Project Management Bootcamp

The WBS Dictionary is a table or spreadsheet that is organized by project task and contains all project planning details.

Task Descriptions are the statements of scope for each of the project activities.  They are written in the format of “action – completion point.”

Story Cards – also known as Product Backlog Items (PBIs) – are the technique used for documenting project scope, quality requirements, estimates, and priority of the deliverables in an Agile/Scrum project.

There is an art to creating effective story cards. In this lesson, an Agile project team member will learn the best practices for writing story cards.

Understand when and how to use a milestone schedule on a project.  Learn how to create a milestone schedule.

Understand when and how to use a Gantt chart on a project. Learn how to create a Gantt chart.

A network diagram is a project scheduling technique that shows the relationship between tasks by depicting project activities as a flowchart.

A Task List Schedule is a schedule format used to communicate tasks with dates to extended team members or those who do not have a major role in the project.

A Kanban Schedule is a project scheduling tool for managing a batch of similar items that must be processed through the same project steps.

Float (slack or buffer) is extra time that a task could consume beyond its duration estimate without impacting other aspects of the project. Total float is extra time without impacting the end date of the project and free float is extra time without impacting another project task.

Critical Path is a project scheduling technique that determines the shortest time that the current project plan can be completed.

The project Resource List is a list of all individuals working on the project with their contact information and all special equipment and facilities required to accomplish project tasks.

The Responsibility Matrix is a project management tool for correlating project work assignments with project team members.

Contractors, vendors, and suppliers are used on projects to reduce risks.  These external resources have capacity and capability that allows them to complete project tasks better than internal resources would be able to complete them.

Understand what is normally shown in a project budget.  Learn how to create a time-phased project budget.

Project resource demands are often inconsistent throughout the life of the project leading to times when resources are over-allocated.

The most commonly used techniques for creating project estimates are analogous estimates, bottom-up estimates, three-point estimates, and using a parametric model.

Time Boxes are an estimating technique that sets a finite time for a task or task group. The amount of scope that is completed is variable. Whatever scope is done when the time box ends is the amount of scope for that activity on the project.

Project estimates of effort, duration, and money are interrelated. Based upon the cost and availability of the resources involved, once you have one of the estimates, you can derive the other two.

Project plans are built with an accumulation of estimates, each of which has a level of uncertainty associated with it.  The level of uncertainty is a major contributor to the accuracy of the plan and the amount of project risk.

Task Accountability is the project management activity associated with ensuring the successful completion of project activities.

Contractors and vendors are often used to accomplish project tasks. The complexity, uniqueness, and uncertainty of the activity will determine the nature of the relationship between the project team and the contractor or vendor.

Sprint execution is the actual work of the Scrum team during the Sprint to accomplish the tasks needed to complete each Story in the Sprint Backlog.

Quality management on projects are processes and tools that aid the project core team and the organization in their effort to both do the right things and do things the right way on projects. It includes a focus on both corrective actions and preventive actions.

The Sprint Demonstration is the formal meeting where the Scrum Team demonstrates to the Product Owner the performance of each deliverable that was created during the Sprint.

Understand how to gain stakeholder acceptance during project closeout and learn how to create and use a Punch List.

A project is formally approved because of a business-level impact. That impact should be verified as the project nears closeout.

In addition to completing the project goals and objectives, an attribute of project performance is the performance of the members of the project team. Each team member should have continued to develop their own skills and leadership.

Since project teams are comprised of people, there are times when the project team will become dysfunctional. Team members begin to violate team ground rules and team cohesion and trust are undermined. In this lesson, we discuss a framework for recognizing this and addressing dysfunctional behavior.

Attributes of governance and compliance were discussed in planning. However, it is during project execution that compliance is demonstrated. In this lesson, we discuss the techniques to be used to monitor the level of compliance on a project.

Depending upon your organization’s culture, compliance may be a primary value or it may only be treated as a minor element of project management. In this lesson, we discuss the compliance mindset and multiple methods for strengthening compliance on your project.

There are a growing number of things outside the control of the project team in today’s business environment. The project manager must monitor the industry and organization to assess the impacts. Risk management has expanded to include items outside the control of the project team.

Project compliance with all appropriate standards, regulations, policies, and requirements documents is the responsibility of the project team. However, typically an independent review of compliance, in the form of a project audit, is done to confirm compliance.

Learn how to create and use a project dashboard to communicate project status with both management and your project team.

Earned Value Management is a comprehensive project management technique that combines scope, schedule and resource management into one set of measures.  It starts with task-level planning.

Earned Value Management is a comprehensive project management technique that combines scope, schedule, and resource management into one set of measures.  An element, in fact, the element that provides the name of the technique, is the setting of Earned Value.

Variance occurs when the actual situation is different from the planned or expected situation.  In projects, variance analysis applies to schedule variance and cost variance.  It determines both why the actual situation is different than what was planned and the impact that will have on the project.

Since projects seldom go exactly as planned, part way through a project the project team is typically asked to estimate how much time and money are required to complete the project.

Issues are any request, complaint, or unexpected condition that leads to unplanned, but in scope, work that must be accomplished on a project.  They normally result in the need to implement a workaround in order to resolve them.

Roadblocks are impediments that prevent the Scrum Team from completing Stories and tasks. The Scrum Master is charged with removing or creating a workaround for the Roadblocks.

Contingencies are potential risk response actions that will only be implemented if some triggering event or condition has shown that the risk probability has gone from unlikely to likely.

Scope creep is the uncontrolled expansion to project scope without adjustments to time, cost, and resources.

There are several approaches a project team can take to accelerate project tasks. Each approach has its own unique characteristics and risks.

The project performance is tracked against an integrated set of project baselines that support the achievement of the project’s triple constraint goals and objectives.

The unique nature of projects leads to an inherent level of uncertainty.  Project managers should expect and plan for project change.

A formal documented modification to the project baseline, boundaries, or an artifact.

Lessons Learned are a retrospective look at a project, or phase of a project, to identify best practices to be repeated and performance gaps to be improved.

The Sprint Retrospective is a lessons learned meeting with a focus on identifying opportunities to improve the performance and management of the next Sprint. 

The Backlog Refinement is the update of the Product Backlog based upon what has been completed and what has been learned in a recently completed Sprint.

To fully realize the benefit of a project, often business systems need to change to implement the project results. This transition can be a challenging aspect of the project.

In many organizations, a final report is prepared after all project activities have been completed and the impact of the project results have been demonstrated in business performance metrics.

In addition to transitioning the result of the project into the organization’s operations, projects often have accounts, systems, and resources that must be closed or disposed of before the project is fully closed.