Individual Management Practices for a Project
Domain 3 tests the individual practice areas and the techniques behind them: scope, schedule, cost, quality, risk, issue, resource, stakeholder, communication and procurement management.
Practice areas at a glance
- Scope: requirements, scope statement, WBS and scope baseline; verify by formal acceptance and control to prevent gold plating.
- Schedule: activity list, sequencing, duration estimates, critical path and float; measure progress against the schedule baseline.
- Cost: estimate (analogous, parametric, bottom-up, three-point), budget with contingency; monitor with earned value: CV = EV − AC, SV = EV − PV, CPI = EV/AC, SPI = EV/PV.
- Quality: plan standards and acceptance criteria, assure processes, control outputs by inspection and testing.
- Risk: identify, analyse probability and impact, plan responses (avoid, mitigate, transfer, accept; exploit, enhance, share for opportunities), assign an owner and monitor.
- Issues and changes: issues are problems happening now; changes alter baselines and follow change control.
- Stakeholders and communication: identify and analyse (power/interest), plan engagement and communication, monitor effectiveness.
- Procurement and resources: make-or-buy decisions, contract type selection, acquire and develop the team.
Worked example
PV = 200, EV = 180, AC = 210 (EUR thousand). CV = 180 − 210 = −30 (over budget), SV = 180 − 200 = −20 (behind schedule), CPI = 0.86, SPI = 0.90. With BAC = 400, EAC = BAC/CPI ≈ 467. Reasoning: earned value uses the planned value of completed work, never actual cost, and both indices below 1 signal cost and schedule underperformance.
Traps that cost marks
- Mixing up CV and SV formulas, or reading CPI above 1 as bad.
- Treating a risk as a risk after it happens; it is then an issue.
- Confusing quality assurance (process) with quality control (product).
- Forgetting that contingency sits inside the cost baseline while management reserve sits above it.