Page 55 - DCAP307_PLANNING_AND_MANAGING_IT_INFRASTRUCTURE

Unit 3: Project Management

A process is “a series of actions bringing about a result”. Project processes are performed by Notes
people and generally fall into one of two major categories:
 Project management processes describe, organise, and complete the work of the project.

 Product-oriented processes specify and create the project’s product. Product oriented
processes are typically defined by the project life and vary by application area.
Project management processes and product-oriented processes overlap and interact throughout
the project.

Example: The scope of the project cannot be defined in the absence of some basic
understanding of how to create the product.

3.3.2 Process Interactions
Within each process group, the individual processes are linked by their inputs and outputs. By
focusing on these links, we can describe each process in terms of it’s:
 Inputs – documents or documentable items that will be acted upon.
 Tools and techniques – mechanisms applied to the inputs to create the outputs.
 Outputs – documents or documentable items that are a result of the process.
The project management processes common to most projects in most application areas are
described here. The process interactions illustrated here are also typical of most projects in most
application areas.

3.3.3 Process Groups

Project management processes can be organised into five groups of one or more processes each:
 Initiating processes — authorising the project or phase.
 Planning processes — defining and refining objectives and selecting the best of the alternative
courses of action to attain the objectives that the project was undertaken to address.

 Executing processes — coordinating people and other resources to carry out the plan.
 Controlling processes — ensuring that monitoring and measuring progress regularly to
identify variances from plan so that corrective action can be taken when necessary meet
project objectives.
 Closing processes — formalising acceptance of the project or phase and bringing it to an
orderly end.
These are elaborated below:

Initiating Processes

Authorising the project or phase is part of project scope management.

Planning Processes
Planning is of major importance to a project because the project involves doing something that
has not been done before. As a result, there are relatively more processes in this section. However,
the number of processes does not mean that project management is primarily planning—the
amount of planning performed should be commensurate with the scope of the project and the
usefulness of the information developed. Planning is an ongoing effort throughout the life of
the project.

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