a control limit or shows a nonrandom pattern.

Risk management sequence: plan risk management, identify risks, perform qualitative risk analysis, perform quantitative risk analysis, plan risk responses, implement risk responses, monitor risks.

Risk register contents: identified risks, causes, potential responses, risk owners, probability and impact ratings, risk score, and status. Risk score = probability x impact in qualitative analysis.

Negative risk responses: escalate, avoid, transfer, mitigate, accept. Positive risk (opportunity) responses: escalate, exploit, share, enhance, accept. Contingency plans address identified risks; fallback plans address risks whose contingency plan fails.

An issue is a risk that has occurred and is now affecting the project; it is tracked in an issue log with an owner, and management reserve is used for unplanned, unidentified work.

Make-or-buy analysis determines whether work is performed internally or purchased externally; it considers direct and indirect costs, capacity, and core competency.

Fixed-price (lump-sum) contracts place cost risk on the seller and are suitable when scope is well defined. Cost-reimbursable contracts place cost risk on the buyer and are suitable when scope is uncertain.

Time and materials contracts blend fixed-price and cost-reimbursable features; they are often used for staff augmentation and usually include a not-to-exceed cap.

Procurement sequence: plan procurement management, conduct procurements, control procurements, close procurements. The procurement statement of work describes the work to be performed by the seller.

Source selection criteria include price, technical capability, past performance, financial capacity, and production capacity; they are documented in the procurement management plan and used to score proposals.

Bidder conferences ensure all prospective sellers have a clear, common understanding of the procurement requirements; all questions and answers are communicated to every seller to maintain fairness.

Independent cost estimates are prepared by the buyer to validate seller proposals and to set a realistic budget before evaluating bids.

Contract change control system: all changes to a contract must be documented, approved, and incorporated through a formal written amendment; verbal agreements are not binding changes.

Communication model: sender encodes, message travels through a medium, receiver decodes, and feedback confirms understanding; noise is anything that interferes with the transmission or reception of the message.

Number of communication channels = n(n - 1) / 2, where n is the number of stakeholders; adding stakeholders increases channel count and communication complexity nonlinearly.

Communication methods: interactive (meetings, calls) is most effective for complex or ambiguous topics; push (email, reports) sends to specific recipients; pull (shared repositories) requires recipients to retrieve information.

Tuckman's stages of team development: forming (orientation), storming (conflict about roles and approach), norming (agreement and cohesion), performing (productive collaboration), and adjourning (release of the team).

Sources of power: legitimate (formal authority), reward, penalty/coercive, expert (technical knowledge), referent (respect and personal trust), and informational. Expert and referent power tend to be most effective with knowledge workers.

Conflict management approaches: collaborate/problem-solve (win-win, generally preferred), compromise, force, smooth/accommodate, and withdraw/avoid. The approach chosen depends on the situation and the importance of the issue.

Servant leadership focuses on serving the team by removing impediments and enabling growth; transformational leadership inspires shared vision and motivates beyond transactional exchange.

Motivation theories: Maslow's hierarchy (physiological, safety, social, esteem, self-actualization); Herzberg's two factors (hygiene factors prevent dissatisfaction, motivators drive satisfaction); McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y assumptions about workers.

Integrated change control: every change request is logged, assessed for impact on scope, schedule, cost, quality, and risk, then approved, rejected, or deferred by the change control board or delegated authority.

Only the approved change request is implemented; the change log records all change requests and their disposition, and approved changes update the relevant baselines and project documents.

Configuration management ensures that the versions and configuration of deliverables and documents are controlled and that changes are tracked against the correct baseline.

Performance reviews compare actual performance to the baselines using variance analysis, trend analysis, and earned value metrics; corrective action realigns performance with the plan, preventive action reduces the probability of future deviations.

Validate scope obtains formal acceptance of completed deliverables from the customer or sponsor; control quality verifies correctness before acceptance. Both should occur before the deliverable is handed over.

Close project or phase: confirm all work is complete, obtain final acceptance, archive project documents, release team resources, and update organizational process assets.

Lessons learned are captured throughout the project and consolidated at closure; they are stored in the organizational process assets for use by future projects.

Benefits realization is measured after project closure; the project manager may not see the benefits, and handover of the product to operations or the customer is a closure activity.

Project: a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result; temporary means it has a defined start and end, and unique means the deliverable differs in some way from prior work.

Operations are ongoing and repetitive; projects are temporary and unique. A work effort that produces the same output repeatedly on an indefinite basis is an operation, not a project.

A program is a group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits not available from managing them individually; a portfolio is a collection of projects, programs, and operations managed as a group to achieve strategic objectives.

Predictive (waterfall) life cycle: scope, time, and cost are determined early and changes are controlled through formal change requests; adaptive (agile) life cycle: scope is refined iteratively and time and cost boxes are fixed per iteration.

Project life cycle phases are typically: starting the project, organizing and preparing, carrying out the work, and closing the project. Cost and staffing levels are low at start, peak during execution, and drop rapidly at closure.

Stakeholder influence is highest and cost of changes is lowest at the start of the project; as the project progresses, stakeholder influence decreases and the cost of implementing changes increases.

Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet requirements, performed through integrating the five process groups: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closing.

A project manager balances competing constraints: scope, schedule, cost, quality, resources, and risk. A change to one constraint generally requires adjustment to at least one other.

Business case: documents the business need and the justification for investing in the project; it is the primary input to the project charter and is often owned by the sponsor.

Project charter: a document issued by the sponsor that formally authorizes the project and the project manager to apply organizational resources; it names the PM, states high-level scope, and records high-level risks and success criteria.

Project manager is assigned as early as possible, ideally during charter development; the charter is the document that gives the PM authority, not the project management plan.

Stakeholder register: records identification information, assessment information (influence, interest, power), and classification of each stakeholder; it is a project document, not part of the project management plan.

Power/interest grid: high power-high interest = manage closely; high power-low interest = keep satisfied; low power-high interest = keep informed; low power-low interest = monitor.

Requirements traceability matrix links each requirement to its source (business need, stakeholder) and to the deliverables, test cases, and design components that satisfy it; it supports verifying that all requirements are met.

Requirements are documented in the requirements documentation and classified as business, stakeholder, solution, functional, or nonfunctional; only requirements that are approved and funded are baselined into scope.

A stakeholder is any individual, group, or organization that may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of the project.

Scope management sequence: plan scope management, collect requirements, define scope, create WBS, validate scope, control scope. Validate scope is the formal acceptance of completed deliverables; control scope manages changes to the scope baseline.

Scope baseline = project scope statement + WBS + WBS dictionary. The scope statement includes product scope description, acceptance criteria, deliverables, exclusions, and constraints/assumptions.

WBS: a hierarchical decomposition of the total scope of work into deliverables-oriented work packages. The 100% rule: the WBS captures all work required to complete the project, and no work outside the WBS is performed.

Work package: the lowest level of the WBS, where cost and duration can be reliably estimated and managed; the WBS dictionary describes each component's deliverables, acceptance criteria, and responsible party.

Decomposition: the process of dividing deliverables into progressively smaller components until work packages are reached; the level of decomposition is driven by the needed degree of control and cost of management.

Critical path: the longest path through the network, which determines the shortest possible project duration; it has zero total float, and any delay on it delays the project finish date.

Total float = LS - ES or LF - EF; a task with total float greater than zero can slip by that amount without delaying the project finish. Free float is the amount a task can slip without delaying the early start of any successor.

Schedule compression: crashing adds resources to critical path activities, usually increases cost, and only works when duration is resource-dependent; fast tracking overlaps activities, increases risk, and only works when activities can overlap.

Cost baseline = the time-phased approved budget, excluding management reserve. Total project budget = cost baseline + management reserve. Contingency reserve is included in the cost baseline and covers identified risks.

Estimate types by accuracy: rough order of magnitude (-25% to +75%), budgetary (-10% to +25%), and definitive (-5% to +10%); accuracy improves as the project progresses and design detail increases.

Analogous estimating uses historical data from similar projects, is fast and low cost, and is least accurate; parametric estimating uses a statistical relationship between historical data and variables (e.g., cost per unit) and is more accurate.

PV (planned value) = authorized budget for scheduled work; EV (earned value) = budget associated with work actually completed; AC (actual cost) = actual cost incurred for work performed.

SV = EV - PV (positive = ahead of schedule); CV = EV - AC (positive = under budget); SPI = EV / PV (greater than 1 = ahead of schedule); CPI = EV / AC (greater than 1 = under budget).

EAC forecast: EAC = BAC / CPI when current cost performance is expected to continue; EAC = AC + (BAC - EV) when remaining work is expected to proceed at the budgeted rate; EAC = AC + ETC.

TCPI = (BAC - EV) / (BAC - AC) for the budget-to-complete target; TCPI = (BAC - EV) / (EAC - AC) when a revised EAC is the target. TCPI greater than 1 means the remaining work must be performed more efficiently than planned.

VAC = BAC - EAC; a negative variance indicates the project is forecast to exceed its approved budget.

Quality planning identifies quality standards and how to satisfy them; quality assurance (manage quality) audits processes; quality control inspects deliverables and records results. Quality is conformance to requirements and fitness for use.

Cost of quality: prevention costs and appraisal costs are conformance costs; internal and external failure costs are nonconformance costs. The cost of preventing defects is generally lower than the cost of correcting them.

Seven basic quality tools: cause-and-effect (fishbone) diagram, flowchart, check sheet, Pareto diagram, histogram, control chart, and scatter diagram. Pareto analysis applies the 80/20 rule to prioritize the vital few causes.

Control charts use upper and lower control limits, typically set at plus or minus three sigma, to distinguish common-cause variation from special-cause variation. A process is out of control when a point falls outside a control limit or shows a nonrandom pattern.

Risk management sequence: plan risk management, identify risks, perform qualitative risk analysis, perform quantitative risk analysis, plan risk responses, implement risk responses, monitor risks.

Risk register contents: identified risks, causes, potential responses, risk owners, probability and impact ratings, risk score, and status. Risk score = probability x impact in qualitative analysis.

Negative risk responses: escalate, avoid, transfer, mitigate, accept. Positive risk (opportunity) responses: escalate, exploit, share, enhance, accept. Contingency plans address identified risks; fallback plans address risks whose contingency plan fails.

An issue is a risk that has occurred and is now affecting the project; it is tracked in an issue log with an owner, and management reserve is used for unplanned, unidentified work.

Make-or-buy analysis determines whether work is performed internally or purchased externally; it considers direct and indirect costs, capacity, and core competency.

Fixed-price (lump-sum) contracts place cost risk on the seller and are suitable when scope is well defined. Cost-reimbursable contracts place cost risk on the buyer and are suitable when scope is uncertain.

Time and materials contracts blend fixed-price and cost-reimbursable features; they are often used for staff augmentation and usually include a not-to-exceed cap.

Procurement sequence: plan procurement management, conduct procurements, control procurements, close procurements. The procurement statement of work describes the work to be performed by the seller.

Source selection criteria include price, technical capability, past performance, financial capacity, and production capacity; they are documented in the procurement management plan and used to score proposals.

Bidder conferences ensure all prospective sellers have a clear, common understanding of the procurement requirements; all questions and answers are communicated to every seller to maintain fairness.

Independent cost estimates are prepared by the buyer to validate seller proposals and to set a realistic budget before evaluating bids.

Contract change control system: all changes to a contract must be documented, approved, and incorporated through a formal written amendment; verbal agreements are not binding changes.

Communication model: sender encodes, message travels through a medium, receiver decodes, and feedback confirms understanding; noise is anything that interferes with the transmission or reception of the message.

Number of communication channels = n(n - 1) / 2, where n is the number of stakeholders; adding stakeholders increases channel count and communication complexity nonlinearly.

Communication methods: interactive (meetings, calls) is most effective for complex or ambiguous topics; push (email, reports) sends to specific recipients; pull (shared repositories) requires recipients to retrieve information.

Tuckman's stages of team development: forming (orientation), storming (conflict about roles and approach), norming (agreement and cohesion), performing (productive collaboration), and adjourning (release of the team).

Sources of power: legitimate (formal authority), reward, penalty/coercive, expert (technical knowledge), referent (respect and personal trust), and informational. Expert and referent power tend to be most effective with knowledge workers.

Conflict management approaches: collaborate/problem-solve (win-win, generally preferred), compromise, force, smooth/accommodate, and withdraw/avoid. The approach chosen depends on the situation and the importance of the issue.

Servant leadership focuses on serving the team by removing impediments and enabling growth; transformational leadership inspires shared vision and motivates beyond transactional exchange.

Motivation theories: Maslow's hierarchy (physiological, safety, social, esteem, self-actualization); Herzberg's two factors (hygiene factors prevent dissatisfaction, motivators drive satisfaction); McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y assumptions about workers.

Integrated change control: every change request is logged, assessed for impact on scope, schedule, cost, quality, and risk, then approved, rejected, or deferred by the change control board or delegated authority.

Only the approved change request is implemented; the change log records all change requests and their disposition, and approved changes update the relevant baselines and project documents.

Configuration management ensures that the versions and configuration of deliverables and documents are controlled and that changes are tracked against the correct baseline.

Performance reviews compare actual performance to the baselines using variance analysis, trend analysis, and earned value metrics; corrective action realigns performance with the plan, preventive action reduces the probability of future deviations.

Validate scope obtains formal acceptance of completed deliverables from the customer or sponsor; control quality verifies correctness before acceptance. Both should occur before the deliverable is handed over.

Close project or phase: confirm all work is complete, obtain final acceptance, archive project documents, release team resources, and update organizational process assets.

Lessons learned are captured throughout the project and consolidated at closure; they are stored in the organizational process assets for use by future projects.

Benefits realization is measured after project closure; the project manager may not see the benefits, and handover of the product to operations or the customer is a closure activity.

Project: a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result; temporary means it has a defined start and end, and unique means the deliverable differs in some way from prior work.

Operations are ongoing and repetitive; projects are temporary and unique. A work effort that produces the same output repeatedly on an indefinite basis is an operation, not a project.

A program is a group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits not available from managing them individually; a portfolio is a collection of projects, programs, and operations managed as a group to achieve strategic objectives.

Predictive (waterfall) life cycle: scope, time, and cost are determined early and changes are controlled through formal change requests; adaptive (agile) life cycle: scope is refined iteratively and time and cost boxes are fixed per iteration.

Project life cycle phases are typically: starting the project, organizing and preparing, carrying out the work, and closing the project. Cost and staffing levels are low at start, peak during execution, and drop rapidly at closure.

Stakeholder influence is highest and cost of changes is lowest at the start of the project; as the project progresses, stakeholder influence decreases and the cost of implementing changes increases.

Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet requirements, performed through integrating the five process groups: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closing.

A project manager balances competing constraints: scope, schedule, cost, quality, resources, and risk. A change to one constraint generally requires adjustment to at least one other.

Business case: documents the business need and the justification for investing in the project; it is the primary input to the project charter and is often owned by the sponsor.

Project charter: a document issued by the sponsor that formally authorizes the project and the project manager to apply organizational resources; it names the PM, states high-level scope, and records high-level risks and success criteria.

Project manager is assigned as early as possible, ideally during charter development; the charter is the document that gives the PM authority, not the project management plan.

Stakeholder register: records identification information, assessment information (influence, interest, power), and classification of each stakeholder; it is a project document, not part of the project management plan.

Power/interest grid: high power-high interest = manage closely; high power-low interest = keep satisfied; low power-high interest = keep informed; low power-low interest = monitor.

Requirements traceability matrix links each requirement to its source (business need, stakeholder) and to the deliverables, test cases, and design components that satisfy it; it supports verifying that all requirements are met.

Requirements are documented in the requirements documentation and classified as business, stakeholder, solution, functional, or nonfunctional; only requirements that are approved and funded are baselined into scope.

A stakeholder is any individual, group, or organization that may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of the project.

Scope management sequence: plan scope management, collect requirements, define scope, create WBS, validate scope, control scope. Validate scope is the formal acceptance of completed deliverables; control scope manages changes to the scope baseline.

Scope baseline = project scope statement + WBS + WBS dictionary. The scope statement includes product scope description, acceptance criteria, deliverables, exclusions, and constraints/assumptions.

WBS: a hierarchical decomposition of the total scope of work into deliverables-oriented work packages. The 100% rule: the WBS captures all work required to complete the project, and no work outside the WBS is performed.

Work package: the lowest level of the WBS, where cost and duration can be reliably estimated and managed; the WBS dictionary describes each component's deliverables, acceptance criteria, and responsible party.

Decomposition: the process of dividing deliverables into progressively smaller components until work packages are reached; the level of decomposition is driven by the needed degree of control and cost of management.

Critical path: the longest path through the network, which determines the shortest possible project duration; it has zero total float, and any delay on it delays the project finish date.

Total float = LS - ES or LF - EF; a task with total float greater than zero can slip by that amount without delaying the project finish. Free float is the amount a task can slip without delaying the early start of any successor.

Schedule compression: crashing adds resources to critical path activities, usually increases cost, and only works when duration is resource-dependent; fast tracking overlaps activities, increases risk, and only works when activities can overlap.

Cost baseline = the time-phased approved budget, excluding management reserve. Total project budget = cost baseline + management reserve. Contingency reserve is included in the cost baseline and covers identified risks.

Estimate types by accuracy: rough order of magnitude (-25% to +75%), budgetary (-10% to +25%), and definitive (-5% to +10%); accuracy improves as the project progresses and design detail increases.

Analogous estimating uses historical data from similar projects, is fast and low cost, and is least accurate; parametric estimating uses a statistical relationship between historical data and variables (e.g., cost per unit) and is more accurate.

PV (planned value) = authorized budget for scheduled work; EV (earned value) = budget associated with work actually completed; AC (actual cost) = actual cost incurred for work performed.

SV = EV - PV (positive = ahead of schedule); CV = EV - AC (positive = under budget); SPI = EV / PV (greater than 1 = ahead of schedule); CPI = EV / AC (greater than 1 = under budget).

EAC forecast: EAC = BAC / CPI when current cost performance is expected to continue; EAC = AC + (BAC - EV) when remaining work is expected to proceed at the budgeted rate; EAC = AC + ETC.

TCPI = (BAC - EV) / (BAC - AC) for the budget-to-complete target; TCPI = (BAC - EV) / (EAC - AC) when a revised EAC is the target. TCPI greater than 1 means the remaining work must be performed more efficiently than planned.

VAC = BAC - EAC; a negative variance indicates the project is forecast to exceed its approved budget.

Quality planning identifies quality standards and how to satisfy them; quality assurance (manage quality) audits processes; quality control inspects deliverables and records results. Quality is conformance to requirements and fitness for use.

Cost of quality: prevention costs and appraisal costs are conformance costs; internal and external failure costs are nonconformance costs. The cost of preventing defects is generally lower than the cost of correcting them.

Seven basic quality tools: cause-and-effect (fishbone) diagram, flowchart, check sheet, Pareto diagram, histogram, control chart, and scatter diagram. Pareto analysis applies the 80/20 rule to prioritize the vital few causes.

Control charts use upper and lower control limits, typically set at plus or minus three sigma, to distinguish common-cause variation from special-cause variation. A process is out of control when a point falls outside a control limit or shows a nonrandom pattern.

Risk management sequence: plan risk management, identify risks, perform qualitative risk analysis, perform quantitative risk analysis, plan risk responses, implement risk responses, monitor risks.

Risk register contents: identified risks, causes, potential responses, risk owners, probability and impact ratings, risk score, and status. Risk score = probability x impact in qualitative analysis.

Negative risk responses: escalate, avoid, transfer, mitigate, accept. Positive risk (opportunity) responses: escalate, exploit, share, enhance, accept. Contingency plans address identified risks; fallback plans address risks whose contingency plan fails.

An issue is a risk that has occurred and is now affecting the project; it is tracked in an issue log with an owner, and management reserve is used for unplanned, unidentified work.

Make-or-buy analysis determines whether work is performed internally or purchased externally; it considers direct and indirect costs, capacity, and core competency.

Fixed-price (lump-sum) contracts place cost risk on the seller and are suitable when scope is well defined. Cost-reimbursable contracts place cost risk on the buyer and are suitable when scope is uncertain.

Time and materials contracts blend fixed-price and cost-reimbursable features; they are often used for staff augmentation and usually include a not-to-exceed cap.

Procurement sequence: plan procurement management, conduct procurements, control procurements, close procurements. The procurement statement of work describes the work to be performed by the seller.

Source selection criteria include price, technical capability, past performance, financial capacity, and production capacity; they are documented in the procurement management plan and used to score proposals.

Bidder conferences ensure all prospective sellers have a clear, common understanding of the procurement requirements; all questions and answers are communicated to every seller to maintain fairness.

Independent cost estimates are prepared by the buyer to validate seller proposals and to set a realistic budget before evaluating bids.

Contract change control system: all changes to a contract must be documented, approved, and incorporated through a formal written amendment; verbal agreements are not binding changes.

Communication model: sender encodes, message travels through a medium, receiver decodes, and feedback confirms understanding; noise is anything that interferes with the transmission or reception of the message.

Number of communication channels = n(n - 1) / 2, where n is the number of stakeholders; adding stakeholders increases channel count and communication complexity nonlinearly.

Communication methods: interactive (meetings, calls) is most effective for complex or ambiguous topics; push (email, reports) sends to specific recipients; pull (shared repositories) requires recipients to retrieve information.

Tuckman's stages of team development: forming (orientation), storming (conflict about roles and approach), norming (agreement and cohesion), performing (productive collaboration), and adjourning (release of the team).

Sources of power: legitimate (formal authority), reward, penalty/coercive, expert (technical knowledge), referent (respect and personal trust), and informational. Expert and referent power tend to be most effective with knowledge workers.

Conflict management approaches: collaborate/problem-solve (win-win, generally preferred), compromise, force, smooth/accommodate, and withdraw/avoid. The approach chosen depends on the situation and the importance of the issue.

Servant leadership focuses on serving the team by removing impediments and enabling growth; transformational leadership inspires shared vision and motivates beyond transactional exchange.

Motivation theories: Maslow's hierarchy (physiological, safety, social, esteem, self-actualization); Herzberg's two factors (hygiene factors prevent dissatisfaction, motivators drive satisfaction); McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y assumptions about workers.

Integrated change control: every change request is logged, assessed for impact on scope, schedule, cost, quality, and risk, then approved, rejected, or deferred by the change control board or delegated authority.

Only the approved change request is implemented; the change log records all change requests and their disposition, and approved changes update the relevant baselines and project documents.

Configuration management ensures that the versions and configuration of deliverables and documents are controlled and that changes are tracked against the correct baseline.

Performance reviews compare actual performance to the baselines using variance analysis, trend analysis, and earned value metrics; corrective action realigns performance with the plan, preventive action reduces the probability of future deviations.

Validate scope obtains formal acceptance of completed deliverables from the customer or sponsor; control quality verifies correctness before acceptance. Both should occur before the deliverable is handed over.

Close project or phase: confirm all work is complete, obtain final acceptance, archive project documents, release team resources, and update organizational process assets.

Lessons learned are captured throughout the project and consolidated at closure; they are stored in the organizational process assets for use by future projects.

Benefits realization is measured after project closure; the project manager may not see the benefits, and handover of the product to operations or the customer is a closure activity.