Project Management Overview

Project Management

• Project: A temporary endeavor designed to produce a unique product, service, or result.
• Operation: Ongoing activities performed to sustain a business.
• Project Constraints: Factors that restrict a project's execution, including scope, time, cost, quality, risk, and resources.
• Project Management: The application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to achieve project objectives.
• Project Management Frameworks: Systematic approaches for managing projects.
• Stakeholders: Individuals or groups affected by or involved in a project.
• Process Groups: Sequential steps within a project, like initiating, planning, executing, monitoring & controlling, and closing.
• Knowledge Areas: Essential skills and expertise required for project management.
• Programme: A group of related projects managed together to achieve a larger goal.
• Portfolio: A collection of projects and programmes managed to achieve broader organizational strategies.

Project Artefacts and Documentations

• Business Case: A document justifying a project's initiation, outlining value and goals. Used for high-level project justification to stakeholders.
• Project Charter: A document authorizing a project manager to use resources. Includes high-level project descriptions and project personnel, justifying company investment.
• Initiation Process: Steps involved in starting a project, such as creating a project charter, assumption log, stakeholder register, and kick-off meeting.
• Assumptions Log: Records assumptions about a project, including potential constraints.
• Stakeholder Register: A record of all key stakeholders, prioritized by interest and impact.

Scope Planning

• Scope Management: Overall approach for defining and controlling the project scope.
• Requirements Gathering: Collecting information and specifications from stakeholders about the project. Similar to Agile backlogs.
• Define Scope: Defining product characteristics, requirements, and deliverables — including acceptance criteria.
• Work Breakdown Structure (WBS): Breaking down a project into smaller, manageable tasks.
• Scope Structure: A definition of scope deliverables, exclusions, constraints, assumptions, and acceptance criteria.

Project Schedule

• Project Schedule: Details regarding project tasks, duration, and sequences to complete the project.
• Identification of Activities: Breaking down work packages into individual tasks.
• Sequencing of Activities: Determining the dependencies between tasks.
• Activity List: A comprehensive list of all activities with definitions and unique IDs.
• Activity Attributes: Detailed specifications for every activity (predecessors, successors, dependencies, resources, constraints, imposed dates).
• Milestone List: Key events or stages in the project with no assigned time to complete.
• Network Diagrams: Visual representation of activity dependencies and task sequences. (e.g., AON Diagrams)
• Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT): A method for project scheduling and risk management

Cost Management

• Resource Planning: Identifying resources based on project objectives and scope.
• Cost Estimation: Determining project costs, including fixed (e.g., equipment) and variable (e.g., workforce) costs.
• Cost Budgeting: Creating a cost baseline for monitoring and control.
• Contingency Reserve: Funds for known project risks.
• Management Reserve: Funds for unexpected risks.
• Cost Baseline: Sum of all work packages' cost estimates and associated contingency reserves.
• Project Budget: Summation of the cost baseline and management reserves.

Quality

• Quality Planning: Process of defining quality standards and objectives.
• Quality Assurance: Activities to ensure adherence to defined quality standards.
• Quality Control: Evaluating the delivered project to ensure adherence to quality standards and measure the project against the desired objectives.
• Cost of Quality: Costs associated—preventing quality issues versus their detection and correction.

Resource and Communication Management

• Project Organizational Chart: Representation of project team members and roles.
• Responsibility Matrices (RACI charts): Tables that show project task ownership and stakeholder involvement.
• Resource Histograms: Charts of required resources overtime in a project.
• Activity Resource Estimation: Quantifying the specific resources needed for each project activity.
• Communications Planning: Strategies for communicating project progress and information to stakeholders.

Risk Management

• Risk Register: A document outlining identified risks.
• Risk Analysis: Evaluating the impact and probability of risks.
• Responding to Risks: Strategies for dealing with identified risks (avoidance, mitigation, transfer, acceptance).

Contract Types

• Cost Plus/Cost Reimbursable Contract: Buyer pays actual cost plus profit.
• Fixed Price/Lumpsum Contract: Buyer pays a fixed price.
• Rate Contract: Buyer/Seller agree on a rate per unit of work.

Monitoring and Control

• Monitoring: Tracking project progress against objectives.
• Control: Taking action when deviations from the project plan occur.
• Corrective actions: Addressing issues to return to the project plan.
• Preventative actions: To fix the cause and avoid repeating problems.

Secure Development

• Asset: Anything that must be protected.
• Threat: Any element that could compromise or damage an asset.
• Weakness: A flaw or vulnerability within a system or process.
• Vulnerability: A flaw in protection systems that allows a threat to succeed.
• Risk: The potential of loss linked to successfully exploiting vulnerabilities by threats.
• Security by Design: Approach of incorporating security in the system’s design.
• Design Principles: Guiding principles for secure system design. (e.g., least privilege, defence in depth, secure by default)
• Secure Development Lifecycle (SDL): Applying security considerations throughout the software development lifecycle.
• Threat Modelling: Identifying potential threats and vulnerabilities.
• STRIDE: A threat modelling framework identifying specific types of threat vectors as spoofing, tampering…
• DREAD: Framework for rating severity of security risks
• LINDDUN: Framework for privacy considerations.
• CIA Triad: Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability – Core tenets of information security.
• Fundamental Security Controls: Identification, Authentication, Authorization, Logging, Auditing.

Agile

• Definition of Done (DoD): Criteria for marking a task completed in Agile methods.
• Kanban: Agile method focused on visualizing work flow and continuous improvement.
• Minimum Viable Product (MVP): Basic version of a product launched with core features.
• Minimum Marketable Product (MMP): Product features considered essential for market launch.
• User Stories: Descriptions of desired product functionalities from a user perspective.
• MoSCoW Method: Prioritization technique categorizing requirements as must-have, should-have, could-have, and won’t-have.

Integration Planning

• Project integration planning: Activities that coordinate and ensure all different plans and features of the project work together.

Dive into the fundamentals of project management with this quiz. Explore key concepts such as project constraints, stakeholder involvement, and different management frameworks. Test your knowledge on process groups and the skills required for effective project execution.