Free CompTIA Project+ Exam Flashcards

A project is temporary work with a defined start, defined finish, and a unique output. A program is a set of related projects managed together for shared benefits. A portfolio groups projects and programs to meet strategic business goals, not a shared deliverable.

Scrum runs timeboxed sprints with a product owner and Scrum Master. Kanban limits work in progress for continuous flow. SAFe scales agile across many teams. Extreme Programming stresses engineering practices such as pair programming. PRINCE2 is a stage-gated method driven by a business case.

Choose Waterfall when requirements, budget, and schedule are fixed and tolerance for change is low, such as regulated or contract-driven work. Choose Agile when requirements evolve, the customer stays engaged, and the team can re-prioritize a backlog each iteration.

Receive the change request, record it in the change control log, run a preliminary review, assess the impact, document a recommendation, then route it to the decision makers or change control board. After approval, update the plan, implement, validate, and communicate.

Scope creep is uncontrolled work added without a change request, so the baselines and budget quietly go stale. An approved scope change passed through change control first, so the scope statement, schedule, budget, and baselines are formally updated to match.

Avoid removes the cause. Mitigate lowers probability or impact. Transfer shifts the financial consequence to a third party such as an insurer or vendor. Accept takes no action beyond, at most, funding a contingency reserve.

Exploit makes the opportunity certain. Enhance raises its probability or impact. Share gives a partner part of the work so the benefit is more likely to land. Accept means you take the upside if it arrives but plan nothing to cause it.

Qualitative analysis ranks risks subjectively on a probability-versus-impact scale to decide which ones deserve attention. Quantitative analysis puts numbers on that shortlist using simulation, expected value, or scenario analysis to estimate the cost and schedule effect.

It is now an issue and moves to the issue log. Because it was identified in advance, you execute the pre-planned contingency plan. A workaround is the unplanned response you improvise for an issue nobody anticipated.

Finish-to-start: the predecessor ends before the successor starts, and it is the most common. Start-to-start: both begin together. Finish-to-finish: both end together. Start-to-finish: the successor cannot finish until the predecessor starts, and it is the rarest.

The critical path is the longest sequence of dependent activities through the schedule, and it sets the shortest possible project duration. Its activities have zero total float, so any slip on them slips the project finish date.

Cost variance is earned value minus actual cost. Schedule variance is earned value minus planned value. A negative result means over budget or behind schedule; a positive result means under budget or ahead of schedule.

Forty-five. The formula is n(n - 1) / 2, so 10 x 9 / 2 = 45. Channels grow far faster than headcount, which is why a larger team needs a written communication plan instead of ad hoc updates.

The facilitator keeps the agenda moving, the scribe captures minutes and action items, and the attendees are the target audience who must decide or contribute. Timeboxing caps each agenda item so the meeting ends on time with follow-ups assigned.

Authority is lowest in a functional structure, where the functional manager owns the staff and the budget. It is shared in a matrix, split between functional and project managers. It is highest in a projectized structure, where the team reports to the project manager.

Send a request for information to survey the market. Send a request for quote to price a defined item. Send a request for bid to collect competing bids against a fixed specification. Send a request for proposal when vendors should propose the solution.

In a fixed price contract the seller absorbs overruns because the price is locked. In cost plus the buyer reimburses actual costs plus a fee, so the buyer carries the risk. Time and materials and unit price sit between the two.

It justifies the investment by comparing the current state with the future state and estimating benefits such as return on investment. It is a discovery-phase artifact, written before any charter exists and before resources are committed.

Capital expenditure buys an asset up front, such as servers, and is depreciated over years. Operating expenditure is a recurring running cost, such as a monthly cloud subscription. CapEx usually needs a larger one-time budget approval; OpEx is easier to start, scale, or cancel, which is why cloud adoption shifts IT spend toward OpEx.

The charter formally authorizes the project, names the project manager, and records objectives, success criteria, and a preliminary scope statement. The sponsor signs it. Detailed scope, schedule, and cost baselines are built later, during planning.

Exactly one. Responsible people do the work and there can be several. Consulted people give two-way input before the decision. Informed people get one-way updates afterwards. RACI is one form of responsibility assignment matrix built during initiation.

Assessment records each stakeholder's interest, influence, and preferred communication so accepted channels are agreed early. Missing an influential stakeholder at initiation is a common cause of late scope change, blocked approvals, and rework.

It defines how project data and documents are named, stored, retained, and archived, and it sets the access requirements for who may read or edit each record. Agreeing it in initiation prevents version conflicts and compliance gaps later.

The preliminary version sits inside the charter and gives a high-level outline of what the project will deliver. The detailed scope statement is a planning artifact defining deliverables, acceptance criteria, exclusions, assumptions, and constraints precisely enough to baseline.

A work breakdown structure decomposes the whole scope into deliverables and work packages, which suits predictive planning. A product backlog is an ordered list of features that is re-prioritized continuously, which suits agile delivery. Both define units of work.

It records who receives which information, in what format, through which platform, and on what cadence, plus meeting methods and escalation paths. It is built during planning so status reporting is never improvised once execution starts.

It covers moving the deliverable into live use: operational training, the go-live steps, and handoff to the operations team. It names both internal and external audiences so support is ready on day one instead of learning during an outage.

A go, no-go, or conditional decision on whether the project may enter the next phase. The sponsor or steering group checks the phase deliverables, budget, and risks against agreed criteria before more money is committed.

Smoothing plays down the differences. Forcing imposes one side's answer. Compromise makes both sides give something up. Collaboration works the problem until both sides win, and it usually produces the best outcome. Avoiding postpones or withdraws from the conflict.

Because adoption fades. Training, communication, updated documentation, and new knowledge bases have to be reinforced over time, or users revert to the old process and the benefits are never realized even though the deliverable was accepted.

Remove team access to systems and data, close out vendor contracts, reconcile the final budget, release human and physical resources back to the organization, and archive documentation so it can be retrieved for a later audit.

The closeout report is the formal record of final performance against scope, schedule, and budget, and it supports sign-off. Lessons learned, gathered in a retrospective or closure meeting, capture what future projects should repeat or change.

A Gantt chart shows every activity as a horizontal bar across a timeline, with durations and dependencies visible. A milestone chart shows only zero-duration checkpoints and their dates. Use the Gantt with the delivery team and the milestone chart with executives.

Both join activities with dependency arrows, exposing predecessors, successors, and the critical path rather than calendar position. A PERT chart adds a weighted three-point duration to each activity: (optimistic + 4 x most likely + pessimistic) / 6, so uncertain estimates still yield one expected path length.

The risk register tracks events that might happen, with probability, impact, owner, and response. The issue log tracks problems that already happened, with owner and resolution. The change log tracks change requests and the status of their approval.

It links every requirement forward to the deliverable, design, and test that satisfy it. That proves nothing was dropped, shows the blast radius of a proposed change, and provides evidence for acceptance and audit at closure.

When work arrives as individual requests that need intake, assignment, priority, and an audit trail, such as defects, service requests, or support incidents. It complements the schedule rather than replacing the project scheduling tool.

Co-authoring tools let several people edit one document at once, which suits fast synchronous drafting. A wiki knowledge base is asynchronous and organizes durable reference material the team returns to, which makes it better for handover and onboarding.

It orders problem causes from most to least frequent and adds a cumulative line, showing that a small number of causes drive most of the failures. Use it to pick the corrective action that gives the largest quality gain first.

Root cause analysis. The problem sits at the head and contributing causes branch off by category, such as people, process, materials, or environment. It structures a team brainstorm so you fix the cause instead of the symptom.

A burndown chart shows work remaining falling toward zero. A burnup chart shows work completed rising against a separate scope line, so added scope stays visible. A velocity chart shows how many story points the team actually completes per sprint.

The project's impact on the local and global environment, the regulations and standards that apply to it, alignment with the company's vision, mission, and values, and the effect the project could have on brand value.

Physical: facility access rules and limits on removable media. Operational: background screening and clearance requirements for team members. Digital: resource permissions, remote access restrictions, and multifactor authentication. A single project plan often needs all three.

Classification decides who may see what. Intellectual property, trade secrets, and national security information each carry different handling rules, and access is granted on a need-to-know basis. Misclassified data is a common source of compliance failure.

Personally identifiable information identifies an individual, for example a national identity number or address. Personal health information is health data tied to an identifiable person. PHI is the more tightly regulated subset, so projects touching it need extra controls.

The privacy regulations of every country, state, or province involved, because residency, consent, and breach rules differ. Legal and regulatory impacts belong in planning; retrofitting them after go-live usually means rework and schedule loss.

With infrastructure as a service you manage the operating system and everything above it. With platform as a service you manage only your application and data. With software as a service you manage almost nothing. XaaS is the umbrella term for anything delivered this way.

Enterprise resource planning runs core finance and operations. Customer relationship management tracks sales and customer interactions. An electronic document and records management system controls formal records and retention. A content management system publishes web and marketing content.

A scheduled downtime or maintenance window, customer notification, a rollback plan for if the change fails, and validation checks to confirm success afterwards. Approving a change with no rollback plan is the classic operational change control gap.

Staging mirrors production, so defects surface where users are not affected. Continuous integration and continuous deployment automate build, test, and release, which makes changes smaller and more frequent, so testing and rollback discipline matter more, not less.