Chapter 9: Project Control | IT Project+ Study Guide, 2nd Edition (PKO-002)

Overview

THE COMPTIA PROJECT+ EXAM TOPICS COVERED IN THIS CHAPTER INCLUDE:

3.1: Identify the specific tasks that should be accomplished on a weekly basis in the course of tracking an 'up and running' project.
3.2: Given a scenario with a set of project performance indicators, demonstrate the ability to recognize when performance problems are occurring on the project and determine if/when corrective action/recovery needs to occur.
3.3: Given a scenario with updates/changes made to the project plan, demonstrate the need to check for various project impacts.
3.4: Given a scenario involving a project with a schedule delay, choose an appropriate course of action.
3.5: Given an approved project and a status report scenario containing a significant variance from plan (e.g., excessive overtime, purchased items more expensive than anticipated), identify and determine solutions and accommodations for such a variance.
3.9: Identify issues to consider when trying to obtain approval of a changed project plan that is still within expected budget, but has a schedule that extends outside of the original baseline end date.
3.10: Define and explain estimate to complete (ETC), estimate at completion (EAC), and budget at completion (BAC).
3.11: Demonstrate the ability to track the financial performance of a project, given the financial management baseline and data on the actual performance of the project.
3.12: Given an approved project plan and a specific scope deviation (e.g., design, schedule, or cost change), demonstrate your ability to identify, prepare, determine, and quantify key elements of change control.
3.13: Identify and justify the conditions for initiating a change control process.
3.14: Given scenarios involving requests for changes from sponsors, team members , or third parties, recognize and explain how to prevent scope creep.
3.15: Recognize and explain the importance of communicating significant proposed changes in project scope, and their impacts, to management, and getting management review and formal approval.
3.16: Identify and explain strategies and requirements for maintaining qualified deliverables, given a large project with many team members at multiple locations (e.g., communication standards, work standards).
3.17: Recognize and explain the importance of testing in situations where tasks are being performed by both project team members and third parties.
3.18: Identify and explain strategies and requirements for assuring quality during the turnover phase (e.g., user docs, user training, help-desk training, or support structure).
3.19: Identify and explain strategies and requirements for assuring quality of deliverables and meeting sufficiency standards during each phase.
3.20: Recognize the need and explain the importance of controlling changes on the configuration of the project deliverable .
3.25: Given an initial high-level scope, budget, and resource allocation, demonstrate understanding of the need to investigate the aspects of the project that could be modified to improve outcomes (i.e., find out what is negotiable, prepare to negotiate).
3.32: Given a project team meeting scenario, demonstrate the knowledge to review an issue log with team members and secure closure of issues.
3.33: Demonstrate the ability to prioritize issues by severity and impact on quality.
3.34: Demonstrate understanding of how to determine if/when planned risks have materialized and how to implement planned risk mitigation and removal strategies.
3.35: Demonstrate the ability to prioritize risks by severity and impact on quality.
3.36: Demonstrate the ability to remove/mitigate a project risk.
3.37: Demonstrate an understanding of how to report to the project sponsor that a project is in jeopardy and how to report corrective action strategies that are under way.
3.38: Demonstrate understanding of how to determine when a project should be prematurely terminated .
4.3: Recognize the need for acceptance testing (user acceptance testing, factory acceptance testing, site acceptance testing) of the project deliverable.

In the course of executing your project plan, you continually monitor results. Deviations from the project plan can be warnings that changes may be required to your original project plan. Requests are received during the course of the project to add new requirements or to expand the scope of the project work. You need to implement change control processes to deal with these requests.

Integrated change control looks at the overall impact of change and manages updates across all elements of the project plan. Scope change control includes recognizing that a scope change has occurred, taking appropriate action relative to a scope change, and managing a process to review and approve or reject requests for scope changes. Schedule control entails knowing that a change to the schedule has occurred, taking the appropriate action to deal with the schedule change, and updating the schedule based on changes in other areas of the project plan. Cost control involves being aware that the project costs have changed from the estimate, understanding when cost changes require response, and updating the budget

Quality control monitors the project deliverables against the project requirements to ensure that the project is delivering according to plan.

Performance reporting provides information to the project stakeholders comparing the work results produced by the project with the information contained in the comprehensive project plan. Variance analysis, trend analysis, and earned value are used to assess project performance.

Risk control implements the risk prevention strategies or contingency plans developed in your risk response plan, monitors the results of preventative actions, and assesses new risks to the project.

Changes to the project plan may result in stakeholder action requiring trade-offs between scope, cost, time, and quality. We'll discuss these processes and techniques in this chapter.