Project Management Overview

• These notes cover key concepts in project management, including change management, project approaches, team responsibilities, and conflict resolution as well as other important aspects.

Change Management Process

• Adding a new scope item requires following a change management process.
• Following a change management process ensures that any changes in scope and potential impacts to the project are documented.
• Key actions in order are: identify the change, assess the change impact, approve or deny the change, and implement the approved change.

Project Management Approaches

• A hybrid approach combines iterative, adaptive design phases with a detailed project plan for remaining deliverables.
• Predictive project management uses a detailed project plan created early on.
• Creating a detailed project plan that encompasses all tasks is the core activity when using a predictive approach.
• Adaptive approaches are suited for projects with requirements that are not known, while predictive approaches are suited for projects with well defined requirements with a predictable timeline.

Team and Supplier Management

• Upon a team's acceptance of a delivered tool from an external supplier, the contract should be closed to trigger payment to the supplier.
• A project director is responsible for final acceptance.
• Project manager oversees activities from start to finish while ensuring it is completed on time, within budget, and to agreed specifications.
• Vendors are external suppliers that provide goods or services.

Ethical Considerations

• Project managers must disclose any potential conflicts of interest, such as a personal connection with a potential vendor, to their supervisor.

Conflict Resolution

• Forcing is a conflict resolution technique where a higher authority imposes a decision.

Team Motivation and Focus

• To foster focus, energy, and positivity within a project team, project managers should discover and leverage individual team member’s motivations.

Project Documentation

• A scope statement defines what is included and excluded from a project.
• Project documents of processes should be archived to retain record of the project, including decisions, lessons learned and other pertinent information.
• Archiving serves as a critical part of the project closure phase and to improve organization and knowledge management.

Stakeholder Communication

• A status update to a manager should include completed work, deliverables in progress, and potential risks or challenges.

Agile Project Delivery

• When using agile, a prioritized list of deliverables should be reviewed on the Kanban board.

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

• The primary goal of creating a WBS is to decompose work packages into assignable work activities.

Adaptive v Predictive Project Management Key Characteristics

• Adaptive project management relies on customer input as well as accommodates project adjustments as needed, and project management plan is not created in the beginning.
• Predictive project management does not rely on customer input as well as does not accommodate project adjustments as needed, and project management plan is created in the beginning.

Understanding a Scope Statement

• Work that should be included in the product and what should be excluded.
• Project objectives should be clearly stated.
• Any project assumptions and constraints should be identified.
• Acceptance criteria should be provided.

Project Procurement

• Acquiring external goods and services that are needed to complete a project.

Project Charter

• Key elements of a project charter outlines the expected project outcome.
• It formally authorizes the project manager to begin work, and apply any necessary resources.

Gold Plating in Project Management

• Refers to an addition of unnecessary, unapproved features that ultimately increase the cost for the customer.

Scope Creep

• The project will take additional time to complete due to the additional unapproved features.

Identifying Resource Skills

• Evaluating the skills needed to successfully complete a project.

Location Changes During Projects

• Speak with the project manager about changing the location and wait for approval.

Selecting Project Management Approach

• Select Predictive if the tasks are well-defined, the deliverable is precise, and team experience present.

Project Sponsor Approval

• Project sponsor needs to provide the approval for further work when the scope of the project needs adjusting.

Assessing Change Management

• Assess the change impact if you receive an updated quote from suppliers as a project manager.

Quality Assurance (QA)

• The role of quality assurance (QA) in the project development process is to ensure procedures are followed to meet standards for performance.

Formal Acceptance of Projects

• Approval from the project sponsor and the customer signifies action.

Team Communications and Decisions

• Request a team meeting to decide on corrective action while adhering to the customer's request and budget.

Schedule Dependency

• Must wait to start a task until after task is completed.

Declining Out-of-Scope features

• "Decline the development of the feature" if a project feature is out of scope.

Adaptive Product Management

• An approach characterized by continuous refinement of the product based on stakeholder feedback.
• Sharing best practice approaches among a team is a benefit to learning lessons that are documented.

Project Lifecycle Phases

• Project cycle consists of the series of phases from the project's start to its completion.

Project Deliverables

• Can range from physical products to documents, software, reports, or any other tangible work that is created during the course of a project.