Advance Programme Management

Exam

1. Some believe that a project management office (PMO) is nothing more than yet another level of management with the associated added cost and bureaucracy. Project Management experts tell us that this is a good thing. Which of these points of view is correct, and how do you (in your own words, though you may cite your readings to support your view as necessary) justify your conclusion? Remember that business thinks primarily in terms of dollars and benefit/cost ratios.

2. One of the most traumatic decisions a project manager must sometimes make is to cancel a project. In an article titled "How to Fail In Project Management without Really Trying," Business Horizons Reprint No. BH010, the following (whimsical but true) reasons that projects go out of control were identified:

3. Ignore the project environment, including stakeholders

4. Push a new technology to market too quickly

5. Don't bother building fallback positions

6. When problems occur, shoot the one most visible

7. Let new ideas starve to death from inertia

8. Don't bother conducting feasibility studies

9. Never admit a project is a failure

10. Over-manage project managers and their teams

11. Never, never conduct post-failure reviews

12. Never bother to understand project trade-offs

13. Allow political expediency and infighting to dictate crucial project decisions

14. Make sure the project is run by a weak leader

15. Your company has a PMO, and it has now decided to incorporate project portfolio management. Part 1: What is the difference between a PMO and a PPM? Part 2: Who should participate in implementing the PPM?

16. Part 1: List the five levels of maturity in the Project Management Maturity Model (PMMM). Part 2: Describe each level and discuss whether each level can overlap with another level, and also define its level of risk.

17. Part 1: What are the basic principles behind the AGILE process? Part 2: What is the PM's role under the AGILE process?

18. You have been hired to establish a PMO in your IT department. You will report directly to the CIO. You have been a member of a failed PMO. You understand why PMOs fail and what you will do to enhance the success of your PMO. Make sure to discuss at least four reasons that contribute to a failure and how you will overcome it. Also provide recommendations for assuring the success of a PMO implementation.

19. Two of your best program managers are in a heated debate on the best way to resolve the situation to recover a project. Neither is willing to budge from his or her stand. What are some of the steps you will take to diffuse the situation? Explain your answers. In your answer, make sure you focus on the modes of conflict and conflict resolution.

20. You have just been assigned to a program. Your team will be responsible for building a new financial system. You have just gone over the program charter and discovered that your program will have to integrate completely with another company's customer service, network, marketing, legal, new development, procurement, and your own, IT.

The program must include a WEB-enabled customer interface that will allow for online bill paying, review, and changes. Your company does not currently have a corporate Web page. You know this will be new technology for your developers. Last of all, the implementation schedule for this program is very aggressive; you have 24 months from today to have the product up and running.

Fortunately, management is behind you 100% and willing to allow you to set up your team in any way you like. Let's start with the organizational structure.

Would you recommend a pure project, matrix, or functional team? Why?

What are some important organizational considerations when forming the project team? What are the key advantages and disadvantages of your choice?

9. Your company just finished delivering a software product to the client. In writing a summary report and checking a minor discrepancy, you uncover an error made by the testing team. It looks like an honest mistake. You realize that you could have caught it earlier had you checked out the discrepancy when it first appeared. You know enough about the software to understand that it will take approximately $30,000 to make the correction, making the project over budget and, of course, late. As designed now, there is the likelihood everything will perform successfully. If there would be a failure, with a remote possibility of patient injury, an investigation could reveal the obvious design error. How would you approach this problem from an ethical and code of conduct point of view?

10. Critical Chain implementation requires a culture shift within an organization to make it successful. Part 1: Why is this statement true? Part 2: What about Critical Chain makes it unique from other scheduling techniques? Part 3: How does it address some of the "human nature" aspects of traditional project scheduling?