5. Describe five types of project reviews.

1. Performance Reviews:

Performance reviews measure, compare, and analyze schedule

performance such as actual start and finish dates, percent complete,
and remaining duration of work in progress. If earned value
management (EVM) is utilized the schedule variance (SV) and
schedule performance index (SPI) are used to assess the magnitude
of schedule variations. An important part of schedule control is to
decide if the schedule variation requires corrective action.

2. Project Evaluation Review:

A review undertaken at the end of a project, no matter how big or

complex it is and provide with valuable information to allow
the project sponsor and/or project steering committee to make an
informed decision about closing the project. It also
captures valuable lessons learned that will benefit the
organization in future projects.

3. Gate Review

The main purpose of the gate review meeting (also called phase
gate review meeting) is to periodically (at the end of each gate)
ensure that the project is running smoothly, and take corrective
measures if it's not. These meetings are attended by a group of
stakeholders, the project sponso , and the project manager. These
are important meetings, so they can take up to a day (it is very rare
for such meetings to take more than a day, and often they take half
aday)
Essentially, what it is discussed during the GRM (Gate Review
Meeting) is how is the project doing so far (still adhering to the
business case? project is done according to the agreed upon quality
and scope?), and should we continue with the project or just cancel
it. This makes the GRM one of the most critical meetings for a
project manager, as his project can be easily cancelled or ideally,
any decision made during a GRM is by consensus. Again, GRMs are
held after finishing important milestones. For example, after
gathering the requirements, when finishing the planning, when
finishing the execution of the project (just before the testing), and
just before closing the project. Typically, you should never have less
than 3 GRMs in your project. But just make sure to keep the
number of these meetings small, they're not, after all, weekly status
meetings.

4. Post project reviews:

Post project reviews typically involve the project team and major
stakeholders meeting together and reviewing what went well and
what went badly during the project. This input can help participants
make the right decisions and plans so that the next project runs
better. It can also help clear up misunderstandings and other
issues.

5. Project Audit Review:

A project audit review provides an opportunity to uncover the

issues, concerns and challenges encountered in the execution of a
project. It affords the project manager, project sponsor and project
team an interim view of what has gone well and what needs to be
improved with the project to successfully complete it. If done at the
close of a project, a project audit can be used to develop success
criteria for future projects by providing a forensic review. This
review will provide an opportunity to learn what elements of the
project were successfully managed and which ones presented some
challenges. This will help the organization identify what it needs to
do so that mistakes are not repeated on future projects.

4. Describe the main responsibilities of 5 key project

management team roles.

Steering Committee:

The Steering Committee generally includes management

representatives from the key organizations involved in the project
oversight and control, and any other key stakeholder groups that
have special interest in the outcome of the project. The Steering
committee acts individually and collectively as a vocal and visible
project champion throughout their representative organizations;
generally they approve project deliverables, help resolve issues and
policy decisions, approve scope changes, and provide direction and
guidance to the project. Depending on how the project is organized,
the steering committee can be involved in providing resources,
assist in securing funding, act as liaisons to executive groups and
sponsors, and fill other roles as defined by the project.

Project Sponsor:

The Project Sponsor is a manager with demonstrable interest in the

outcome of the project who is responsible for securing spending
authority and resources for the project. The Project Sponsor acts as
a vocal and visible champion, legitimizes the project’s goals and
objectives, keeps abreast of major project activities, and is a
decision-maker for the project. The Project Sponsor will participate
in and/or lead project initiation; the development of the Project
Charter. He or she will participate in project planning (high level)
and the development of the Project Initiation Plan. The Project
Sponsor provides support for the Project Manager; assists with
major issues, problems, and policy conflicts; removes obstacles; is
active in planning the scope; approves scope changes; signs off on
major deliverables; and signs off on approvals to proceed to each
succeeding project phase. The Project Sponsor generally chairs the
steering committee on large projects. The Project Sponsor may elect
to delegate any of the above responsibilities to other personnel
either on or outside the Project Team

Project Manager

The Project Manager is the person responsible for ensuring that the
Project Team completes the project. The Project Manager develops
the Project Plan with the team and manages the team’s
performance of project tasks. It is also the responsibility of the
Project Manager to secure acceptance and approval of deliverables
from the Project Sponsor and Stakeholders. The Project Manager is
responsible for communication, including status reporting, risk
management, escalation of issues that cannot be resolved in the
team, and, in general, making sure the project is delivered in
budget, on schedule, and within scope.

Team Members:

The Project Team Members are responsible for executing tasks and
producing deliverables as outlined in the Project Plan and directed
by the Project Manager, at whatever level of effort or participation
has been defined for them. On larger projects, some Project Team
members may serve as Team Leads, providing task and technical
leadership, and sometimes maintaining a portion of the project plan.

Customers

Customers comprise the business units that identified the need for
the product or service the project will develop. Customers can be at
all levels of an organization. Since it is frequently not feasible for all
the Customers to be directly involved in the project, the following
roles are identified:

• Customer Representatives are members of the Customer

community who are identified and made available to the
project for their subject matter expertise. Their responsibility
is to accurately represent their business units’ needs to the
Project Team, and to validate the deliverables that describe
the product or service that the project will produce. Customer
Representatives are also expected to bring information about
the project back to the Customer community. Towards the end
of the project, Customer Representatives will test the product
or service the project is developing, using and evaluating it
while providing feedback to the Project Team.

• Customer Decision-Makers are those members of the

Customer community who have been designated to make
project decisions on behalf of major business units that will
 use, or will be affected by, the product or service the project
will deliver. Customer Decision-Makers are responsible for
achieving consensus of their business unit on project issues
and outputs, and communicating it to the Project Manager.
They attend project meetings as requested by the Project
Manager, review and approve process deliverables, and
provide subject matter expertise to the Project Team. On some
projects they may also serve as Customer Representatives or
be part of the Steering Committee.

3. Explain 5 strengths OR weaknesses of the use of a matrix

structure to manage a project

Strengths of matrix structure

The cross functional teams of a matrix structure reduce the

functional barriers between departments, and increase the
integration of functions.

Matrix structure opens up for communication, may provide an

opportunity for team members to learn from each other thus
distributing valuable knowledge laterally within organization.

The matrix structure makes it possible to assign specialized

resources to project when needed

Weakness of matrix structure

A matrix structure lacks the effectiveness of bureaucracy, and will
potentially not work if the organization does not need to react
swiftly to changes.

The flat hierarchy may be the cause of conflict, and different

stakeholders may pursue entirely different goals.

The great focus on integration between functional areas requires a

great amount of lateral communication and it may requires great
resources to get information distributed effectively between team
members.

The use of matrix structure seems more feasible for organization

operating in business environment characterized by change,
dynamism and uncertainty. This could e.g. be organization
operating in high tech industries such as computing and
telecommunication.

2. Explain 5 benefits of closing a project.

1. Seek and record customer and user acceptance of the

projects outputs. The project outputs will have clearly
defined quality and acceptance criteria that should be
agreed with the customer, early in the project.

2. Take the opportunity to look at how the project fared

against its original baseline plans and objectives. Project
schedules change throughout the lifecycle as issues occur
and objectives, as outlined in the project scope, can change
due to the customer’s changing requirements. It is
important to understand the effect these have had on the
success of the project.

3. Evaluate benefits that have been realized. Many won’t be

realized though until later than the project closure, so a
follow up review should be planned to look at these at the
appropriate point.

4. Close down any outstanding risks or issues, recording any

necessary further actions or recommendations.
 5. Capture lessons to benefit future projects. It is easy to
think only of the current project and assume that any future
projects are the problem of the future project manager
responsible for them. There are, however, significant
benefits to be gained by capturing and sharing lessons
learned.

List and then explain five elements of project handover.

Gaining acceptance for the product

 Harvesting the benefit

 Reviewing how it all went

 Record management

Ending relationships

Gaining acceptance for the product

Projects need a clear cut-off to signal the end of handover and the
transfer of full operational responsibility from the project team to
the customer.

Gaining acceptance is not as simple or straightforward as it might

appear at first because the customer may:

• Lack confidence in his or her ability to manage the product or

service effectively without ongoing support.

• Doubt his or her ability to deliver the benefits from the product
or service on which the business case was built, and there will
no longer be anyone else with whom to share the blame.

• Be receiving adverse comments from end users who were

never convinced of the merits of the project in the first place.
 • Have come to realize in the course of the project that what
they really want isn’t the product or service that the project
has delivered, and as long as no acceptance has been signed,
it might be possible to improve the match.

So planning for project acceptance needs to start much earlier in

the life of the project—ideally during project initiation.

Harvesting the benefits

Regardless of whether the responsibility lies with the project

manager or the project sponsor, the project will be successful only
when the intended benefits are harvested. This means that the
project team has a genuine interest in the product or service being
managed in such a way that the full benefits are obtained.

Some benefits are easy to quantify and measure, such as sales and
revenue from a new line of products. Others are easy to quantify,
but less easy to measure, such as cost savings from an improved
interdepartmental business process. Still more are difficult both to
quantify and to measure, such as the benefits of company-wide
education in risk management.

The project manager and sponsor need to ensure that three

conditions exist before the project is finally put to bed:

• The criteria by which benefits of the product or service will be

measured or assessed are clear.

• The points in time at which the measurement or assessment

will be carried out are established.
 • A named person has accepted responsibility for carrying out
the measurement or assessment in the agreed way at the
agreed points in time.

Reviewing how it all went

Project success is a very elusive concept. A project that appears to

have been successful from the point of view of one set of
stakeholders might appear to have failed when seen from another
viewpoint. A project that is completed on time and within budget
might look splendid at the time of project closeout, but a year later,
with the benefit of hindsight, it might appear to have been a big
mistake. For this reason, it is important that the different groups of
stakeholders all agree at the outset, precisely what will constitute
“project success.”

These same groups of stakeholders should then, as far as possible,

be involved in reviewing at the close of the project the degree of
success that was actually achieved. Because many of the benefits
will not be harvested until after the project is complete, the post-
implementation review is best carried out in two stages–a “lessons-
learned” review while members of the project team have the actual
events of the project fresh in their minds, and a “post-
implementation” review some months after the product has been in
operation, when the benefits can be more accurately assessed.

The object of the lessons-learned review is to reflect on the events

that took place in the course of the project and to consider what
might have been done differently to improve the results obtained.
The review may well be led by the project manager or the project
sponsor, and will be attended by representatives from all significant
parties that contributed to the project. The review is likely to be
based on a comparison between the actual results and conduct of
the project, and the project charter and project plan.

A frequently encountered problem is how to create the right climate

for an honest review. Lessons learned are unlikely to be of real and
lasting value if they are tainted by the need for participants to
present what happened in a light that is favourable to them.

The results should be communicated to everyone who needs to

know what happened. This group is likely to include the project
sponsor, future project sponsors, members of the present project
team (including suppliers and subcontractors), potential managers
of similar future projects, and the person or group responsible for
the conduct of projects throughout the organization.

The post-implementation review has a somewhat different focus. Its

purpose is to establish the extent to which the product of the
project is delivering the anticipated benefits. The review is likely to
be based on a comparison between actual operating benefits being
harvested and those predicted in the business case for the project.
The focus is on the product in operation and the impact on benefits
of decisions made during the establishment and execution of the
project.

Similar to the lessons-learned review, the results should be

communicated widely to the appropriate audience.

Record management

Completing the documentation and archiving the project records are

perhaps the most monotonous and least exciting parts of project
closeout management, which is in itself hardly the most glamorous
part of project management (although it is arguably one of the most
important ones).

In addition to drawings and technical documentation, there are

other project records to complete and archive, including financial
records, personnel records, and essential records of meetings,
reviews, contracts, and so on.

If the project has had the use of dedicated resources, such as

offices or technology, then these need to be returned or passed on.

Anticipated benefits need to be included in business plans, and in

the operating plans and budgets of all departments that are the
beneficiaries of the product or service.

Ending relationships

The seventh and final element of project closeout management is

ending relationships, or disbanding the project team. As tasks come
to an end, resources can be released in an orderly fashion. In the
case of people who work for the same organization as the project
manager, they can return to their own line or functional department
in order to take on other tasks. In the case of contractors and
suppliers, it is important that contracts are closed to prevent
unnecessary work being charged to the project after it has formally
ended.

Two aspects of saying goodbye are important–celebrating and

providing feedback. At some time when the memories of the project
are still fresh in the minds of the project team, some form of
celebration such as a party can help team members move on from
the past to their future assignments with a sense of closure
regarding the completed project. This is an important social
dynamic.
The second aspect is equally important, and just as often ignored–
people need to understand their own contribution to the project’s
results. Appraisals with each team member are the means by which
a person’s own perception of their contribution can be checked
against that of the project manager. In an organization where much
of the work is carried out in projects, this can be the only feedback
available to the person’s line or functional manager on which
development plans and career opportunities can be assessed.