Question 31 – Material Change in Construction Project
A supplier offers a cheaper, suitable material midway through the project. How should you handle this opportunity while ensuring proper approval?
Question 32 – New Logistics Partner Integration
A client adopts a new logistics partner requiring major system changes. What steps should you take to manage this impact effectively?
Question 33 – Stakeholder Unhappy with Approved Change
A key stakeholder is dissatisfied with a change that has already been approved and implemented. How do you address their concerns?
Question 34 – Resource Inefficiencies in High-Priority Project
Some team members are overloaded while others are underutilized, leading to inefficiencies. What’s the best way to optimize resources?
Question 35 – Pressure to Begin Work Without a Plan
A new initiative is suggested but lacks formal analysis, and stakeholders are pressuring you to start. What is the first step to properly initiate the project?
Question 36 – Benefits Management Plan
What does a benefits management plan include, and what is its primary purpose?
Question 37 – Organizational Structure
In which type of organizational structure does the project manager have significant authority over project resources, including budget and scheduling decisions?
Question 38 – Project Approach
What is the best project management approach for an initiative with a fixed timeline, well-defined requirements, and minimal scope changes?
Question 39 – Gathering Expert Insights
What is the most efficient way to quickly gather insights from multiple subject matter experts (SMEs) on key project features?
Question 40 – Leadership and Team Morale
What is the best leadership approach to rebuild team morale and encourage open communication after taking over a project from a manager who lacked transparency and support?
Pep Talk
You’ve done an amazing job! Studying towards your PMP or your CAPM is the most worthy thing you can do this year you’re doing an amazing thing and just by studying every single day I know you’ll have success towards your goal. You’re doing the right thing – by studying, by improving, learning and growing. Keep going!
What is Business Analysis and What Does a Business Analyst Do?
In the world of project management, you may have heard of a business analyst (BA). Whether you’re preparing for a certification exam like the Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) or working with a business analyst, it’s important to understand what they do. In this article, we will explain what business analysis is, what a business analyst’s role involves, and how they help make projects successful.
Who is a Business Analyst?
Here is a simple way to explain a business analyst’s role. There are three main tasks that define business analysis:
Gathering Requirements: A business analyst works with stakeholders and customers to collect their needs.
Ensuring the Solution Matches: Once the requirements are gathered, the BA ensures that the solution meets these needs.
Evaluating the Outcome: After the solution is delivered, the BA checks if the desired results—like increased revenue or better customer satisfaction—were achieved.
This basic explanation gives a clear idea of the BA’s job in a project.
The Role of a Business Analyst in a Project
In a typical project, there are several stages: initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and controlling, and closing. A business analyst focuses on three key areas throughout the project:
Stakeholder Management: The BA identifies and works with stakeholders to gather and refine project requirements.
Scope Definition: The BA helps define the project’s scope, ensuring the right requirements are included.
Quality Assurance: The BA ensures that the solution matches the defined requirements and meets quality standards.
These three areas—stakeholders, scope, and quality—are vital for a business analyst’s success and contribute to the overall project success.
How Business Analysis Works in Practice
1. Engaging Stakeholders and Gathering Requirements
The business analyst’s first task is to identify and engage the right stakeholders—customers, users, and anyone affected by the project. To do this, the BA uses tools like an organizational breakdown chart to identify key people within the organization. Once the right stakeholders are identified, their roles are documented in a stakeholder register.
The BA uses a stakeholder classification matrix to assess the influence and impact of each stakeholder, focusing on those who have the greatest influence on the project’s outcome. Engaging the right people early ensures that the gathered requirements are accurate.
2. Eliciting and Visualizing Requirements
Once stakeholders are engaged, the BA uses various techniques like workshops, brainstorming, and facilitation skills to gather requirements. One effective method is the Nominal Group Technique, where everyone writes down their ideas anonymously, avoiding bias from higher-ups in the room.
After gathering the requirements, the BA visualizes them to ensure they are clear and understandable. Techniques such as process mapping, SE diagrams, and context diagrams help the BA create visual representations of how the system works or will work in the future. These diagrams make it easier for everyone to understand the requirements.
3. Ensuring the Solution Matches Requirements
After gathering and visualizing requirements, the BA works with developers and the project team to make sure the solution aligns with the requirements. To do this, the BA uses a Requirements Traceability Matrix, which ensures that all requirements are covered and tested.
The BA also helps break down the project into smaller tasks using a work breakdown structure (WBS). This helps the team manage the work more easily. The BA ensures that acceptance criteria are clearly defined, so the project team knows what is required for each task to be considered complete.
4. Evaluating the Success of the Solution
Once the solution is delivered, the BA checks if it achieved the desired results. Did it improve customer satisfaction? Did it increase revenue or reduce costs? The BA may use tools like Net Promoter Score (NPS) or customer satisfaction surveys to measure the impact.
Additionally, the BA may conduct a retrospective meeting with the project team to review what went well and what could be improved for future projects.
Tools and Techniques a Business Analyst Uses
Business analysts rely on various tools to do their job effectively. Here are some of the most common ones:
Stakeholder Register and Stakeholder Classification Matrix: To identify and assess stakeholders.
Workshops, Brainstorming, and Nominal Group Technique: To gather requirements.
Process Mapping, Sequence Diagrams, and Context Diagrams: To visualize systems and processes.
Requirements Traceability Matrix: To ensure requirements are met.
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS): To break down tasks into manageable pieces.
Acceptance Criteria: To define when a task is complete.
These tools help the business analyst manage requirements, scope, and quality throughout the project.
The Key Skill of a Business Analyst: Drawing Out Answers
A business analyst’s key skill is the ability to draw out answers. The BA doesn’t need all the answers at the start of the project. Instead, they must be good at asking the right questions and engaging the right people to uncover the information needed. This skill is essential for steering a project in the right direction.
Conclusion
A business analyst plays an important role in project management. They gather and clarify requirements, make sure the solution matches those needs, and evaluate the results to ensure success. By focusing on stakeholders, scope, and quality, business analysts help guide projects to successful outcomes.
With the right tools and techniques, a business analyst can keep the project on track and make sure it delivers value. Whether you’re preparing for a certification exam or working with a business analyst, understanding their role will help you achieve better project outcomes.
When you are working as a project manager, you don’t necessarily own a team of your own inside the business. Instead, you’re usually coming in and using business resources to help you deliver something, and they may not report to you on a daily basis.
Because of that it’s very interesting to look at the project manager’s sphere of influence, because it really does vary and it is different to a normal manager’s sphere of influence. For example, the normal manager will have direct influence over their team – they can pretty much hire or fire, they can tell their people exactly what to do with real consequences. Sure, a project manager can in some ways do that as well, but it’s much more prominent as a functional manager will have direct control over those people.
A project manager will need to have influence over the project team, and the managers and the resource managers for those people. But it extends out even further. They need to work with and ensure influence and responsibility for the project sponsors – who we’re delivering that business value to. There are also governing bodies around the project such as the steering committee of the project. There’s project management organizations or PMOs – all of these within an organization will need to be worked with, and you’ll need to provide information make sure that they’re working with you not against you, and ensure there’s little friction so that you can help get those things delivered nice and smoothly.
And that’s all part of being in the project manager role.
Beyond that we’ve got stakeholders of the project, for example suppliers who are supplying either resources or tools or things or information into the project. The end customer and the end users as well – all of these people will ultimately be influenced by the work that we do and so are subject to the project manager’s influence over the project.
A project manager needs to lead the project team and meet the project objectives, and meet or manage their stakeholder’s expectations. If things need to change over time a project manager will need to use their skills to ensure that stakeholders support the project instead of going against the project (which definitely can happen if things go sideways) and even to support the project decisions even when they don’t agree with them sometimes.
That can be a very challenging situation but it will be something that you do need to work through. It was noted in the PMBOK guide that the top 2% of project managers demonstrate superior relationship and communication skills, while displaying a positive attitude.
Even when things get tough, they still are able to display a positive attitude and work through those issues in a positive way. This is so they can keep those good stakeholder relationships as well, and work through those things in the future. It’s very, very important.
A project manager must also have influence over the organisation, working with other project managers in the organization. Maybe you’ve got 10 projects going on at the same time and maybe there are different resources required – this project needs some of your resources and now you have to ensure that you’re using your power and influence and your skills to make sure that your stuff still gets done at the same time as helping out other projects around the organization.
It can be a tough situation, but it is something that you will need to be aware of. Other projects may impact yours due to demands on the same resources, funding (maybe they need money and it’s coming out of the same bucket of money), impacts of the change to the business. Sometimes the business can only handle so much change going into it, such as training and communication and process changes that need to be done, and they have their business as usual work that they need to do as well, so sometimes they just run out of capacity to take it all on.
As project management capability is increased it’s also important throughout the organization that everyone is operating from the same playbook, the same strategic steps, the same tactical steps (such as processes that you go through to complete a project), so that everyone is is on the same page and knows what you’re talking about. It’s a much nicer shortcut to working with others when everyone is working from the same process steps.
But that is not all.
The project manager needs to work with the industry as well. We need to stay informed about current industry trends, no matter what industry you’re in all of these things are constantly changing and it’s up to us to be aware of what’s happening in our industry because they might impact our project. Something could come out of the blue and completely change the landscape, and we need to be aware of that.
We might have product technology development, new market niches. You might have broader economic forces, for example maybe the stock market is starting to fall, or maybe money is flowing out of this particular industry. We’ve got new tools, new skills or disciplines (for example Agile coming into IT around 15 years ago and now into project management, and also into operations management).
We’ve got new competitors, new threats and of course new laws and regulations. We seen our fair share of of regulation changes over the last few years in almost every industry.
But that is still not all.
A project manager needs to influence and be aware of their own professional discipline as well. That means continuing our professional development, continuing to learn, continuing our education and sharing that knowledge, the things that we’ve learned with others within our organization to help everyone sing from the same hymn book, to work from the same process steps. Beyond the organization is helping other organizations improve their way of work and their methods for delivering projects as well. It might include standards for delivering change around the world, whether it’s in your industry or other industries. This is a wonderful thing because now we’re not just helping ourselves, but we’re going out there and helping others where we can as well – we’re developing our project management knowledge, our knowledge in our related profession and we share that at local, global and national levels.
Lastly the project manager’s sphere of influence will occur across disciplines. And that’s part of the real value of project management because project management is a skill set that will sit across almost any industry, because any industry will require to put change into an organization or to go from point A to point B at some point, and to do that you need a project. To do that change you need to manage a project from start to finish. In using a project management process that works across disciplines we can help coach, improve and inspire others in that method to help them get the business value that they need.
Enterprise Environmental Factors and Organisational Process Assets
It’s time to look at the environment in which projects operate.
The environment can really change the way you need to manage a project, and this is why it is included in the PMBOK Guide. The way it is outlined is through two things: Enterprise Environmental Factors (EEFs) or the overall environmental factors involved, and Organizational Process Assets which will help us to operate within the project environment that we’re delivering in.
These are the two main things that you’ll see come up time and time again in each of the project management processes as we go through the PMBOK guide.
Organizational process assets or OPAs could be processes, procedures, policies or a corporate knowledge base. Enterprise environmental factors or EEFs are enterprise conditions, and they’re usually not under the control of the project team (which can make things a little bit difficult) but they still influence, constrain or direct the project.
Let’s have a look at what some of the Internal EEFs are. We’ve got organizational culture, any structure and governance that’s in place, we’ve got the geographic distribution of facilities and resources (are they all in the one place or across multiple states or countries?). We’ve got the actual physical infrastructure, and sometimes the I.T. infrastructure involved. We’ve got the information technology software that we’re using, the resource availability (how available are the resources that we’re needing to help deliver these projects), and of course the capability of all these people (have they delivered projects before? Are they familiar with the process?)
Many different things will influence the internal EEFs. To complicate things there are external EEFs as well.
We’ve got government or industry standards, we’ve got social and cultural influences, marketplace conditions, legal restrictions, cost constraints and financial considerations (do we actually have the money to to do what we need to do?) and physical environmental elements (are we in the right place physically to be able to do these things?). These are just a few examples of enterprise environmental factors or EEFs that will influence and change how you need to deliver your project.
But that’s not the only thing we have to consider. The other side of the coin is our OPAs, our Organizational Process Assets. These are the plans, the processes, policies, procedures, all of these documents and knowledge bases, things that are used by the performing organization that you’re working with and usually delivering into. OPAs will influence the management of the project because we’ll have things like specific organizational standards. You might have certain product or project life cycles that are already used in that organization (such as Agile or Waterfall). You might have pre-approved supplier lists lists or contractual agreements already in place that you need to abide by.
There are knowledge repositories as well – so you might have configuration management knowledge repositories, containing versions of things, of your baselines for your scope or maybe of the cost of the project. Historical information, lessons learned, data repositories for measuring your benefits, project files from previous projects. All of these things will impact your OPAs and your project.
As a project manager you will need to find all this out when you’re delivering a project, so you can make sure that you work within these Organizational Process Assets and ways of working that are already in place.
In this series we will walk through five PMP Practice Exam Questions each day – a great way to set up your morning as you prepare to pass the PMP Exam. It is also useful for the CAPM exam, as the content is very similar.
We will also figure them out together, and you’ll see the thought process behind solving these PMP exam questions.
I hope you enjoy!
Question 1
You are working as a Project Manager and one of the stakeholders of the project raises a problem with the product requirements, stating they are not correct. Which document will you use to note this for further discussion and resolution?
A) Change Request
B) Benefits Management Plan
C) Issue Log
D) Requirements Traceability Matrix
Question 2
You are working on a project in the financial sector, and the project sponsor asks you for a written document that outlines the intention of the project with set terms and conditions so she can accept. What is she referring to?
A) Collaterals
B) Indemnitees
C) Settlements
D) Agreements
Question 3
You as a project manager are listing the things that must be done to close out the project. What should you do in regards to the contracts for your third party suppliers?
A) Issue a formal written notice of the project completion to the contractors
B) Put a legal notice in the newspapers indicating that all invoices must be submitted
C) Request final inspection reports for all vendor-supplied materials
D) Issue letters of recommendation for the project team
Question 4
One of your stakeholders needs to make a proposal for modification to the scope, policies, procedures, plans, or processes of the project, after a formal review of the issue. What will they use?
A) Rectification Requests
B) Change Requests
C) Adjust Requests
D) Amend Requests
Question 5
What is the term used for any product, service or results to be achieved to complete a process, phase or project?
In this series we will walk through five PMP Practice Exam Questions each day – a great way to set up your morning as you prepare to pass the PMP Exam. It is also useful for the CAPM exam, as the content is very similar.
We will also figure them out together, and you’ll see the thought process behind solving these PMP exam questions.
I hope you enjoy!
Question 1
Different Project Management Office types have different levels of control and influence on projects within the organization. What is one of the types of PMO Structures?
A) Passive
B) Controlling
C) Global
D) Active
Question 2
You are working on a project in the construction industry and your project sponsor has allocated a fixed budget and tight timeline to complete the work. What are the limitations placed upon the project that the project manager and team must work within?
A) Restrictions
B) Limitations
C) Considerations
D) Constraints
Question 3
Your Project Management Office recommends the use of project management templates and checklists to plan, implement and manage your projects professionally. These templates are an example of:
A) Organizational Governance Meetings (OGM)
B) Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT)
C) Enterprise Environmental Factors (EEF)
D) Organizational Process Assets (OPA)
Question 4
Work Performance Data are the raw observations of your project, without analysing it against other metrics. What is one of the types of Work Performance Data?
A) Implementation status for change requests
B) Forecasted estimates to complete
C) Number of defects
D) Status of deliverables
Question 5
A Work Performance Report is a document containing organized information about project performance in a report format to enable decision making & actions and project communications. Which of the following is a type of Work Performance Report?
A) Status reports
B) Status of deliverables
C) Forecasted estimates to complete
D) Implementation status for change requests
The Influence of Organisational Systems on your Project
An organizational system is something that encompasses the whole organisation and involves things like the culture, the governance frameworks in place and the management elements that are already in place.
There are a few things that influence the organisational structure of a company.
The first is governance frameworks.
With governance frameworks we ask, what are the rules that we have in place? We might have rules, policies, procedures, norms, even just cultural norms that are accepted within an organization. Existing relationships can also be very important, for example Billy might have an existing relationship with Anne and he can say: “Hey Anne could you just do this for me – I know it usually takes four weeks, but maybe you could do it for me this time?” And that will happen if they have a really great existing relationship within the organization.
You might have existing processes in place which apply for projects, programs and portfolios, where lots of projects will make up one program, and then multiple programs will make up one portfolio.
Management has a very specific role in organizational systems – it is how it works on a daily basis with responsibilities, discipline of action, how much action actually gets done and what happens if it’s not done, unity of direction and unity of command. Ensuring there is one clear strategic direction. Or perhaps everyone’s just sort of going for their own little team and trying to make that work – each company will be different and you may need to adjust. Safety of the people, ensuring optimal morale, ensuring clear security of work positions – all of these things are part of the management when we’re managing in within an organizational system.
The Project Manager’s Sphere of Influence
Within a company itself there are certain influences on these organizational structures and systems. It starts at the bottom where the influence of the project manager is very low. If we’ve got a project that’s just organic, where has been kicked off between a bunch of people and it’s not really formal – maybe we’re just trying to make an improvement in some way – then usually the influence of the project manager will be quite low.
But it goes up as we go into these different structures, and a functional system is where we have a functional manager who is leading a project and trying to do something, usually within their own department. They’re actually the one in charge. If a project manager comes on board usually they will report to that functional manager, within that particular team.
The influence of the project manager goes up as we move through virtual teams, hybrid teams, Weak, Balanced and Strong matricies. If you’ve got a weak matrix you’ve still got low influence, balanced is where you’ve got a balanced influence usually between the business and the project manager or the project management office, and then the strong matrix is where you have a lot more control and as a project manager you have more directive control over the resources, over the cost, over the scheduling, and all of that is more up to you as opposed to being up to the functional or the BAU environment.
Lastly the Project Management Office is where all of the projects are collected within a PMO and they are brought down the lines specifically within their own governance structures, where everyone has to go through the PMO to get anything done, and they have the most influence in a PMO structure.
In this series we will walk through five PMP Practice Exam Questions each day – a great way to set up your morning as you prepare to pass the PMP Exam. It is also useful for the CAPM exam, as the content is very similar.
We will also figure them out together, and you’ll see the thought process behind solving these PMP exam questions.
I hope you enjoy!
Question 1
You have been promoted from your role of project manager into a portfolio manager role. A portfolio is work grouped together to meet a certain strategic business objective and it involves:
A) Projects and programs
B) Projects and operations
C) Programs and operations
D) Projects, programs, and operations
Question 2
You are working as a project manager and created the cost estimate to bid on a government contract, where the scope was set by the government. Your manager advises you to reduce the cost to win the contract by whatever means, but your analysis shows that reducing the cost estimate will make the project unable to meet the specified scope. What should you do?
A) Reduce the cost estimate and submit it
B) Formally communicate to your manager about the implications of reducing the cost
C) Ask your manager to estimate instead
D) Submit your estimate without reducing the cost
Question 3
Work Performance Data generally contains raw facts and figures such as start dates for various activities, the number of bugs found in the software, spent cost, etc. What is a type of Work Performance Data?
A) Forecasted estimates to complete
B) Implementation status for change requests
C) Percent of work physically completed
D) Status of deliverables
Question 4
As you work on projects they can be influenced by many different things, and many different Enterprise Environmental Factors. What sort of influence are Marketplace conditions on your project?
A) External
B) Internal
C) Regulatory
D) Public
Question 5
You have recently been promoted from your role as Project Manager to a role that manages a related group of projects, and ensures efficient use of resources among those projects to ensure they are delivered. What is your role?
A) Functional Manager
B) Project Manager
C) Portfolio Manager
D) Program Manager
The PMO or the project management office itself is quite important and there are a few different types of PMO that you will come across in your career and in the CAPM and PMP exams.
Supportive PMO
A supportive PMO is more of a consultative role. They will supply templates, best practices, and they don’t really have a high degree of control they just give people guidelines in what to do and say.
For example, “Here’s a good way to do it, but what you do is up to you.” They’re just supporting you. They’re not really directing or controlling anything.
Controlling PMO’s give more of a specific project management framework or methodology, such as the use of specific templates, forms and tools. They also ensure you use them, so they’re saying “Here are the things that you have to use, and this is the way you have to do your project.” It’s controlling the project, but through the use of templates forms and tools that the company uses. A controlling PMO asks for conformance to those governance frameworks. They might have project specific methodologies and specific ways of work.
Lastly the most controlling is the Directive PMO, which is what I personally found a little bit confusing. But directive project management offices take complete control of their projects by directly managing those projects. They have specific project managers, assigned by the PMO, and they report back to the PMO. They have a very very high degree of control in this environment.
So you have supportive, controlling (where we control through templates, governance frameworks and adhering to these) and then directive (where we’re actually taking the direction of the project through the project management office
The primary function of a PMO, no matter what type it is, is to support those project managers in a variety of ways. These ways could include managing shared resources across all projects and this is really important. You might have 10 projects but you only have enough resources for six projects, so you need to shift these around and the PMO can keep an eye on all of this. A PMO will usually have a portfolio view of things and help manage the use of those resources across those different projects.
They can help with coaching, mentoring, training and oversight, monitoring the compliance requirements and the standards and policies and procedures, helping people work with the policies and procedures within an organization, and coordinating communications across projects.
It really does come back down to that project, program and portfolio view where they have a great view of all the things that are going on. In the individual projects they can help with the communication, help with the management of it, and basically are there to support those project managers and help get the job done. And these are the Project Management Office Types.
In this series we will walk through five PMP Practice Exam Questions each day – a great way to set up your morning as you prepare to pass the PMP Exam. It is also useful for the CAPM exam, as the content is very similar.
We will also figure them out together, and you’ll see the thought process behind solving these PMP exam questions.
I hope you enjoy!
Question 1
You are working on a project and your project sponsor asks you to contribute to a decision on whether to continue the project. The project had an initial budget of $500,000, is only half complete and has spent $1,000,000. Should the organization consider the $1,000,000 when determining whether to continue?
A) Ask the Project Team to vote so the process is democratic
B) No, the money spent is gone
C) Yes, that is our money spent, we should consider it
D) Refer to the functional manager as they own the business unit
Question 2
You are working as a project manager, asking for proposals from a Third Parties to complete the work. Your brother works for one of the vendors bidding for the contract. You are part of the executive team which will accept a vendor. What do you do?
A) Discourage the vendor bid as it would be a conflict of interest
B) Help the your brother’s vendor in the bid so you can work together
C) Inform your company and the vendor of the relationship
D) Don’t tell anyone. Why complicate things?
Question 3
You are working as a project manager in a foreign country. It is customary that gifts be made to the government to obtain the necessary project approvals, however the country where your company is based does not allow this practice. What should you do?
A) Don’t bother with getting project approvals
B) Ensure you offer gifts to obtain the project approvals
C) Allocate additional hidden funds in the project to obtain the gifts
D) Do not offer gifts to obtain project approvals
Question 4
You are working on a complex project requiring expertise from the functional manager. What is your role as a project manager in a weak matrix organization?
A) Coordinator
B) Administrator
C) Supporter
D) Functional manager
Question 5
Project Constraints are any restriction that defines a project’s limitations and is the limit of what the project is expected to accomplish. Which of the following is one of the types of competing Project Constraints?
The Project Manager’s Sphere of Influence
Enterprise Environmental Factors and Organisational Process Assets
PMP Exam Question Session 10
The Influence of Organisational Systems on your Project
PMP Exam Question Session 8
PMP Exam Question Session 7