What I Know about Project Management So Far
So I’m doing a Master programme at Stockholm University on IT Project Management as I have aspirations to understand the business and management processes behind each software application I create as a software engineer. At the time of this writing, I have no prior experience in project management and as part of the programme, I had to read the first two chapters of the book called “A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge” and the entire book called “The Standard for Project Management“. The content provides an interesting and eye-opening overview what project management entails! That’s why I would like to share what I got to know so far, theoretically at least.
The first chapter of the book “A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge” is a complete introduction of the world of project management, the vocabulary used, the points that serve as a foundation for project management and how the guide aims to help people and organizations to discover how to setup, plan, create, execute and close a project.
The chapter describes the types of distinctions that exists within Project Management, namely, Project, Program, Portfolio and Operations.
A project can be part of a program, but a program can consist both of a project and a program. A portfolio can contain both projects and programs but also, other portfolios as well.
I personally see this as the predominant group of things that can be managed as projects, programs, portfolio and operations are all managed under a Portfolio. All these categories share the same resources and stakeholders. These categories are managed by applying what is called organizational project management or OPM for short. It is a framework that is integrated with organizational enablers in order to achieve strategic objects. Project phases and life cycles are also defined in the book and they are not always necessarily limited to a fixed amount of time or deadline but they can also change depending on the kind of project that is being managed.
Another interesting categorization described in the book are Process Groups. A Process Group is a logical grouping of project management processes and this is done to achieve specific project objectives.
The chapter states five groups:
1) Initiating Process Group
2) Planning Process Group
3) Executing Process Group
4) Monitoring and Controlling Process Group
5) Closing Process Group
The flow of a project being managed with these groups is also applied in that order. Each group has a very large amount of things that an organization needs to take into consideration. You can think of things like, having a particular plan, activities, business document or analysis that needs to be done in order to move to the next group. However, some activities continue throughout all process groups.
The next thing I was not aware of are Project Management Knowledge Areas. Knowledge areas are identified areas of project management defined by its knowledge requirements and underlying approaches within project management. There are ten basic knowledge areas and can be more depending on the context of a project:
1) Project Integration Management
2) Project Scope Management
3) Project Schedule Management
4) Project Cost Management
5) Project Quality Management
6) Project Resource Management
7) Project Communications Management
8) Project Risk Management
9) Project Procurement Management
10) Project Stakeholder Management
The management of all these points arise in all of the Process Groups, some points more than others. These points introduce structure and clarity to a project in terms of what needs to happen when managing a project. I found this to be quite interesting as it opened my eyes and made me finally fathom how, both public and private organizations carry large, billion dollar projects over the course of years.
And now chapter two.
This chapter is shorter but still contains some very interesting points.
Chapter two gives an introduction on Enterprise Environmental factors. These are things that can affect a project and can come both from inside or outside an organization. You can think of, political changes, funding (or sudden lack thereof) and change in business strategies to give an example.
The chapter also introduced the concept of Organization Governance.
This, in short, deals with hierarchies, roles and responsibilities that need to be created and assumed due to needs of the project. There were other details explained as well but these were the highlights for me.
And now some points worth mentioning about the book “The Standard of Project Management”.
What’s peculiar is that this book is included within the “A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge” book, all the way at the end. This book describes in-depth about the 5 Process Groups I’ve mentioned earlier. It gets quite extensive in some Process Groups but the key takeaway is that, within each Process Group, a set of components based on plans, documents, activities and the progression of the plans need to be extensively tackled. I’ll give some small examples on each Process Group:
In the Initiating Process Group, stakeholders need to be identified and a project management plan needs to be created.
For the Planning Process Group, the scope needs to be defined. Project requirements need to be collected within this group. The planning of the management of Scope needs to be look at. Project activities need to be defined, estimated and sequenced. A schedule needs to be developed. The management of a Cost Plan needs to be tackled. The budget needs to be determined. Quality and resources need to be put into perspective. The estimation of activity resources needs to be done, and planning the management of communications and risks need to be done.
There are a lot of additional points, I’m just giving an example to show how extensive a process group can get in terms of points that need to be dealt with.
For the Executing Process Group, the following points need to be managed:
Project Knowledge, Quality, Resources, Team Development, the actual Team and Communications. Risk responses need to be implemented, Procurements need to be conducted and Stakeholder engagement needs to be managed.
For the fourth group, Monitoring and Controlling Process Group, the following points need to be tackled: Project work needs to be controlled and monitored, an Integrated Change Control needs to be performed, a Scope Validation needs to happen, the scope itself needs to be controlled along with the schedule, costs, quality and resources. Communications and risks also need to be monitored.
For the last group, Closing Process Group, the project will, obviously be closed, or, will go into an other phase. Still, relevant management plans and documents need to be closed, archived, signed and/or handed over to the relevant parties.
This is what I know so far about project management. Definitely just the theoretical basics but very insightful nonetheless!