Project Management Processes

Project Life Cycle

• A process is a set of interrelated actions and activities performed to achieve a pre-specified product, result, or service
• Each process is characterized by its inputs, the tools and techniques that 
• can be applied, and the resulting outputs
• In order for a project to be successful, the project team must:
  • Select appropriate processes required to meet the project objectives;
  • Use a defined approach that can be adopted to meet requirements;
  • Comply with requirements to meet stakeholder needs and expectations;
  • Establish and maintain appropriate communication & engagement with stockholders;
  • Balance the competing constraints.
• The project processes are performed by the project team and generally fall into one of two major categories:
  • Project management processes ensure the effective flow of the project throughout its existence.
  • Product-oriented processes specify and create the project’s product.

Process Groups

• Initiating process group: recognising a project or phase should begin (authorising the project or phase)
• Planning process group: devising and maintaining a workable plan
• Executing process group: coordinating resources to execute the plan
• Monitoring & Controlling process group: ensuring project objectives are met; monitoring, correcting and measuring progress
• Closing process group: formalised acceptance
• Common Project Management Processes Interactions:
• Monitoring & Controlling Process Group interacts with the other Process Groups
• Project Management Process Groups are linked by the outputs that are produced
• The Process groups are overlapping activities that occur throughout the project
• The output of one process generally becomes an input to another process or is a deliverable of the project, subproject or phase
• Deliverables of subproject or project level may be called incremental deliverables
• The Planning Process Group provides the Executing Process Group with project management plan and project documents
• Project management plan and project documents always revisited and updated

Initiating Process Group

• Defines and authorises the project.
• Are often done external to the project’s scope of control.
• Facilitate formal authorisation to start a new project.
• Project manager assigned
• Funding and approval happens external to project boundaries
• Many large or complex projects are divided into phases, and repeating it for each subsequent phases.

Planning Process Group

• Defines and refines the objectives, and plan the course of action required to attain the objective and scope that the project was undertaken to address.
• Develops project management plan and also refines project scope, project cost and schedule.
• It is updated and refined throughout execution process group by rolling wave planning.
• All necessary stakeholders are involved in this process.

Execution Process Group

• Majority of the project budget will be spent in performing Executing Process Group. 
• Integrates people and other resources to carry out the project management plan.
• During the project execution, results may require planning updates and rebaselining

Monitoring & Controlling Process Group

• The main benefit of M&E Process Groups is that the project performance is measured and analyzed at regular intervals.
• Monitoring the ongoing project activities against the project management plan and the project performance measurement baseline
• Influencing the factors that could circumvent change control or configuration management so only approved changes are implemented.
• Controlling changes and recommending corrective or preventing action in anticipation of possible problems.
• M&E Process Group not only monitors and controls the work being done within a Process Group, but also monitors and controls the entire project effort.

Closing Process Group

• Formalizes acceptance of the project or phase deliverable.
• Obtain acceptance by the customer or sponsor to formally close the project or the phase
• Conduct post-project or phase-end review 
• Record impacts of tailoring to any process
• Document lessons learned
• Apply appropriate updates to organisational process assets.
• Achieve all relevant project documents in the PMIS to be used as historical data
• Close out all procurement activities
• Perform team members’ assessments
• Release project resources

Project Information

• The project data are continuously collected and analysed during the dynamic context of the project execution. The project team should use appropriate terminologies. Such as:
• Work performance data: the row observations and measurements identified during activities performed to carry out the project work.(Ex: reported present of work physically completed, quality and technical performance measures, start and finish date of scheduled activities, number of defects, actual cost, actual duration, etc..)
• Work performance information: the performance data collected from various controlling processes, analyzed in context and integrated based on relationships across areas.(ex: status of deliverables,implementation status for change requests, and furcated estimates to complete).
• Work performance reports: the physical or electronic representation of work performance information is compiled in project documents,intended to raise issues or generate decisions (ex: status reports,memos, justifications, information notes, etc…)

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