Project Scope Management

Project Scope includes managing all of the work required and agreed with the stakeholders during the design phase and only the work required and agreed, to complete the project successfully.
Clear and well defined scope is very important for the completion of any minor or major project on time.

Project Scope Management comprises five processes:
• Scope Planning (Planning Process Group)
• Scope Definition (Planning Process Group)
• Create work break down structure (Planning Process Group)
• Scope Verification (Monitoring and Control Process Group)
• Scope Control (Monitoring and Control Process Group)

-Posted by Girish

Appraisal Cost

Appraisal costs are part of Cost Of Quality.

Appraisal costs are the costs spend to examine/check the product to make sure the requirements/objectives are met. These costs include costs related to conduct inspections and testing.

-Posted by Dhana

Appeals

Appeals are part of Claims Administration and this is one of the tools and techniques of Administering Contracts.

Claims Administration includes the handling of contested changes to the contracts. Contested Changes meaning, changes which are not agreed between any of the involving parties of the contracts. These is also known as disputes, claims or appeals.

These can be settled in various methods such as direct negotiation, arbitration or legal system thru court.

-Posted by Dhana

Analogous Estimating

Analogous Estimating, is one form of expert judgment and it also known as Top-down Estimating. This technique is used to determine the duration of the project. After finalizing the high level scope/requirement, the PM will refer & compare the previously completed project’s similar activities with the current activities and determine the duration.

This estimation technique will be applied to determine the duration when the detailed information about the project is not available, usually during the early stages of the project. This technique will look the scope/requirement as a whole single unit to estimate. This estimate will give a ball-park idea about the estimation and will have bigger variance.

Eg : To estimate the time required to complete the project of upgrading XYZ application’s database version to a higher version, is to compare similar past projects and estimate the duration. This is done irrespective of the complexity, size and other factors.

-Posted by Dhana

Affinity Diagrams

This is one of the Additional Quality Planning Tools which is part of the Quality Planning Tools and Techniques.

Below are the list of the Additional Quality Planning Tools. You need to memorize the list for exam purpose and details/explanation are not much required from the point of exam.

Brainstorming and nominal group techniques
Flowcharts
Affinity diagrams
Force field analysis
Matrix diagram
Prioritization matrices

-Posted by Dhana

Addition

Addition is one type of the Project Ending/Closure. After the successful implementation of the project, the project will naturally move into ongoing operations and will trigger the end of the project. This is called as Addition.

Example, The project objective is to implement the new intranet web portal for the company employees to access/get the corporate information. After the successfull implementation of necessary hardware and software, the new intranet portal is up and providing the corporate informations to the company employees. However the regular content maintenance, h/w and s/w maintenance will be carried as Business As Usual (BAU) process and the project team will hand over these tasks to operational team. This will mark the end of the project.

-Posted by Dhana

Activity On Node (AON)

Activity On Node (AON) is an activity sequencing tool and also known as Precedence Diagramming Method (PDM). Activity sequence diagrams use boxes or rectangles to represent the activities which are called as nodes. The nodes are connected with other nodes by arrows, which shows the dependencies between the connected activities.

Most of the Project Management Softwares such as MS Project uses this method. This method supports all four logical relationships i.e Finish-Start (FS), Start-Finish(SF), Finish-Finish(FF) and Start-Start(SS).

This is most preferred method of Activity Sequencing.

-Posted by Dhana

Project Integration Management

Includes day to day processes required to ensure that the various elements of the project are properly coordinated. Using Project Integration Management, Project manager can put all the pieces of a complex project together. This is how project is completed within agreed time, cost and quality. This knowledge area helps in meeting the requirements and managing the expectations of the stakeholders.  

Project Integration Management comprises seven processes:

• Develop Project Charter (Initiating Process Group)
• Develop Preliminary Project Scope Statement (Initiating Process Group)
• Develop Project Management Plan (Planning Process Group)
• Direct and Manage Project Execution (Executing Process Group)
• Monitor and Control Project Work (Monitoring and Control Process Group)
• Integrated Change Control (Monitoring and Control Process Group)
• Close Project (Closing Process Group)

 -Posted by Girish

What is Knowledge Area?

Knowledge areas are areas of specialization. One dimension describes nine “knowledge areas” while the other dimension describes thirty nine project management processes divided into five process groups.

Each of the nine knowledge areas contains some or all of the project management processes. For example, Project Human Resource Management knowledge area contains following four processes:

·         Human Resources Planning (Planning Process Group)
·         Acquire Project Team (Executing Process Group)
·         Develop Project Team (Executing Process Group)
·         Manage Project Team (Monitoring and Control Process Group).

Following are the nine knowledge areas:

Project Integration Management

Project Scope Management

Project Time Management

Project Cost Management

Project Quality Management

Project Human Resource Management

Project Communications Management

Project Risk Management

Project Procurement Management

 -Posted by Girish

PMBOK 4 is ready

PMI recently announced that the next version of PMBOK 4.0 is available for comment. Every four year PMI will review the PMBOK and released the new draft version of PMBOK. Now PMI asked the existing PMPs to comment on the new draft version, it means that any time PMI can release the PMBOK 4 to replace the existing PMBOK 3.

This is a good news for the PMPs as we will get the change to know and learn the latest developments in the field of Project Management.

Also this rings a ALARAM BELL for guys who are currently preparing for PMP exam based on PMBOK 3. Yes, you need to rush and take the PMP exam before PMI officially releases the PMBOK 4, otherwise you have prepare again based on new PMBOK 4 which means re-start your preparation from zero.

-Posted by Dhana