CSE 495- MID2 (Questionnaire)

1) What is project charter? Why is it important? What are the basic components and sample
of project charter?

A project charter is the statement of scope, objectives and people who are participating in a
project. It begins the process of defining the roles and responsibilities of those participants and
outlines the objectives and goals of the project. The charter also identifies the main
stakeholders and defines the authority of the project manager at the outset of the project plan.

Importance of Project Charter

A project without a charter can end up like a flop movie, similar to how a movie without a script
can be a disaster. A project charter’s sole purpose is to document and acknowledge the
project’s existence. This document will serve as proof that organizational resources have been
committed to the project.

The main reason for a project charter is to formalize the authorization of a project and to give
its consent to use resources provided by the organization. There is a chance for the project to
get canceled without the project charter at any point in time and for any excuse. It can even be
audited as an unofficial project.

We can consider a case where a project only begins for a couple of months and due to
unfortunate circumstances the project manager has to resign from the project, a new project
manager will be assigned. The beginning task for the authorized project manager is to look at
the project charter to have a thorough understanding of the business needs and objectives of
the project assigned.

Components of Project Charter

The project charter serves to document some basic things about the project so everyone has a
common understanding of the work that is about to begin.

1. PROJECT BACKGROUND

Include a few paragraphs about what the project is for and what problem it is trying to solve.
You can explain the reasons why the project has been initiated although there is a separate
opportunity to go deeper into benefits later, so keep this section to the context and business
drivers for the project.
2. PROJECT OBJECTIVES

The point of including objectives here is to make sure everyone has clarity on what it is the
project is setting out to achieve. You can include the high-level vision as well as the detailed list
of objectives.

3. BENEFITS

It’s also useful to include a bullet-point list of benefits, because you can then refer back to that
at the end of the project to see how many were achieved.

4. STAKEHOLDERS

The stakeholder section is normally a substantial part of the project charter. You’ll want to list
all the core project roles including the types of people and expertise required for the project
team, the customer or client representative, the governance framework and who is involved
with that, and any other key decision-making stakeholders.

5. INITIAL RISKS AND ISSUES

The business case or any conversations to this point may have highlighted risks and issues that
affect the project. You can include a brief list of these in the project charter.

6. INITIAL BUDGET

You won’t have a lot of detailed information about the budget yet, but you might have enough
information to include a general section stating where the budget will come from, how much
overall it’s going to be and so on.

7. INITIAL TIMELINE

Again, you won’t have a detailed project schedule at this point, but you should include key
dates and milestones where you know them.

A sample of Project Charter

2) What is project scope? Briefly explain with 5 parts.

Project Scope Management: Scope refers to all the work involved in creating the product of
the project and the processes used to create them.

Project Scope Management Process

1) Scope planning (Collect Requirements)

Scope planning or collecting requirements is deciding how the scope will be defined, verified
and controlled. For some IT project, its helpful to divide requirements development into
categories called elicitation, analysis, specification and validation. It is important to used an
iterative approach to defining requirements since they are often unclear early in a project.
There is also some method of collecting requirements.

 Interviewing stakeholder one-on-one

Effective but expensive and time-consuming
 Focus groups and facilitated workshops
Faster and less expensive than one-on-one
 Questionnaires and survey
Efficient as long as stakeholders provide hones and thorough information
 Observation
Good for projects that involves improving working processes and procedures
 Prototyping
Used for software developing projects
 Software tools
Several SW tools are available to assist in collecting and management requirements

2) Define Scope

Key inputs for preparing the project scope statement include the project charter, requirements
documentation, and organizational process assets such as policies and procedures related to
scope statements as well as project files and lessons. As time progresses the scope of a project
should become more clear and specific.

3) Creating WBS (Work Breakdown Structure)

A WBS is a deliverable-oriented grouping of the work involved in a project that defines the total
scope of the project. WBS is a foundation document that provides the basis for planning and
managing project schedule, costs, resources, and changes.

Decomposition is subdividing project deliverable into smaller pieces. A work package is a task at
the lowest level of the WBS.

Approaches to Developing WBS

 Guidelines: Some organizations such as the DOD, provide guidelines for preparing WBSs.
 Analogy approach: Review WBBs of similar projects and tailor to your projects.
 Top-down approach: Start with the largest items of the project and break them down.
 Bottom-down approach: Start with the specific tasks and roll them up.
 Mind-mapping approach: Write tasks in a non-linear, branching format and then create
the WBS structure.
4) Verifying Scope

Scope verification involves formal acceptance of the completed project scope by the
stakeholders. Acceptance is often achieved by a customer inspection and then sign-off on key
deliverables.

5) Controlling Scope

Scope control involves controlling changes to the project scope. Goals of scope control are to:

 Influence the factors that cause scope changes

 Ensure changes are processed according to procedures developed as part of
integrated change control
 Manage changes when they occur.

3) Difference between project scope and product scope with example.

Organizations undertake many projects or produce many products to grow up. In project
management, there are several important definitions used to refer to various features of
project deliverables. For example, Project scope and product scope are widely used concepts in
project management that everyone should be aware of their differences in order to build up a
career in the field of project management.
Project

Projects are undertaken by organizations to create a unique product or service. In other words,
when you deliver the deliverables of the project, the project will come to an end because
you’ve achieved the goals.

A project is temporary in nature which is undertaken to produce a specific output or a product.

The output can be physical or non-physical. Most of the projects provide monetary incomes like
hotel construction or software development. However, some projects are non-profit which are
performed to improve public health or personal growth.

Product

A product can be defined as a physical item or a component that is produced artificially. Goods
and materials are examples of products. They can be produced as an output of a manufacturing
process. They may have both physical and chemical characteristics.
Computers, construction equipment, vehicles are examples of products.

Scope

Scope is a widely used term in project management that you may encounter this word in many
processes. The scope can be used as a suffix of project or product term. Basically, it refers to
the boundary or extent of the area that something deals with. It can be considered as the sum
of the products and services to be provided as a project.

Product Scope

The Product Scope can be defined as the features and functions that characterize a product. In
other words, it defines and details the features, characteristics of a product, service, or result.
Therefore it involves technical specifications, features, functions required to represent a
product itself. Simply put, the product scope focuses on how the product will look and how will
it work. The product can be described as the output or the end result of a project.

For example, your company will produce a computer. The product is the computer and its
scope will include its dimensions, battery size, processor speed, screen resolution, memory
capacity, etc.

Project Scope

The PMBOK Guide defines the Project Scope as the work performed to deliver a product,
service, or result with the specified features and functions. Therefore it involves all the works,
processes, methods required to deliver the project deliverables. In other words, the action you
do to perform your product is the scope of your project. It includes outputs, however, it may be
extended to cover benefits. Definition of scope statement is an important task in project scope
management.

The Difference between Project Scope and Product Scope

Below are some of the key differences between project and product scope.

• The project scope is the work that is required to deliver the product.

• The scope of the project refers to all the work and processes required to be done to deliver
the product and the product scope refers to technical specifications, features, functions of the
product itself.

• The product scope focuses on the features of the end product and the project scope focuses
on the work needed to deliver the product.

• The product scope can also be included in the project scope.

Project Scope and Product Scope Example

Suppose that you will build a mansion for your client. The client defines the requirements such
as the size of the rooms, number of bathrooms, floor covering materials, door colors, and other
features. The mansion is the product and the client’s requirements are the scope. You received
the product scope from the client.

In order to build the mansion, you will create the project schedule, prepare the budget and hire
employees. You will perform all the construction work and related processes such as health and
safety and quality management. All the works and processes that you will perform to construct
the mansion are the scope of the project.

4) RTM, WBS, WBS Dictionary, and Work Package. Give definition with example.

RTM: A requirements traceability matrix (RTM) is a tool that helps identify and maintain the
status of the project's requirements and deliverables.
WBS: A work breakdown structure (WBS) is a visual, hierarchical and deliverable-oriented
deconstruction of a project.

WBS Dictionary: A WBS dictionary is where the details of the tasks, activities, and deliverables
of the work breakdown structure are located.
Work Package: A work package is a planning tool that helps project managers divide a large
project into smaller related tasks. It's the smallest unit of a work breakdown structure (WBS).

5) What is time management? Briefly explain its 7 step.

Time is one of the 3 pillars of project management. As an invaluable asset for project managers,
time should be carefully planned.

Project time management refers to the way a project manager sets up a strategy in order to
allocate the right amount of time to each task and decide on deadlines for project phases and
delivery dates.

The aim of effective project time management is to stick to the schedule and bring projects to
completion on time.

Since time doesn’t wait for anyone and it just keeps going forward, time management takes on
even more significance.

Project Time Management Process

1) Planning schedule management: determining the policies, procedures and documentation

that will be used for planning, executing and controlling the project schedule.

2) Defining activities: identifying the specific activities that the project team members and
stakeholders must perform to produce the project deliverables.

3) Sequencing activities: Identifying and documenting the relationships between project

activities.

4) Estimating activity resources: Estimating how many resources a project team should use to
perform project activities.

5) Estimating activity duration: Estimating the number of work periods that are needed to
complete individual activities.

6) Developing the schedule: Analyzing activity sequences, activity resource estimates, and
activity duration estimates to create the project schedule.

7) Controlling the schedule: Controlling and managing changes to the project schedule.