Information Technology Project Management 8e Kathy Schwalbe - Test Bank

2. Collecting requirements involves defining and documenting the features and functions of the products produced during the project as well as the processes used for creating them. The project team creates stakeholder requirements documentation, a requirements management plan, and a requirements traceability matrix as outputs of the requirements collection process.

3. Defining scope involves reviewing the project charter, requirements documents, and organizational process assets to create a scope statement, adding more information as requirements are developed and change requests are approved. The main outputs of scope definition are the project scope statement and updates to project documents.

4. Creating the WBS involves subdividing the major project deliverables into smaller, more manageable components. The main outputs include a work breakdown structure, a WBS dictionary, a scope baseline, and updates to project documents.

5. Verifying scope involves formalizing acceptance of the project deliverables. Key project stakeholders, such as the customer and sponsor for the project, inspect and then formally accept the deliverables during this process. If the deliverables are not acceptable, the customer or sponsor usually requests changes. The main outputs of this process, therefore, are accepted deliverables, change requests, work performance information, and updates to project documents.

6. Controlling scope involves controlling changes to project scope throughout the life of the project—a challenge on many information technology projects. Scope changes often influence the team’s ability to meet project time and cost goals, so project managers must carefully weigh the costs and benefits of scope changes. The main outputs of this process are work performance information, change requests, and updates to the project management plan, project documents, and organizational process assets.

Many organizations provide guidelines and templates for developing WBSs, as well as examples of WBSs from past projects. At the request of many of its members, the Project Management Institute recently developed a WBS Practice Standard to provide guidance for developing and applying the WBS to project management.

Project managers and their teams should review appropriate information to develop their unique project WBSs more efficiently.

The Analogy Approach
In the analogy approach, you use a similar project’s WBS as a starting point. Some organizations keep a repository of WBSs and other project documentation on file to assist people working on projects. Viewing examples of other similar projects’ WBSs allows you to understand different ways to create a WBS.

The Top-down and Bottom-up Approaches
Most project managers consider the top-down approach of WBS construction to be conventional. To use the top-down approach, start with the largest items of the project and break them into their subordinate items. This process involves refining the work into greater and greater levels of detail. After finishing the process, all resources should be assigned at the work package level. The top-down approach is best suited to project managers who have vast technical insight and a big-picture perspective.

In the bottom-up approach, team members first identify as many specific tasks related to the project as possible. They then aggregate the specific tasks and organize them into summary activities, or higher levels in the WBS. The bottom-up approach can be very time-consuming, but it can also be a very effective way to create a WBS. Project managers often use the bottom-up approach for projects that represent entirely new systems or approaches to doing a job, or to help create buy-in and synergy  with a project team.

Mind Mapping
Mind mapping is a technique that uses branches radiating out from a core idea to structure thoughts and ideas. Instead of writing tasks down in a list or immediately trying to create a structure for tasks, mind mapping allows people to write and even draw pictures of ideas in a nonlinear format. This more visual, less structured approach to defining and then grouping tasks can unlock creativity among individuals and increase participation and morale among teams.

After discovering WBS items and structure using the mind-mapping technique, you could then translate the information into chart or tabular form. Mind mapping can be used for developing WBSs using the top-down or bottom-up approach.

The scope management plan, scope baseline, requirements documentation, requirements traceability matrix, validated deliverables, and work performance data are the main inputs for scope validation. The main tools for performing scope validation are inspection and group decision-making techniques. The customer, sponsor, or user inspects the work after it is delivered and decides if it meets requirements. The main outputs of scope validation are accepted deliverables, change requests, work performance information, and project documents updates.

2. Employ techniques such as prototyping, use case modeling, and Joint Application Design to understand user requirements thoroughly. Prototyping involves developing a working replica of the system or some aspect of the system. These working replicas may be throwaways or an incremental component of the deliverable system. Prototyping is an effective tool for gaining an understanding of requirements, determining the feasibility of requirements, and resolving user interface uncertainties. Use case modeling is a process for identifying and modeling business events, who initiated them, and how the system should respond to them. It is an effective tool for understanding requirements for information systems. Joint Application Design (JAD) uses highly organized and intensive workshops to bring together project stakeholders—the sponsor, users, business analysts, programmers, and so on—to jointly define and design information systems. These techniques also help users become more active in defining system requirements.

3. Put all requirements in writing and keep them current and readily available. Several tools are available to automate this function. For example, a type of software called a requirements management tool aids in capturing and maintaining requirements information, provides immediate access to the information, and assists in establishing necessary relationships between requirements and information created by other tools.

4. Create a requirements management database for documenting and controlling requirements. Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools or other technologies can assist in maintaining a repository for project data. A CASE tool’s database can also be used to document and control requirements.

5. Provide adequate testing to verify that the project’s products perform as expected. Conduct testing throughout the project life cycle.

6. Use a process for reviewing requested requirements changes from a systems perspective.

7. Emphasize completion dates.

8. Allocate resources specifically for handling change requests.