CIPS L4M2 Defining Business Needs Exam Practice Test

Answer : E

Value Analysis (VA) is concerned with existing products. It involves a current product being ana-lysed and evaluated by a team, to reduce costs, improve product function or both. Value Analysis exercises use a plan which step-by-step, methodically evaluates the product in a range of areas. These include costs, function, alternative components and design aspects such as ease of manufac-ture and assembly.

According to the Value Methodology standard, there are 6 phases to a Value Analysis:

- Information

- Function Analysis

- Creative

- Evaluation

- Development

- Presentation

1. Information

In this first phase, the team attempts to understand why the project exists and who or what it is to produce. They obtain project data, present the original design or product concepts, and understand the project scope. Schedule, costs, budget, risk, and other non-monetary issues are studied until the team is comfortable with the concept of the project, what it is to produce, and who its end users are.

This step also includes things like site visits and meetings with the project team, if required. Project documents like plans, drawings, specifications, and reports are obtained and the value engineering team becomes familiar with them.

2. Function Analysis

This step represents the meat and potatoes (core) of the value analysis. The team attempts to determine the functions the project serves. Functions come in two forms:

- Primary functions are those that represent the reason for the project's existence, for example, a building project might have adequate plumbing as a primary function.

- Secondary functions are those that the project serves without being core to the project. For example, a building project might have as a secondary function maintaining the view of the neighboring building.

The functions are described in verb/noun pairs, such as ''supply water to all suites,'' or ''Maintain view of adjacent park.'' For a project like this, the team should come up with 10 -- 15 functions. You might be surprised how many secondary functions exist for most projects. Subject matter experts would be a great resource, but in their absence an appropriate level of brainstorming and analysis are necessary.

The team should also identify value-mismatched functions to focus the improvements on. For ex-ample, maybe a large obstruction is preventing the view of the adjacent park from too many suites resulting in a potential mismatch of the cost vs. functional benefit. This is investigated in the next step.

3. Creative

This phase represents the generation of improvement ideas. The team develops alternative ways that the project can perform the functions that have been identified. At this step, the functions are looked at individually and each one gets a list of alternative ways to perform the function. There is no judging between the importance of the various functions.

4. Evaluation

At this stage, a priority is given to each project improvement idea. The ideas are discussed and potential costs are determined. Once the risk-reward profile of each idea is itemized, the team has determined which ideas are worth implementing into the project or feature.

A few years ago, there was a pedestrian bridge built near my home which was originally designed for emergency vehicles. Although this type of design is standard practice for the bridges of this type, the value engineering team identified that emergency vehicle passage was not needed (verb/noun pair = 'maintain passage for emergency vehicles'). Also, a second major outcome of this value analysis was to change the design to an aesthetic, curved bridge because it was in a prominent location. The redesign of the bridge cost some money but this was more than made up by the cost of the bridge construction. Thus, the value analysis paid for itself about 10 times over in the reduced construction cost, and the bridge was significantly more aesthetic.

5. Development

Once the value improvement options have been whittled down to the ones that make sense, the value engineering team develop the options to the point of passing them back to the original project team. They must be clearly written and explained so that the project owner and stakeholders can understand how it benefits the project and act on it. Any potential negative factors are identified. Potential costs and cost savings are itemized.

6. Presentation

This last phase represents the presentation of the alternatives to the stakeholders. Often value engineering represents a change in the normal practices that people are used to, an ''out of the box thinking.'' Thus the best salesperson on the team is often the best one to do the presentation.

Some typical products of a value engineering analysis are a briefing document, risk analy-sis, present worth analysis, advantages vs. disadvantages, etc.

LO 3, AC 3.4

Answer : D

Value analysis is often defined as a systematic process for improving the value of a product, service or project. It is typically used in the following ways:

- To determine the value of each component used

- To find cost reduction opportunities by optimising the components used

Segment analysis helps procurement and supply to shape and manage the supply markets.

There is no concept known as Variety reduction.

Standardisation is the process which is used to reduce varieties of products or parts.

In this scenario, the company's objective is cost reduction, then value analysis or value engineering is more likely to be applied. Also the company aims at reducing variety, standardisation can be combined with value analysis to produce the best results.

LO 3, AC 3.4

Answer : A, B

Answer : D

The writing of a complex specification should be treated as a project because it requires the brain power from different stakeholders. Many tools and processes of project management can be applied to complex specification development. Before engaging with the stakeholders and implementing the project, the project initial document should developed.

A Project Initiation Document (PID) is one of the most important components of project manage-ment, which forms the foundation for a company project. It is a reference point during the entire project, for the client as well as for the project team.

A PID bundles documentation into a logical reference work that collects all important information needed to start and run a project from a good foundation. After that, Project Initiation Document must be transferred to all stakeholders, including business sponsors.

This forms the basis for the project management. The documentation from which the PID is com-posed include the business case in which the project's justification can be found, the communica-tion plan and the project plan.

The PID is composed out of collected information and includes, among others, the following com-ponents:

- Project goal(s); what do you want to achieve with the project?

- Project size; how large is the project, how long does it take and how many people are involved?

- Project organisation; who are involved in the project, what are their tasks, responsibilities and authority?

- Limits and risks; what can cause a project to stagnate and are there risks related to the project?

- Stakeholders; who has a stake in the success of the project?

- Project checks and frame reporting; by carefully taking into account evaluation moments, it is clear to everyone what sample tests can be carried out during the process.

In addition, it is important that the Project Initiation Document also contains the following infor-mation:

- The background and occasion of the project, which together provide information about the con-text.

- The project organisational structure, which describes who has which management responsibility in the project.

- The project quality plan, describing who controls the quality of the products to be delivered and how it will take place.

- The total project planning, including the duration of all activities.

- The exception process, which describes how exceptions are dealt with and the steps of the escalation procedure.

- The risk log, including the measures that will be taken when there are unforeseen risks.

- The documentation structure of the project, in which the encoding and storage of all documents and products to be provided by the project has been recorded in advance.

- CIPS study guide page 148

- Project Initiation Document (PID), a project management tool | ToolsHero

LO 3, AC 3.3

Answer : A, D

Through-life Management involves the life-cycle management of the products, services and activities required to deliver a fully integrated capability to the customer, while reducing the cost of ownership for the customer.

Source: Andrew Graves

With through-life management, buyer not only cares about the physical asset but also other factors like customer services and maintenance.

LO 3, AC 3.2

Answer : D

The scenario is very long with many distracting data. Students need to read carefully and use their experience to solve this problem.

The company is developing a new component which requires different type of material. But this component will not be available for mass production in 1.5 years. This means the company still needs to produce the current components with current materials until the development is finished. They must continue purchase the materials from current supplier through call-off orders. This situation is an example of straight re-buy.

LO 1, AC 1.1

Answer : A