Can anyone identify some of the process groups and knowledge areas one needs to identify more often when tracking their projects' progress during all its' relevant stages and phases? Saving Changes...
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Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
If you ask me, it is hard to answer because it will be related to the type of project life cycle you will use. I can say that from long long time ago the amount of time to spend into each phase is 40% in activities previous to development (here is not related to software), 20% in activities related to development, 40% in activities after the development. But all this is splitted and sliced depending on the life cycle. Saving Changes...
It might be easier to say that I don't have to worry about cost or procurement management on every project. Taking a step back from my projects and looking at them objectively, I'd say I use most of the process groups and knowledge areas on all of my projects, but the specific activities and knowledge needed can vary by project.
A couple of things to keep in mind:
- The process groups are not the project lifecycle, even if the names of the process groups are similar to phases of your project. There is no "monitoring and controlling" phase, unless, maybe, you're talking about tracking benefits AFTER the project is over (which somebody should do). For example, SAP' has included "Operate" and "Post-Production" in their project life cycles.
- Nobody else on your project is likely to know what you are talking about if you bring up process groups and knowledge areas. And they don't want to know. And that's okay. Saving Changes...
Thomas WalentaGlobal Project Economy ExpertHackenheim, Germany
Michael,
I like Aaron’s reply.
As to positively name mandatory processes for every project, I point to the knowledge area of integration management. All of its processes, except Knowledge Mgmt, you will find on all projects. I sometimes call it the backbone of a project.
All process groups apply to all phases of a project lifecycle, because there are shorter duration activities that each goes from initiation through closure with more or less formality.
What you need to focus on to enable effective tracking depends on a lot of things, but generally I would focus on the initiating and planning for the best results. As projects progress, the cost of change increases, while the ability to change the end result decreases, so your up front planning has the most potential to have the greatest benefit on your end results.
If you have not set clear objectives in initiation, or how to get there in planning, then how can you track the execution to determine if you are converging on the objectives? Saving Changes...
Elizabeth HarrinDirector| RebelsGuideToPM.comLondon, England, United Kingdom
I agree with what's been written above. They are all relevant, most of the time, so you have to base what you need on the project, the scale, the complexity, the life cycle etc. We obviously do more execution-type work during the delivery phases (in an iterative approach project) and more planning work in the early phases, but all the knowledge areas are useful - if only to quickly think about it and then to say 'nope, I don't need to do that on this project' (as Aaron was saying above about procurement). Saving Changes...
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