Project Management Process Groups & Processes (PMBOK® 4th Edition)

I am creating Mind Maps™ for project management coaching activity. I found Mind Maps™ are giving excellent way of visual communication compared to verbose presentation slides. Especially in project management, Mind Maps™ have wide range of application like decision making, risk planning, process flows, etc. In this map, I presented PMBOK process groups & processes within those process groups. Click on the Image to view it in HQ (3900 px * 2861 px). You will get a nice printout on A4 Landscape paper.

 

* Note# 1: There could be some typo or presentation errors. Please reply back for any corrections.

* Note# 2: You can use this for personal use (like studying for PMP Exam or PM activities). But don’t share this in common forum or web sites.

Trademarks:

The use of the term “Mind Maps” is claimed as a trademark by The Buzan Organisation, Ltd. in the UK and the USA. The trade-mark does not appear in the records of the Canadian Intellectual Property Office. In the U.S. “Mind Maps” is trademarked as a “service mark” expressly for “EDUCATIONAL SERVICES, NAMELY, CONDUCTING COURSES IN SELF-IMPROVEMENT” – other products and services are not covered by the trademark.

“PMBOK” is a registered trademark of the Project Management Institute, Inc. which is registered in the United States and other nations www.pmi.org

Project Selection Methods – An Overview

Projects are undertaken for various reasons. Each project should have clear justification and methods defined to show its ‘worth’ taking it. Strategic goals of organization, Market Need, Technological Advancement, Competitive Advantage, Profitability, Project/Portfolio Management Office (PMO), Sponsors are key in project selection.

Below I presented the gist of few widely-used project selection methods. Decisions are made based on the best information in hand about a particular project at a given point of time. One can use either Benefit Measurement Methods(Comparative approach) or Constrained Optimization Methods (Mathematical approach) or both to arrive conclusion on project selection.Out of these two benefit measurement method is most commonly used.

Benefit measurement methods are based on measuring the benefits in taking up the project and comparing the results against other projects or a strategy benchmark. Cost-Benefit Analysis, Scoring Models, Economic Models, Discounted Cash Flow(DCF), Net Present Value (NPV), Internal Rate of Return are different types under Benefit measurement methods.

Constrained optimization methods uses complex mathematical calculation based on different worst/best case scenarios and probability of outcome and then selecting project on best results. Generally known methods are Linear programming, nonlinear programming, multi objective programming.

Project Selection Methods

Let me explain about each of these methods in brief in a later post.

Enterprise Environmental Factors (EEFs)

Let me start the topic with the following four questions:

* What are the environmental factors that influence your project’s success?

* Is those environmental factors are external or internal to your organization?

* Is the factor going to affect the project outcome positively or negatively?

* Is any factor imposing any constraints on the existing project management options?

You may bring a list of factors for the above thought provoking questions. Here we go!

The project manager must consider any or all external environmental factors and internal organizational environmental factors that surround or influence a project’s success. These factors are referred as Enterprise Environmental Factors (EEFs).

These factors may come from any or all of the enterprises involved in the project and it may include lot of things like organizational culture & structure, existing resources, PM softwares, etc. But these must be taken into account for every project process like project charter preparation, project planning, scheduling, costing, resources, etc.

Enterprise Environmental Factors include(not limited to):

* Organizational culture & structure, Infrastructure,

* Government rules, guidelines, regulations or industry standards,

* Marketplace conditions,

* Stakeholder risk tolerances,

* Project management information systems(PMIS),

* Existing human resources factors like skills, knowledge, disciplines,

* Personnel administration like hiring, performance review guidelines, training,

* Published commercial information or databases for estimations,risk data

* Company work authorization system.

Importance of Organizational Process Assets

Good practices come from experience…..and experience indeed a precious resource, even when it is not your own.

For any projects – management team, as a first and foremost activity, need to search the historical information regarding similar projects executed in their organization. If the project is in entirely new, then they need to collect information regarding similar projects from other sources.

Starting a project from scratch without using any information from past projects executed by your organization or similar projects executed by other organization(s) is such a waste of time!

Each organization should have repository of information from already executed projects and these are called ‘Organizational Process Assets’. If one is not already existing, at least start creating it from now onwards. Lessons learned from earlier projects and historical information usually constitutes organization’s knowledge base, which in turn helps effective planning & execution of new project’s processes.

Organizational process assets include any or all processes related to the assets from an organization(s) involved in a project that can be used to influence the project’s success.

Process assets include (not limited to):

* Any formal/informal plans

* Organization’s standard processes, policies, procedures/methodologies,

* Guidelines,

* Lessons learned, and

* knowledge & information from historical project records and documents

Today’s project is going to be tomorrow’s history. For better tomorrow, it is the responsibility of project team members to add and/or update the organizational process assets throughout project life cycle.

More on Project Baselines

In the earlier post, I briefed about definition of baseline and what constitutes project baseline. Now, let us review elaborately on this topic.

A schedule baseline is a project schedule developed from the schedule network analysis used to verify lag and lead time of current project activities against approved deadlines (mainly used in schedule control).

The cost baseline is an authorized budget used to estimate, monitor, and control overall cost performance on the project. Generally, in any organization, a project budget authorization & approval happens in staggered manner(unless it is a small project). So, Cost baseline is developed as a summation of the approved budgets by time period & it is typically displayed in the form of an S-curve.

Scope baseline is used to compare current scope with actual approved scope and decide whether a change, corrective action or preventive action is required (mainly used in scope verification process). Typically, approved detailed scope statement, WBS and WBS dictionary are the scope baseline documents for the project.

The quality baseline records the quality objectives of the project. The quality baseline is the basis for measuring and reporting quality performance as part of the performance measurement baseline. All above 3 baselines are input in identifying quality standards to be followed in the project within the project constraints.

Variance is another term related to baseline. During project execution, variances will require re-baselining (of course update on plans too). These variances can include changes to activity timings, changes in availability of resource, and risks. Such variances may affect the project plan or project documents and may require detailed analysis and development of appropriate project management responses. The results of the analysis can trigger change requests that, if approved, may modify the project management plan or other project documents and possibly require establishing new baselines.

Stakeholders requirements should be clearly understood and need to be incorporated into different plans before these are base-lined.