Grading Summary
These are the automatically
Date Taken:
computed results of your exam.
Grades for essay questions, and
Time Spent:
comments from your instructor, are Points Received:
in the "Details" section below.
Question Type:
Essay
7/25/2012
54 min , 56 secs
80 / 80 (100%)
# Of Questions:
4
# Correct:
N/A
Grade Details - All Questions
1. Question :
Student Answer:
(TCO A) You work for Holt consulting company, which has been asked
to recommend organizational improvements for CDC Software
Company. You have been assigned to present PPM. Your boss has
informed you that CDC Software Company knows nothing about PPM
and you will need to cover the items below in your presentation.
• What is a PPM?
• Compare PPM, PgM, and Project level
• Benefits of each (PPM, PgM, and Project)
• Why should CDC Software Company implement a PPM?
PPM is Project Portfolio management which is a structure and
processes that are established to ensure that organizational
projects being implemented support the strategic objectives of
the organization while effectively and efficiently utilizing the
available resources. This is essentially having governance and
oversight and effective management of the many projects being
done within the organization and ensuring that the benefits and
value to organization are maximized. PPM's main responsibility
is to ensure that the organizational strategies, goals, and
objectives are supported by the projects that are accepted. PPM is
concerned with choosing the right projects, prioritizing the
projects chosen, and then allocating resources to those projects.
Benefits of PPM include alignment with organizational strategy
and ensuring that usage of scarce organizational optimized while
there is a structured and best practices based approach to the way
projects are implemented. PgM is Program Management, which
is essentially managing a collection of projects that together
achieve a set of objectives and which are collectively managed
and executed. Being managed by a Program Management Office,
this approach to project execution ensures continuous
improvements, application of lessons learnt and knowledge
sharing and ensuring that projects are executed in an efficient and
effective manner. Benefits include efficiency and effectiveness,
and the organization is able to operate in a mature manner which
is based on best practices and can continuously learn and
improve itself. At the lowest level of grouping are projects which
are individual projects being executed with a start and end dates.
These projects can be independent and autonomous or be part of
a larger program or portfolio within the organization. Benefits
include faster decision making and implementation and highly
responsive to business needs. CDC Software Company given the
nature of its business would be implementing multiple internal or
external IT projects to realize the company goals and objectives.
It would be more value if it is able to approach this in a more
structured and best practices oriented manner, so that it has
complete view on what is being done and if the projects
implemented are aligned with organizational strategy and
business priority. Having a PPM approach would allow it to do
that, and bring in benefits of faster time to market, higher quality
and better reporting, all of which would lead to more effective
project implementation. PPM would definitely bring in a lot of
value at CDC and hence they should implement it.
Comments:
2. Question :
Student Answer:
(TCO B) In project orientation it is important to determine both the
project needs from the project’s perspective and from the
organization’s perspective. From the project’s perspective, the main
areas of concern are project scoping, project programming, and project
autonomy. In your own words, explain what is meant by project
autonomy.
As per the textbook, “Project autonomy refers to the degree to
which the project is allowed to evolve without constant report
and input from the organization”. Project autonomy is used to
give a context as to how connected and dependant the project is
on other organizational aspects and the amount of management
reporting, coordination and dependency in terms of resources or
inputs and information. Projects that are highly autonomous can
be said to be highly independent in nature in relation to the
organization and are able to complete and achieve project
objectives without much of a dependence on other organizational
areas or dynamics and have the information and resources they
need to complete the project. On the other hand, projects that are
low on autonomy have a lot of dependency on organizational
areas and there is direct reporting to organizational stakeholders
and major decision and approvals are done by higher
management or people from outside the project.
Comments:
3. Question :
Student Answer:
(TCO C) The program management life cycle was developed to not
only ensure successful realization of organizational/program strategies
but also to create a process to plan, identify, and resolve specific cost,
schedule, or quality problems associated with the program. The five
phases of the program life cycle are formulation, organization,
deployment, appraisal, and dissolution. In your own words, describe
the appraisal phase and how it aids in planning, identifying, and
resolving specific cost, schedule, or quality problems associated with
the program.
The appraisal phase assesses, evaluates and validates the program
level benefits. In this phase the program is constantly reevaluated in terms of value to the organization and key success
factors and ensures that the program is able to deliver benefits
and results that are of value and can create a good impact for the
organization. In the appraisal phase, there is evaluation done on
the need to carry on with the program, review its purpose, or stop
it. In this phase, results are compared with expected business
benefits; emergent threats and opportunities are managed and
overall program performance assessed. As there is a thorough
examination of the program from multiple perspectives, and there
is a lot of questioning on various aspects to gain insights and
learn lessons to do things better, there is a direct impact leading
to better quality and effectiveness of project delivery. As this is a
investigative and assessment process, the project is evaluated
from multiple angles and information gathered that would help
identify pain points and issues that can be solved to make the
project better, thus helping in problem identification. Also, as
this is generally done at a time when the project is stable, various
issues related to cost, scope or schedule can be brought forward
and discussed with key project stakeholders and key decisions
made in context of organizational relevancy and value, to ensure
that the project has a clear direction and there is a plan on what
has to be done next. As various stakeholders and decision makers
are involved, issues can be resolved in an effective manner.
Therefore, as can be seen there are a lot of things that are
accomplished and which add direct value in making better and
realizing the value of projects being done in the organization.
Comments:
4. Question :
Student Answer:
Comments:
(TCO C) The following acronyms are used when working with project
budget or schedule: PV, AC, EV, & BAC. Define these acronyms,
explain how they are calculated, and how they are used to measure or
explain the projects budget and schedule.
PV is Planned Value and this is the amount of budget planned to
be spent during a given period of time. Formula for Planned
value is PV = Hourly Rate * Total Hours Planned or Scheduled
AC is the Actual Cost and this is the amount of money actually
spent on the completed work. This is the actual money that has
been spent or billed to the project at a given point in time.
Formula for Actual Cost is AC = Hourly Rate * Total Hours
Spent EV is Earned Value and this is a value indicating how
much of the budgeted cost should have been spent given the
amount of work actually completed. EV = Baselined Cost * %
Complete Actual BAC is Budget at Completion which is the
planned cost of the project. This is calculated by adding the cost
of individual project tasks to come up with the planned project
cost or project budget. Using these four metrics above various
project metrics can be determined such as the cost of schedule
variance, which essentially show if a project is ahead or behind in
terms of cost and schedule.