Project Management Basics Quiz

Manage Conflict

• Work stressors, disagreements, and task conflicts can arise in complex project environments.
• Project leaders heavily influence conflict resolution and handling.
• Effective conflict management improves understanding, performance, and productivity.
• Ineffective conflict management can lead to destructive behavior, animosity, and reduced productivity.

Investigate the Conflict

• In predictive projects, project managers facilitate conflict resolution sessions.
• In agile settings, teams self-organize to resolve conflicts.
• Active listening to both sides is crucial for investigation.
• Analyzing facts and stories, while maintaining neutrality, is important.

Tools & Techniques

• Leadership skills (interpersonal, active listening, empathy, cultural awareness, expert judgment, emotional intelligence) are essential for conflict resolutions.
• Conflict management helps mitigate negative aspects of conflict while enhancing positive aspects.
• A conflict management strategy and behavior guidelines should be in place (via team charter or way of working).
• Change management helps teams navigate complexity, including conflict, using tools and resources.

Deliverables & Artifacts

• Team Charter: Outlines team values, including conflict resolution.
• Conflict Management Matrix: Tracks conflict escalation and resolution (logged in issue log if needed).

Decipher Conflict Source and Stage

• Helping the team identify the conflict source improves strategic conflict resolution approaches.
• Conflict resolution approaches vary in effectiveness based on the conflict's complexity.
• Common conflict causes include competition, differing objectives/values/perceptions, disagreements regarding roles, work activities, or approaches, and communication breakdowns.

Communication

• One-on-one discussions or informal interviews are beneficial for understanding conflicts.
• Interpersonal skills like emotional intelligence, adaptability, active listening, and negotiation aid in resolving conflicts.

Determine the Root Cause

• Active listening is essential to uncover the facts behind project conflicts or disagreements.
• An objective view, from coaches, of the conflict origins can help resolve interpersonal disputes more effectively.
• The root cause of a conflict is vital for creating suitable conflict resolution strategies.

Tools & Techniques (Various)

• Five Whys: A highly effective method for uncovering root causes.
• Project Schedule: Linking conflict situations to project schedule elements can improve analysis of conflict's origins and duration.
• Fishbone Diagram: Can aid in identifying potential conflict causes that could be used during meetings or brainstorming sessions.

Analyze the Context

• Understanding the context of a conflict, including team dynamics, working approaches, and issues, is helpful.
• Analyzing the different points of view regarding the conflict helps to find common ground.

Interpersonal Skills

• Emotional intelligence and adaptable leadership styles are essential for navigating interpersonal conflicts.
• Active listening to process and understand messages contributes to resolving misunderstandings and issues.
• Encouraging a culture of empathy and active listening on the team enhances communication and collaboration.

Lessons Learned

• Record observations and learnings about interacting with stakeholders, combining or categorizing stakeholder interactions.
• Insights into how to effectively work with stakeholders or similar problems will assist the team and project during future work.

Implement and Track Solutions

• The chart shows common conflict resolution approaches.
• Factors such as conflict's stage, complexity, conflict impact on people involved or the project environment affect the choice of the relevant approach.
• Ensure the implemented solution is effective.

Face-to-Face Discussions

• Addressing conflict in person is generally more effective than doing so remotely.
• Physical presence minimizes misinterpretations of messages.

Updated Issue Log

• If a conflict escalates to an issue, manage it as any other project issue.
• Assign someone to track its resolution.

Reprioritized Backlog

• Resolving conflicts can influence work priorities.
• Re-evaluate and re-prioritize the project workload accordingly.

Lead a Team

• Project members require motivation and inspiration and project leaders need adaptable leadership skills.
• Project leaders must assist staff and stakeholders with project vision and value.

Set the Project Vision

• Fostering motivation and focus amongst stakeholders is encouraged by promoting the project's vision.
• A clear vision statement that aligns the project with stakeholders' and organizational goals aids in effective execution.

Setting the Project Vision (Various)

• Project Charter: Provides information about project vision and mission.
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Operational or functional leaders are responsible for aligning projects with organization's strategic goals.
• Engagement of stakeholders: Actively seeking stakeholder input is essential for creating and validating a project's vision and mission.

Support Diversity and Inclusion

• Project leadership needs to foster diversity and inclusion.
• Team members should get equal treatment and tolerance for differences in styles of expression and working.

Value Servant Leadership

• Servant leadership involves serving the team's needs first while being a leader.
• Focus on team growth rather than individual direction.

Interpersonal Skills (Various)

• Communication: Communicate openly, build trust and act without bias to effectively collaborate with stakeholders.
• Servant leadership: Model the behaviors agreed upon by the team for positive team interactions.
• Emotional intelligence: Fostering self-awareness, and encouraging introspective interaction will create a collaborative and healthy environment.

Preferred Leadership Styles

• While a leadership style may be preferred, flexibility and adaptability to changing circumstances are essential.

Inspire, Motivate, and Influence

• To achieve the highest performance level, team members need inspiration, motivation, and effective influence, starting with modeling behaviors.
• Positive team cohesion, trust, and a safe psychological environment in turn drive better performance and outcomes.

Support Team Performance

• Effective communication promotes trust and teamwork among team members and stakeholders.
• Team leaders should establish KPIs to help align the team with project goals.

Match Team Performance to KPIs

• Using KPIs will help track progress towards project objectives.
• They help to indicate specific strengths in team performance.

Support Team Growth

• Team development requires continued efforts to support their progress and achievements.
• Addressing dependencies or potential for failure should be supportive and not punitive.

Verify Performance Improvements

• Track progress on KPIs to monitor the team's progress and to identify areas where improvement is needed.
• Use visualization tools such as velocity charts and information radiators to show team progress.

Support Task Accountability

• Establish measures of individual and team accountability.
• RACI Charts (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) are common methods of showing roles and responsibilities.

Empower Team Members and Stakeholders

• Empowering team members and stakeholders is crucial for project success.
• Knowing and engaging stakeholders aids in successful project outcomes.

Play to Your Strengths

• Understanding stakeholder/team member strengths and weaknesses is crucial for managing a team effectively.
• Involve stakeholders appropriately in decisions for effective collaboration and risk mitigation.

Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM)

• This framework assigns tasks to individuals, making accountability visible.
• A RACI matrix is specific to assigning decision-making responsibility.

Analyze the Context (Various)

• Team Decision-Making Tools: Tailor the tools so they fit the team's skills and strengths.
• Retrospectives: Regularly discuss progress and improvements in team meeting format.
• Interpersonal Skills: Demonstrate servant leadership, using empathy, active listening, and collaborative engagement for successful stakeholder interactions.

Share Authority

• Project leadership can maintain control and visibility while delegating appropriate task control to the team.
• A project management team environment characterized by a collaborative and supportive culture ensures flexibility in responding to changes.

Address Impediments, Obstacles, and Blockers

• Project issues can be proactively addressed at the beginning, preventing them from delaying the project.
• Prioritize and organize issues into a logical manner for clarity, and to guide decision-making more efficiently.

Identify Challenges

• Identifying impediments, obstacles, and blockers early enables effective communication during a project.
• Distinguishing between impediments, obstacles, and blockers improves organization for addressing issues most efficiently.

Daily Standups

• Daily meetings for the teams to assess, identify, and address emerging challenges directly.

Risk Register

• Maintaining a risk registry improves visibility of and preparedness to emerging issues in the project progression.

Identify Priorities

• Analyzing project issues in terms of their associated value and priority helps teams make informed decisions in managing project work and associated risks more effectively.

Assess Backlog

• Understanding the dependencies in the project's backlog can show how and when hurdles or obstacles can occur.

Reprioritize Backlog

• If necessary or feasible, reprioritizing backlog items will facilitate project progress or efficiency and accommodate any necessary changes, issues, or obstacles.

Establish Solutions to Clear the Path

• Identifying and implementing solutions to clear the obstacles or issues occurring in a project are vital in moving a project toward success.

Collaboration

• Creating and using a tangible method of addressing obstacles enables teams to work through solutions.
• Encouraging team members to identify and use their skills is crucial to successful planning and problem solving.

Impediment Task Board

• A visual method of recording issues, concerns, responsibilities, and status can help teams track issues, obstacles, or blockers that occur in a project.

Keep the Path Clear

• Periodically assessing current risks and addressing any and all new issues will keep the project focused on timely delivery of outcomes.

Engage Stakeholders

• Encouraging stakeholder awareness of project activities is essential in supporting both internal and external stakeholder interactions and engagement.

Align Stakeholder Needs and Expectations

• Understanding stakeholder needs is crucial to developing a successful project outcome.
• Aligning projects and organizational goals with stakeholder expectations is vital for maintaining a successful and profitable project or program.

Build Trust and Influence

• Strong project leadership requires building trust, patience, and communication to ensure stakeholder buy-in.
• Cultivating a collaborative relationship amongst all stakeholders helps to facilitate a mutual understanding of project value.

Support Virtual Teams

• Team leaders must facilitate team bonding for virtual project teams.
• Fostering proper and appropriate communications channels amongst team members ensures project success.

Implement Options for Engagement

• Planning and implementation of effective communication channels are critical to supporting virtual project teams.
• Maintain open channels or accessibility for information and change transparency by maintaining project materials.

Keep Engagement High

• Monitoring and measuring engagement from team members is essential.
• Project leaders should prioritize project goals over individual team member's performance and achievements.

Manage Project Risks

• Risk exists at all levels in every project; therefore project risk must be analyzed on all levels (internal and external).
• Risks or potential risks should always be anticipated and a methodology established for response as issues or obstacles arise during the project lifespan.

Decide Your Risk Management Approach

• Knowing the organization's risk tolerance level is crucial in developing a suitable risk response plan.
• Proactive risk evaluation and planning are both cost effective and help avoid unexpected issues.

Identify, Assess, and Prioritize Risk Responses

• Project teams should gather, analyze, and prioritize risks, using historical data, to effectively approach risk or issues, to ensure responses to risks are appropriate.
• Use risk management plan and risk boards (where appropriate) for managing risks.

Implement Risk Response

• Implement the agreed risk response according to the documented plan and any necessary changes to the project.
• The risk response process should be integrated into project aspects like the schedule, budget, and other project actions.

Evaluate Organizational Impact

• Measure the project's outcome(s) against the stakeholder's expectations and business strategic goals.
• Use modeling, simulations, or prototypes to demonstrate and gain stakeholder buy in and feedback of the project.

Plan and Manage Quality

• Quality in any project depends on meeting stakeholder expectations or requirements, while managing internal and external sources of risks or obstacles.
• Establish quality policies and procedures using both qualitative and quantitative frameworks throughout the project lifespan.

Evaluate Quality Standards Regularly

• Measuring project quality enables verification of compliance with project needs.
• Project management teams should actively evaluate quality standards at every phase.

Recommend Options to Improve Quality

• Address potential quality issues and vulnerabilities proactively to ensure project goals (and related customer expectations) are met.
• Prioritize and evaluate potential quality improvements based on realistic cost, time, and resource constraints.

Define Compliance

• Compliance defines clear rules, regulations, and standards that should be adhered to (both internally and externally) in a project.
• A comprehensive framework for project compliance assists in identifying activities that are compliant, or noncompliant, in a timely manner.

Confirm Compliance Requirements

• Identifying and prioritizing compliance requirements are crucial.
• Project leaders use research and collaboration with stakeholders to effectively manage compliance requirements.

Support Compliance Efforts

• Utilize suitable resources and stakeholder input in order to identify gaps in addressing project compliance needs.
• Project managers regularly review reports and analysis of project progress or variances to ensure that the identified tolerances and compliance requirements are being met.

Analyze Consequences of Noncompliance

• Non-compliance can result in various negative impacts; therefore, analysis of potential issues or problems prior to or during a project will provide mitigation strategies.

Measure Compliance

• Implementing a regular quality audit will assist project managers in identifying and resolving issues that could create risk to a project.
• Evaluate project outcomes to validate or identify any changes to project performance relative to compliance requirements and standards.

Plan and Manage Scope

• Scope may be based on either a product or project context.
• Products or services delivered by a project need to align with the requirements and expectations of stakeholders (internal and external).

Determine and Prioritize Requirements

• Stakeholders should be consulted at the beginning and during various phases of project execution to elicit and confirm customer or organizational and functional needs.
• Understanding how changes may impact requirements and project outcomes ensures adequate and effective project planning and execution.

Prepare Project Scope Statement

• Defining the project scope description and acceptance criteria assists in establishing and managing the scope of work to be performed in a project.

Estimate User Stories

• Estimate the length or duration of each task in a project to assess how long or risky task(s) will take to complete the project or aspects thereof.
• Utilizing an appropriate relative measuring tool enables team members to provide estimations for an accurate project timeline and budget.
• Understanding customer needs and desires through user stories helps to plan the project's scope effectively.

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

• MVP is used for producing a prototype that can be validated to verify product quality and functionality.
• This can help to ensure that the product is suitable and compliant with all customer, organizational, or functional requirements.

Define Scope and Acceptance Criteria

• Scope is the project deliverables, while acceptance criteria defines the conditions that need to happen before a work package or similar project aspect(s) is accepted as complete.
• Having and clarifying both scope and acceptance criteria at the beginning enables clear communication amongst project teams and stakeholders to ensure the project is well managed and delivered as planned.

Plan and Manage the Schedule

• Creating plans and prioritizing tasks facilitates smooth execution and keeps projects on schedule - managing changes to the project schedule is critical to ensure the project is aligned with both internal and external constraints.

Use Benchmarks and Historical Data

• Benchmarking project efforts from similar projects enables a predictive model for estimating future work completion dates.

Prepare Schedule

• Based on a project's past or similar project examples, and current project/organizational goals and strategic objectives, a detailed project schedule can be created and continually monitored.

Monitor Scope

• The ongoing monitoring of a project's scope enables teams to deal with any potential problems or issues as they arise or are identified.
• Ongoing monitoring should aid in mitigating the negative aspects of the work on a project.

Manage Project Changes

• Establishing a process for handling changes is essential and allows for clear expectations of change to all those involved (internal and external).
• Using an established process for dealing with change allows projects and work to continue without disruption, or at the very least to be better prepared for potential issues associated with change events.

Manage Project Issues

• Project issues, similar to risks, should be monitored throughout a project.
• An issue log should be maintained to allow for tracking, prioritizing, and resolving any and all issues.

Approach the Issue with Optimal Action

• Actively and reliably respond to and resolve issues that emerge throughout a project, always factoring in the impact to the project's cost, scope, time, and quality constraints.

Evaluate and Deliver Benefits and Value

• Evaluate project benefit value by tracking and understanding the overall impact or consequences (financial or otherwise) or benefits of a project or project-related activities.