Foundational Concepts & Principles Flashcards

Which element is NOT part of the Performance Measurement Baseline?

Answer: Management reserve

Management reserve is held outside the PMB for unknown risks, while distributed budget, undistributed budget, and summary level planning packages are within it.

A work package differs from a planning package primarily because a work package is:

Answer: Near-term, detail-planned effort with assigned earned value techniques

Work packages are detail-planned near-term tasks with specific earned value methods, while planning packages hold far-term budget pending detail planning.

Under rolling wave planning, what must a CAM do before a planning package's work begins?

Answer: Convert it into detail-planned work packages without changing its total budget or scope

Planning packages must be converted to work packages before work starts, preserving scope, schedule, and budget traceability.

Which earned value technique is most appropriate for a discrete work package spanning two months with two distinct outputs?

Answer: Milestone weights or fixed formula such as 50/50

Short discrete work with identifiable outputs is best measured with milestone or fixed-formula techniques like 50/50 or 25/75.

Why is Level of Effort (LOE) the least preferred earned value technique?

Answer: It earns value with the passage of time, so it can never show a schedule variance

LOE automatically earns its budget as time passes, masking schedule performance and diluting meaningful variances.

The Schedule Performance Index (SPI) is calculated as:

Answer: BCWP divided by BCWS

SPI equals earned value (BCWP) divided by planned value (BCWS), with values below 1.0 indicating schedule slippage.

A CAM's control account shows CPI of 0.85. What does this mean?

Answer: The account is earning only 85 cents of value for every dollar spent

A CPI below 1.0 means cost efficiency is unfavorable, with only $0.85 of work earned per $1.00 actually spent.