Project Management Processes

Project management process involves a number of activities that contribute to overall project completion; these number of activities can be categorized together to form five main processes of project management.

• Project Initiation
• Project Planning
• Project Execution
• Project Monitoring & Control
• Project Closing

Now we will discuss the five processes of project management in bit detail

Project Initiation

The initiating processes determine the nature and scope of the project, If this stage is not performed well, it is unlikely that the project will be successful in meeting the business’ needs. The key project controls needed here are an understanding of the business environment and making sure that all necessary controls are incorporated into the project. Any deficiencies should be reported and a recommendation should be made to fix them.

Project Planning

After the initiation stage, the project is planned to an appropriate level of detail. The main purpose is to plan time, cost and resources adequately to estimate the work needed and to effectively manage risk during project execution. As with the Initiation process group, a failure to adequately plan greatly reduces the project's chances of successfully accomplishing its goals.

Project planning generally consists of

• determining how to plan
• developing the scope statement
• selecting the planning team
• identifying deliverables and creating the work breakdown structure;
• identifying the activities needed to complete those deliverables and networking the activities in their logical sequence.
• estimating the resource requirements for the activities;
• estimating time and cost for activities;
• developing the schedule;
• developing the budget;
• risk planning;

Project Execution

Executing consists of the processes used to complete the work defined in the project plan to accomplish the project's requirements. Execution process involves coordinating people and resources, as well as integrating and performing the activities of the project in accordance with the project management plan. The deliverables are produced as outputs from the processes performed as defined in the project management plan and other frameworks that might be applicable to the type of project at hand.

Execution process group include:

• Direct and Manage Project execution
• Quality Assurance of deliverables
• Acquire, Develop and Manage Project team
• Distribute Information
• Manage stakeholder expectations
• Conduct Procurement

Project Monitoring & Control

Monitoring and controlling consists of those processes performed to observe project execution so that potential problems can be identified in a timely manner and corrective action can be taken, when necessary, to control the execution of the project. The key benefit is that project performance is observed and measured regularly to identify variances from the project management plan.

Monitoring and controlling includes:

• Measuring the ongoing project activities ('where we are');
• Monitoring the project variables (cost, effort, scope, etc.) against the project management plan and the project performance baseline (where we should be);
• Identify corrective actions to address issues and risks properly (How can we get on track again);
• Influencing the factors that could circumvent integrated change control so only approved changes are implemented.

Project Closing

Closing includes the formal acceptance of the project and the ending thereof. Administrative activities include the archiving of the files and documenting lessons learned.

This phase consists of:

• Project closure: Finalize all activities across all of the process groups to formally close the project or a project phase
• Contract closure: Complete and settle each contract (including the resolution of any open items) and close each contract applicable to the project or project phase