Project Management Knowledge Areas

Project Integration Management

Project Integration management involves unification, consolidation, articulation, and integrative actions that are crucial for successfully completing the project. Project Integration management is a high-level work that requires the project manager to manage interdependencies among the other knowledge areas.

Project Management Process

Project Management Process groups are divided into five groups:

• Initiating Process
• Planning Process
• Executing Process
• Monitoring and Controlling Process
• Closing Process

Project Scope Management

Project Scope Management includes the processes required to ensure that a project includes all and only the work essential to complete the project successfully. Managing the project scope is primarily concerned with defining and controlling what should be included in the project.

Key activities of Project Scope Management

Ensure Constant Monitoring – Ensure all the project work is being completed.
Avoid Scope Creep – Defines project boundaries and avoids unnecessary addition of scope.
Prevent Gold Plating – Restricts the project work only to the defined activities and avoids doing more work than required in the project.

Project Schedule Management

Schedule Management is one of the most important knowledge areas in project management. It refers to the skills, tools, & techniques used to manage time when accomplishing specific tasks, projects, and goals. Schedule management describes how to monitor and control time spent within a project. It also explains the processes that are required to manage the timely completion of the project. All the processes of schedule management are applied in a tailored way to make it a unique project.

Schedule Management Processes

Plan Schedule Management – Plan Schedule Management is the process of establishing policies, procedures, and documentation.
It helps in planning, developing, managing, executing, and controlling the project schedule.
It provides guidance and direction on how the project schedule will be managed throughout the project.

Define Activities – Define activities is the process of identifying and documenting the specific actions that need to be performed to produce the project deliverables.
It breaks down the work progress into activities.
It provides the basis of estimating, scheduling, executing, monitoring, and controlling the project work.

Sequence Activities – Sequence activities are the process of identifying and documenting relationships among various project activities.
It helps in defining the logical sequence of the work to obtain the greatest efficiency given all project constraints.

Estimate Activity Duration – Estimate activity duration is the process of estimating the number of work periods needed to complete individual activities with estimated resources.
It provides the amount of time each activity will take to complete
It acts as a major input into the Develop Schedule process.

Develop Schedule – It is the process of analyzing activity sequences, durations, resource requirements, and schedule constraints to create the project schedule model.
It generates the schedule model with planned dates for completing project activities.

Control Schedule – It is the process of analyzing activity sequence, durations, resource requirements, and schedule constraints to create the project schedule model.
It generates a schedule model with planned dates for completing project activities.

Project Cost Management

Project Cost Management includes the processes involved in estimating, budgeting, and controlling costs so that the project can be completed within the approved budgets.

Cost Management Plan

The Cost Management Plan contains details about managing costs on a project. It provides details on how to plan, manage, and control the project cost in relation to the cost baseline, and manage the cost variances.

• The project cost management plan is a subsidiary of the project management plan.
• The techniques involved in estimating the cost of each project activity is similar to the ones used in estimating project time.
• Expert judgment, analogous estimating, bottom-up estimating, and reserve analysis are some of the techniques used in cost management.

Project Quality Management

In a project, meeting the quality expectation is the responsibility of not only the project manager, but everyone involved. A project is said to meet quality expectations, when all the project requirements agreed in the beginning of the project are met, and the resulting product is usable.

Quality Management

Quality management includes creating and following policies and procedures that meet the project’s defined quality needs. This is to ensure that the specified approach to quality is implemented on the project. The three key activities of quality management as follows:

• Quality Planning – Quality related activities of the project are planned.
  • Scope – Determines a plan for quality defining the standards, templates, policies, and procedures.
  • Activities – Involves preparation of the quality management plan.
  • Focus Area – Focuses on information on the level of quality and the methods of achieving it.
• Quality Assurance – Quality assurance is carried out to ensure the process is carried out as per the quality management plan.
  • Scope – Determines if the project is complying with the organizational policies and procedures.
  • Activities – Involves conducting regular process audits to identify deviations from the quality plan and undertake corrective and preventive actions.
  • Focus Area – Focuses on process and not products.
• Quality Control – Periodic checks are conducted to ensure quality improvements.
  • Scope – Measures specific project results (product) against standards.
  • Activities – Involves inspecting and verifying the project’s product, defect repair, and measuring whether the quality indicators are improving.
  • Focus Area – Focuses on product and data.

Project Resource Management

Project Human Resource Management includes the processes that organize, manage, and lead the project team. It is composed of the people with assigned roles and responsibilities for completing the project. Project management team is the subset of the project team and is responsible for the different phases of project management.

Plan Resource Management

Plan Human Resource Management is the process of identifying and documenting project roles, responsibilities, required skills, reporting relationships, and creating a staffing management plan.

Responsibility Assignment Matrix – Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) is used to define project responsibilities among the project team.

Project Communication Management

Communication is a two-way process of transferring information from one entity to another. A project manager spends around 90 percent of the time ensuring proper project communication.

Project Communication Management includes the processes that are required to ensure timely and appropriate planning, collection, creation, distribution, storage, retrieval, management, control, monitoring, and the ultimate disposition of project information.

Communication Methods

Communication can be either written or verbal. Further, it can be formal or informal.

• In formal communication, certain rules should be followed.
• Informal communication takes a casual approach.
• Combination of the two forms results in the following four communication methods.
  • Formal written
  • Formal verbal
  • Informal written
  • Informal verbal

Project Risk Management

Risk is an uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive or negative effect on a project’s objective.

Calculation of Risk

Risks can be managed only if they are measured quantitatively.

• Risk is measured by assigning a monetary value to it.
• Risk is calculated by multiplying probability and impact of risk.
  • Risk = Risk Probability x Risk Impact
    Where risk probability is the likelihood that a risk event could happen and risk impact is the effect on the project objectives if a risk event happens.

Project Stakeholder Management

Project Stakeholder Management includes the processes required to identify the people, groups, or organizations that could impact or be impacted by the project, to analyze stakeholder expectations and their impact on the project, and to develop appropriate management strategies for effectively engaging stakeholders in project decisions and execution.

An individual, group, or organization who may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of the project. The Project team, project manager, project sponsor, PMO Office, customer, etc. are the stakeholders of the project.

A stakeholder can have a positive and negative impact. Therefore, it is necessary to engage and involve the stakeholders in the project to ensure project success. A project sponsor is the one who gives a go ahead for a project that provides the necessary resources to execute the project.

Project Time Management

Project Time Management includes the processes to manage the timely completion of the project. It is primarily concerned with developing a realistic project schedule and controlling changes to the schedule.

Key Activities of Project Time Management

• Identifying Activities – A list of activities to be included in the project will be identified.
• Estimating Time and Resources – Time and resources for each of the identified activities will be estimated.
• Sequencing Activities – All the activities will be sequenced as per the dependencies.

Project Time Management Processes

1. Plan Schedule Management – Plan Schedule Management is the process of establishing the policies, procedures, and documentation for planning, developing, managing, executing, and controlling the project schedule.
2. Define Activities – Define activities is the process of identifying and documenting the specific actions to be performed to produce the project deliverables.
3. Sequence Activities – Sequence activities are the process of identifying and documenting relationships among the project activities.
4. Estimate Activity Resources – Estimate activity resources are the process of estimating the type and quantities of material, human resources, equipment, or supplies required to perform each activity.
5. Estimate Activity Durations – Estimate activity durations are the process of estimating the number of work periods needed to complete individual activities with estimated resources. The key benefit of this process is that it provides the amount of time each activity will take to complete, which is a major input into the Develop Schedule process.
6. Develop Schedule – Develop Schedule is the process of analyzing activity sequences, durations, resource requirements, and schedule constraints to create the project schedule model.
7. Control Schedule – Control Schedule is the process of monitoring the status of project activities to update project progress and manage changes to the schedule baseline to achieve the plan.