Project Management Notes

...

- All process groups depend on each other to successfully finish

- Initiating – authorized by sponsor and senior manager

- PM is chosen

- High level goals set by major stakeholders

- Planning – refines and defines project objectives and plans steps to achieve objectives within scope

- Budgets estimated, timelines set, deliverables defined

- Executing – puts project management plan into action

- Resources are combined to carry out project management plan

- Need to control change and monitor the project is on time and budget

- Monitoring and Controlling – change requests, defect requests, updates to project scope and project management plan is reviewed

- Approve final deliverables of project

- Closing – close the overall project and provide deliverables to customer

- Vendors to be paid, accounts to be updated

- Formal acceptance of product or services

- Orderly close to the project

Initiating

- 2 processes

- Main objective: clarify reason for project, business needs, scope at high level

- Documentation shows stakeholders that other project options have been considered and this is the right choice to meet expectations

- Stakeholders have the greatest ability to influence outcomes of the project

- Risk is highest during this stage because of the high degree of unknown factors.

- Activities to define beginning of new project:

- Authorization

- Defining scope

- Identification of major stakeholders

- Selection of PM – selected early on so sponsor can utilize his expert judgment while creating plan. PM is assigned during this process

- Inputs:

- Business case – defines reason why project was started

- Product description

- Linkage of company’s strategy with stakeholders

- Likely stakeholders

- Contract

- Current industry standards

- Change control system

- Processes and procedures

- Templates from past projects

- Company culture

- Outputs:

- Project Charter – project objectives, milestone schedules, initial budget

- Identified Stakeholders

- Strategy to manage stakeholders

- Organization’s business needs and requirements are documented – feasibility of project by evaluating other project alternatives

- Project sponsor determines which project makes sense and meets business needs

- Once project is decided, descriptions of project objectives are developed and why project is right choice

- PM, sponsor and stakeholders have basic understanding of scope, deliverables and duration of project

- Generate high level forecast of resources to complete project

- Details of project analyzed and broken down later in PMP

- Progressive elaboration – process of continually refining estimates and scope

- High level planning – WBS created, order of magnitude estimation, high level risk identification

- Processes under initiating process group authorize project or project phase

- Identifies or defines project’s objectives and authorizes PM to start project

Planning

- 24 distinct processes

- Starts immediately after project charter is approved

- Creation of blueprint of project – helps save time, resources, money

- Detailed analysis of whether project team can achieve project objectives; road map is identified to accomplish project successfully

- Main output is the PMP – project documents, strategies, baselines that processes will be compared against

- encompasses all knowledge areas that define processes in a project

- Integration of process groups, scope of project, duration of project, costs, quality, communications, HR, risks, procurements, stakeholder management

- Various influences and factors may affect project – plan and processes may have to be revisited and more planning may be needed

- Progressive elaboration

- Planning is always ongoing

-

- Rolling Wave Planning – sometimes it is not possible to predict all future activities of project especially over entire period of project

- Done in waves or stages with activities in the near term planned in detail and others planned in detail as project progresses

- When done correctly, these processes help gain stakeholder buy-in

- Planning the project makes or breaks project success.

Executing

- After project is approved and planned, execution happens

- Executing takes project management plan and combines