CHAPTER 9:PROJECT HR MANAGEMENT

QUESTIONS:


1.Question: All the following statements relating to project management team and project team are accurate EXCEPT:
1. Project Management team can also be called core, executive or leadership team
2. Project team is responsible for activities like planning, controlling and closing
3. Project Management team is a subset of the project team
4. For small projects, the project management responsiblities can be shared by the entire team or administered solely by the project manager.
2.Question: As a project manager, you are interested in the personal activities of team-members. Other than working with you on the project, the team members love to go out with you for lunch or an occasional game of golf. The power that you have over the team members is:
1. Penalty
2. Expert
3. Legitimate
4. Referent

3.Question: As a project manager, you always want to have an appropriate recognition and rewards system to encourage better performance and reinforce desired behaviors. All the following statements about a recognition and rewards system are correct except:
1. Recognition and reward systems promote or reinforce desired behavior
2. Recognition and reward systems must consider cultural differences
3. People who worked extra hours should always be recognized for their dedication
4. Electing team-member of the month should be discouraged because it can hurt team cohesiveness

4.Question: In a project lifecycle, least number of conflicts occur over:
1. Priorities
2. Schedules
3. Personality Conflict
4. Cost

5.Question: Human resource planning determines project roles, responsibilities and reporting relationships. Project roles can be designated for persons or groups.All the following will be outputs from the human resource planning process EXCEPT:
1. Resource Availability
2. Roles and Responsibilities
3. Project Organization Charts
4. Staffing Management plan

6.Question: As a project nears completion, you notice that the functional managers are more interested in trying to find a new position, rather than concentrating on their project work. Their motivation is:
1. Safety
2. Social
3. Psychological
4. Self-esteem

7.Question: In your project, you have determined a specific conference room for your project where the team can meet as often as required to discuss issues and post schedules and updates. This is an example of a:
1. War Room
2. Team Building Activity
3. Reward and recognition system
4. Training System

8.Question: Your company has an agreement with the labor union that states that workers will not be asked to work more than 45 hours every week. For your project, this becomes a/an :
1. Pre-defined criteria
2. Restriction
3. Assumption
4. Constraint

9.Question: You are the project manager managing the setting up of an oil rig in the Pacific Ocean. Which of the following could be a valid constraint when you are doing human resource planning for your project?
1. Weak matrix organization structure
2. Unlimited budget since the project is very critical to meet compliance needs
3. Oil price increasing above $ 60 per barrel
4. None of the above

10.Question: To get the work done, the supervisor threatens punishment and carefully supervises the work. The supervisor believes in :
1. Theory Y (McGregor Model)
2. Theory X (McGregor Model)
3. Maslow hierarchy of needs
4. Referent power

11.Question: Your organization has to follow some guidelines and policies while recruiting people to the company. From your project perspective, these guidelines and policies will be considered to be:
1. Regulations
2. Best practices
3. Assumptions
4. Constraints

12.Question: What is the factor which will help a project manager gain the maximum support of the assigned project personnel?
1. Expertise of the project manager
2. Work Challenge
3. Ability of the project manager to penalize team members
4. Ability of project manager to provide promotions to team members depending on their abilities

13.Question: In the last project status meeting, there was a team member who was criticized some of his other team members and decreased the status of work done by them. The role that was played by the person was that of:
1. Aggressor
2. Conflict Maximiser
3. Devils advocate
4. Recognition Seeker

14.Question: As a project manager, you advocate active participation of your team members - this is because you believe in:
1. Theory Y (McGregor Model)
2. Theory X (McGregor Model)
3. Maslow`s hierarchy of needs
4. Referent power

15.Question: You are the project manager in a software company. As an output from the project human resource planning process, you have determined the roles and responsibilities of all your project team members. All the following statements about roles and responsibilities in your project are accurate EXCEPT:
1. Examples of project roles in your project can be business analyst, technical architect, programmer, project manager and team leader
2. To get the best performance from your team members, you should match their individual levels of authority to their competency.
3. You should assign proper responsibility to all the team members i.e. work that a team member is expected to perform in order to complete the project`s activities
4. To improve competency of project team members, proactive responses e.g. training, hiring, schedule changes, or scope changes are initiated.

16.Question: You are the project manager in a software company. In your project, you want to ensure that all the operational departments in your organization (e.g. Information Integrity, Data Architecture group, Servers group etc.) can clearly visualize their project responsibilities. You should use a/an:
1. Organizational Breakdown Structure
2. Staffing plan
3. Responsibilities Assignment Matrix
4. Resource Breakdown Structure



17.Question: You have been given a high priority task that needs to be completed within a short time frame. Since you know what has to be done, you assign tasks to the different team members and tell them when and how the tasks should be done. The management style that you are following is:
1. Directing
2. Laissez Faire
3. Delegating
4. Task-oriented

18.Question: Two project members have been having some disagreement about the best way to handle a problem. You ask both the team members to look at the positives and negatives of both their approaches, and give you their recommendation. Which of the following conflict resolution techniques did you use?
1. Smoothing
2. Compromising
3. Confrontation
4. Withdrawal

19.Question: Maximum intensity of conflicts occur over:
1. Priorities
2. Schedules
3. Personality Conflict
4. Cost
20.Question: In your project, there has been a lot of conflict recently between team members. You would like to emphasise that all team members are working towards one goal (i.e. successful completion of the project) - a conflict handling mode which puts more emphasis on similarities (rather than differences) in ways to solve a problem can also be referred to as:
1. Smoothing
2. Forcing
3. Confrontation
4. Withdrawal

21.Question: According to Herzberg`s theory, all the following are motivating agents except:
1. Recognition
2. Responsibility
3. Advancement in career
4. Salary
22.Question: You are tired of the constant disagreements within your team members regarding some pressing issues. You ask them to stop arguing and do the tasks in a way in which you want them to be done. Your conflict handling approach is:
1. Smoothing
2. Forcing
3. Confrontation
4. Withdrawal

23.Question: The staffing management plan, a subset of the project management plan, describes when and how human resource requirements will be met. The staffing management plan can be formal or informal, highly detailed or broadly framed, based on the needs of the project.

As part of your staffing management plan, you are creating a chart to illustrate the number of hours that a person, department or entire project team will be needed each week or month over the course of the project. This chart can also be called a:
1. Resource control chart
2. Resource Breakdown structure
3. Resource histogram
4. Resource run chart

24.Question: In your project, you would like to document team member roles and responsibilities. You have documented your project roles as Responsible, Accountable, Control and Inform. A good way to depict the information is through:
1. RBS
2. RAM
3. Text oriented charts
4. None of the above

25.Question: In your project, you have started doing human resource planning and are studying the Interpersonal relationships among the candidates who are being considered for the project team. Some factors you consider include:

- What type of formal and informal reporting relationships exist amongst the candidates for the project team?
- What are the candidate`s job descriptions?
- What are the supervisor-subordinate relationships?
- What cultural or language differences will affect working relationship between team members?
- What levels of trust and respect currently exist?

All this information will be available as part of :
1. Enterprise Environmental factors
2. Organization hierarchy
3. Informal reporting relationships
4. All of the above

ANSWERS:

1. Ans: 2
Justification: The project management team is a subset of the project team and is responsible for project management activities like planning, controlling and closing. This group can be called core, executive or leadership team. For smaller projects, the project management responsibilites can be shared by the entire team or administered solely by the project manager.
Reference: PMBOK Third Edition, Page Number: 199


2. Ans: 4
Justification: The five interpersonal influences are:

* Legitimate Power: The ability to gain support because project personnel perceive the project manager as being officially empowered to issue orders.

* Reward Power: The ability to gain support because project personnel perceive the project manager as capable of directly or indirectly dispensing valued organizational rewards (i.e. salary, promotion, bonus, future work assignments

* Penalty Power: The ability to gain support because the project personnel perceive the project manager as capable of directly or indirectly dispensing penalties that they wish to avoid. Penalty power usually derives from the same source as reward power, with one being a necessary condition for the other

* Expert Power:The ability to gain support because personnel perceive the project manager as possessing special knowledge or expertise. (that functional personnel perceive as consider as important)

* Referent power:The ability to gain support because project personnel feel personally attracted to the project manager or project

Reference: Project Management - A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling and Controlling, Page Number: 246-247

comments: Referent power is because team members like the manner in which project manager treats them


3. Ans: 3
Justification: Only desirable behavior should be rewarded. For example, willingness to work overtime to meet an agressive schedule objective should be rewarded or recognized; needing to work overtime as the result of poor planning should not be rewarded. Win-lose (zero sum) rewards that only a limited number of project team members can achieve, such as team member of the month, can hurt team cohesiveness.

Reference: PMBOK Third Edition, Page Number: 214


4. Ans: 4
Justification:



Reference: Project Management - A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling and Controlling, Page Number: 390


5. Ans: 1
Justification: Resource availability is an output from the "Acquire Project Team" process and not the Human Resource Planning process. Refer Figure 9-1
Reference: PMBOK Third Edition, Page Number: 201


6. Ans: 1
Justification: Please refer to the diagram below:





Reference: Project Management - A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling and Controlling


7. Ans: 1
Justification: Co-location strategy can include a meeting room, sometimes called a war room with electronic communication devices, places to post schedules, and other conveniences that enhance communication and a sense of community.

Reference: PMBOK Third Edition, Page Number: 214


8. Ans: 4
Justification: Examples of constraints that can limit flexibility in the human resource planning process are: ...contractual agreements with unions or other employee groups
Reference: PMBOK Third Edition, Page Number: 204


9. Ans: 1
Justification: Examples of constraints that can limit flexibility in the human resource planning process:... an organization whose basic structure is a weak matrix means a relatively weaker role for the project manager.

Reference: PMBOK Third Edition, Page Number: 204

commments:
- Unlimited budget is not a constraint(limited budget could be a potential constraint and limit the project team`s options)

- Oil price increasing over $ 60 per barrel is also not a constraint (it is an assumption)


10. Ans: 2
Justification: Douglas McGregor advocated that most workers can be categorized according to two theories:

* Theory X: This assumes that the workers are inherently lazy and require supervision

* Theory Y: The average worker finds that physical and mental effort on the job satisfying, and likes his work.

Reference: Project Management - A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling and Controlling, Page Number: 234-235


11. Ans: 4
Justification: One of more of the organizations involved in the project may have policies, guidelines, or procedures governing staff acquisitions. When they exist, such practices act as a constraint on the staff acquisition process


12. Ans: 1
Justification: Expertise of the project manager is the most important factor in getting support from the project personnel; least important factor is ability to penalize
Reference: Project Management - A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling and Controlling, Page Number: 247-248


13. Ans:1
Justification:





Reference: Project Management - A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling and Controlling, Page Number: 214


14. Ans:1
Justification: Douglas McGregor advocated that most workers can be categorized according to two theories:

* Theory X: This assumes that the workers are inherently lazy and require supervision

* Theory Y: The average worker finds that physical and mental effort on the job satisfying, and likes his work.

Reference: Project Management - A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling and Controlling, Page Number: 234-235


15. Ans:2
Justification: Authority: The right to apply project resources, make decisions, and sign approvals.

Team members operate best when their individual levels of authority matches with their individual responsibilities

Reference: PMBOK Third Edition, Page Number: 207

comments: Individual levels of authority should be matched with individual responsibilities (not to individual competencies). For example, a technical architect may be very competent but he may be working only 5% of his time on the project. So, he should not be given limited authority since he is not responsible for the deliverables of the project. On the other hand, a technical lead may be less competent but working 100% of his time on the project and sharing greater responsibility and authority


16. Ans: 1
Justification: The organizational breakdown structure looks similar to the work breakdown structure but instead of being arranged according to the breakdown of project deliverables, it is arranged according to an organization`s existing departments, units or teams. The project activities or work packages are listed under each existing department. This way, an operational department such as information technology or purchasing can see all of its project responsibilities by looking at its portion of the OBS.

Reference: PMBOK Third Edition, Page Number: 205


17. Ans: 1
Justification:







18. Ans: 2
Justification:



Reference: Project Management - A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling and Controlling, Page Number: 389


19. Ans: 2
Justification:



Reference: Project Management - A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling and Controlling, Page Number: 390


20. Ans: 1
Justification:



Reference: Project Management - A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling and Controlling, Page Number: 389


21. Ans: 4
Justification:


22.
Justification:


Reference: Project Management - A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling and Controlling, Page Number: 389
Ans: 2


23. Ans: 3
Justification: One tool for charting human resources is the resource histogram - this bar chart illustrates the number of hours that a person, department, or entire project team will be needed each week or month over the course of the project. Refer Fig 9-6
Reference: PMBOK Third Edition, Page Number: 208


24. Ans: 2
Justification: A Responsibility Assignment Matrix is used to illustrate the connections between work that needs to be done and project team members. The matrix shown in Figure 9-5 is a type of RAM called a RACI chart because the names of the roles being documented are Responsible, Accountable, Consult and Inform.

Reference: PMBOK Third Edition, Page Number: 206


25. Ans: 1
Justification: Enterprise Environmental Factors: The definition of project roles and responsibilities is developed with an understanding of the ways that existing organizations will be involved and how the technical disciplines and people currently interact with one another. Some of the relevant enterprise environmental factors involving organizational culture and structure are:
Interpersonal : (all examples given in the question are mentioned)

Reference: PMBOK Third Edition, Page Number: 203