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Perform Integrated Change Overview

Puneet Kuthiala, PMP, ASQ CMQ/OE — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 09:34:38 +0000

Introduction
The perform integrated change control is all about managing changes. Change
requests that are generated during execution of the project need to be
reviewed, approved and applied systematically. The changes will be relevant to
one or more of issues related to the project; deliverables, organizational
process assets, project management plan or the project documents. To be
effective this change control will have to be maintained right through the
complete life cycle of the project-from its inception to the closure.
The Integrated change control
The integrated change control process uses expert judgment and change control
meetings as the main tools and techniques to process the inputs and generate a
set of updated to the project documentation. These updates include a change
requests status update, update to the project management plan and updates to
other project documents. The range of inputs used to generate approved changes
and then the document updates include the project management plan, work
performance information, change requests, enterprise environmental factors and
organizational process assets. Work performance information in comparison with
the initial benchmark generated the change requests that are required. The
change requests themselves are part of the inputs. Enterprise environmental
factors and organizational process assets provide the context and the
moderation due to the regulatory issues and the accumulated knowledge of the
organization.
Change requests may come from any of the stakeholders interested in or an
associated with the project. They could be verbal too. However, they are always
documented for ensuring that nothing is missed. Such requests generated are
subject to the change control and configuration control processes. Time and
cost estimates for the changes are required information that is required prior
to submitting them to approval process. Configuration management is an
essential part of the integrated change control. Configuration control focuses
on the specifications of deliverables and the processes. Change control s focus is on the identification of changes, documenting and controlling
changes. Thus change control along with configuration control helps achieve
goals that include the ability to communicate the change requests and what are
the approved ones to all the stakeholders. They provide the opportunity to
validate the changes and thereby improve the project by considering the impact
of these changes. It helps with the identifying the changes and their impacts
to the baselines.
Configuration identification, configuration status accounting and configuration
verification and audit are aspects of configuration management that needs to be
taken into account.
Configuration identification activities should include selection and
identification of a specific item of product configuration. All the changes,
document updates related to this product is tagged by the configuration
identification. The status accounting part is a list of approved configuration
identifications and status of approved changes to the configuration as well as
if these are implemented or not. Verification and audit ensure that the changes
are registered, assessed for appropriateness and the time and cost estimates,
tracked and the implementation is done and verified.
The change approval authority is, quite often laid with the project manager;
for the large parts of project areas anyway. The authorized areas will be
specified in the roles and responsibilities document. For all the other areas,
a change control board (CCB) is empowered to take decisions on the requested
changes. The authority of a CCB is also is clearly defined in the documents.
Approved changes will have cost estimates, activity sequence, schedule dates,
resource requirements, etc. worked out so that changes to the relevant
documents could be made effectively. Overall the action areas under this
integrated change control process cover the following areas.
One of the foremost category of actions is to prevent any uncontrolled changes.
Influencing of all factors that may prevent this control is of topmost
priority. Only approved changes are applied and applied systematically.
Determining the need and validity of the change request as well as assessing
the impact in terms of time and cost are another essential set of activities.
As a follow up what needs to be done is to ensure that the approved changes
have actually been applied. As a consequence the changes in the baselines
should be confirmed to be valid. Releasing only approved changes to the project
management plan and the project documents can ensure that. Review, approval or
rejection of preventive and corrective actions is another vital set of actions
under the change control process. One really crucial area is to ensure that
changes are applied through to all the relevant documents. If there is a
schedule change requested, that may have consequences on cost, risks, quality,
staffing plans. Unless all of these changes have been incorporated,
unpredictability can get introduced into the plan documents. Consequently
documenting the complete impact of a change requests is very important too. An
integrated management to the control of changes thus is vital to the success of
a project.

Monitor and Control Project Inputs

Puneet Kuthiala, PMP, ASQ CMQ/OE — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 21:33:40 +0000

Introduction
Monitor and control projects process is used for measuring if there are
differences in the current project performance with the planned one. This
monitoring needs to be frequent enough to be effective. Measurements tell you
if the deviations are significant. If they are actions are required to get the
project back on track. The changes from the planned progress triggers change
requests as the main set of outputs from this process. Changes that are
approved cause changes to be made in the project management plans and project
documents. Expert judgment is used to process the inputs and generate the
change requests and the necessary updates to the documentation. The inputs that
are used by the experts include the project management plan and performance
reports. These tell you what was required or expected; as detailed in the
project management plan. The performance reports clearly establish what is
actually happening with the project.
The project management planused as inputs at this stage has a range of outputs that are useful to the
monitoring and control of projects process. The important issues detailed here
are the life cycle selected for the project and the processes that are applied
to the phases. The project management plan details how work will be carried out
to reach the project objectives. Project management team may tailor processes
to be used and the level that is relevant for each of these processes. Tools &
techniques used to implements such processes and how these processes will be
used are also documented. Changes are an important part of the monitoring and
control of projects process. A change management plan that details how changes
will be monitored and controlled are also part of the project management plan.
maintenance of performance baseline is relevant too. Configuration management
and communication plans are important to this process as the control loop
depends on how the change requests are approved and hence need to be
communicated to appropriate authority and the approvals need to trickle down to
the implementing team.
How baselinesare to be maintained is an important bit of information for this process as the
changes affect the performance baselines and maintaining their integrity is
very important to the on-going measurements, monitoring and control. The
baselines that are important and maintained as per the project management plan
are the scope, schedule and the cost performance baselines. These baselines are
the initial references that define what was intended to be done in the project.
The subsidiary plans have an influence on the monitoring and the control
aspects. These subsidiary plans are scope and requirements plans, schedule and
cost management plans. The scope and requirements plans provide details of the
initial conditions. The schedule and cost plans are the designed time
utilization and expenses plan of the project. Quality and the process
improvement plans define the important aspect of quality of the product,
services or the intended outcome. Risk management plan has the picture of
assessed risks. Any changes in the situation then become easy to capture. The
balance subsidiary plans of HR, communication and procurement management are
support plans and serve as the initial reference.
Performance reports, as prepared by the project team at defined monitoring points in time, capture both the positives and the
negatives of the project progress. Thus while achievements like activities
completed, milestones achieved are recorded so are issues and problems that
come up. The issues and problems directly point to the changes that are
happening or are likely to come up. Thus besides current status, significant
accomplishments, scheduled activities, forecasts and issues are recorded.
Forecasts are significant in that they provide an estimate of where things are
going after the effects of latest changes are incorporated.
The enterprise environmental factorsthat have an impact on the monitor and control project executions include,
among others, governmental and industry standards, company work authorization
system and approval structure as well as stakeholder risk tolerances. The
project information management system is a big influencing factor as well.
Regulations from regulatory bodies such as safety, environmental, etc. as well
as the product related standards such as quality, workmanship standards, etc.
are factors of the governmental and industry environments. Project information
management systems will provide support by way of automated tool sets for
storage, retrieval, quick search of information, configuration management,
scheduling tools, web based help such as collaboration sites or even Wiki
sites.
Organizational process assets that are significant to this process include financial control procedures.
These typically cover time reporting, expenditure reviews and standard contract
provisions. Other process assets that may matter are issues and defect
management system, risk control procedures, communication requirements, etc.
Risk control procedures that cover risk categories, probability definition and
impact as well as the probability and impact matrix. Process information
database also influences the actions in this process. Lessons learned database
is always useful and helps determine the best possible action.

Development of Project management Plan Inputs II

Puneet Kuthiala, PMP, ASQ CMQ/OE — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 09:32:58 +0000

Introduction
Project management plan integrates several subsidiary plans and baselines. This
set of four articles discusses the inputs to developing a project management
plan. Of these the first three deals with the subsidiary plans. The part 1 of
the set covers scope and requirement management plans and the schedules and
cost management plans. This article is going to discuss the quality management,
process improvement pan and the HR plans.
Subsidiary Plans on Quality and HR
The quality management plan describes how the organization s quality policy will be implemented. This plan details how the project
management tea will implement the quality processes. The quality management
plan provide the specific details to the project management plan on how to
administer quality assurance, quality control and performance improvement
processes. The details used in the plan are decided by the nature of the
project. Besides, the organization s own experience with managing quality decides the level of details as well as
format of reporting documents, standards, etc. The size and/or complexity of
the project may be such that a broadly framed plan is good enough. Similar
considerations decide if the plan needs to be formal or an informal document.
There is a need for a formal review of the quality management plan very early
in the planning process. That ensures the quality plan is based on accurate
information. The quality inputs has a benefit going back to the other plans
including the master plan of project management plan. This is that the quality
inputs can help reduce costs and schedule overruns. These are the two major
bugbears the project management team fights against right through the project
lifecycle. Quality metric define many attributes that define the quality of the
product or service and ensure quality assurance and control processes to be
carried out accurately. Quality checklists are another set of tools that help
implement these quality processes.
A cornerstone of quality philosophy is that if you have a quality process the
outcomes of that process will be of good quality. Given that, one of the
significant processes one has to undertake to keep improving quality is to keep
tuning the process that delivers an outcome. The aim of theprocess improvement planis to address precisely this area of the quality concern. The prime aim of this
plan is to categorically detail what needs to be analyzed about a process. The
aim of the analysis should be to identify the pieces that enhance a process.
The enhancement should always be addressed to reduce the variability of the
outcome. In general terms the areas to be considered for analyzing are
processing boundaries, process configuration, process metrics and targets for
improved performance. The purpose of the process, the start and end conditions,
inputs/outputs and data required, the process owner and the stakeholders define
the boundaries of the process. Process configuration I a graphic representation
of the process steps and interfaces that facilitates the process analysis.
Process metric are the significant measurements, used with control limits of a
process. Targets define the targets for process improvements.
The human resources plan provides the necessary inputs on how the human
resources for the project needs to be defined, staffed, managed and controlled.
A release plan also is part of this HR plan. Some of the significant things
covered under this plan are the roles & responsibilities, project organization
chart, staffing management plan and staff release plan. the roles and
responsibilities define the roles in the project organization. It also defines
the skills and competencies needed for these roles. Authority available to the
roles, as applicable, are also spelled out.
Project organization chart defines the structure, reporting and communication
channels in the project organization. The details depicted will , of course,
depend on the complexity and type of the project. Staffing management plan part
of this HR plan must take care of acquisition, resource calendars, ongoing
management and staff release plans.

Develop Project Charter – Overview

Puneet Kuthiala, PMP, ASQ CMQ/OE — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:32:12 +0000

Introduction
The project charter is the forma document that authorizes and initiates a
project or a particular phase. It includes the initial requirements as
stakeholders see it and the outcomes they expectations from it.
The Projects Charter and its Development
Besides being the initiation document of the project or a specific phase of it,
the charter also defines the relationship between the performing organization
and the requesting organization. If the requesting organization is an outside
agency such as a customer, there would be contracts guiding this relationship
and the highlights would be part of the charter. The charter also should
provide the project manager with the appropriate authority of marshalling the
resources necessary and applying the same according to the need of the
project.
The project manager usually gets assigned to the project even before the
project is formally initiated. He/she needs to be involved in drawing up of the
charter as this is a crucial working document that authorizes the parameters of
his/her role. A signature on the charter by the project initiator formalizes
the document. Usually the initiator is someone outside the project. A sponsor,
even a steering committee or a formal PMO department n the organization
initiates the charter development, but it may actually get delegated to the
project manager to complete the details.
There may be any number of reasons calling for staring of a project. These
include internally perceived business needs or a response to external
developments. Either way the whole process will start typically with needs
analysis, a business case or simply a description of the situation that
necessitates the start of the specific project. Thus this project statement of
works and any business case developed from it are the essential inputs used to
develop the charter. The enterprise environmental factors, organizational
process assets would determine the way the charter is developed. Between these
two items all the formats, standards, methodology to be used and the collective
knowledge of the organization are included.
Expert judgment processes these details and comes up with the charter that
clearly states what exactly is to be delivered by way of the project who is
authorized to manage the same and the boundaries within which he/she must
operate. Once signed by the appropriate authority within the performing
organization, this becomes the formal authorization document for the project.
Project manager s appointment and his role is also authorized by the same.

Perform Integrated Change Inputs

Puneet Kuthiala, PMP, ASQ CMQ/OE — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 09:31:17 +0000

Introduction
Project management plan, work performance reports are the main inputs to the
process. Additionally the enterprise environmental factors and organizational
process assets provide directions based on the context, the ecosystem in which
the organization exists as well as the collective wisdom that has been
generated within it influence and moderate actual actions taken. The project
management plan provides the frame of reference for how the project should be
behaving. Work performance reports provide the data that tells us how exactly
the project is behaving. That difference gives rise to the change requests that
are to be controlled and applied correctly to keep the project going in the
right direction.
Inputs to the Integrated change control
Project management planprovides the plan according to which the project is to be carried out. This it
integrates several other subsidiary plans that are relevant to the project and
several baselines that define the way the project should progress to achieve
its goals. The baselines are used as guides to infer if deviations from them
have occurred and what to do about them to bring the project back on track.
These baselines are scope baseline, schedule baseline and the cost performance
baselines. These are the references used right through the project life. These
keep getting updated due to changes that are necessary. These changes are
approved by the assigned authorities and the baselines get updated to reflect
the current situation. Currency is always up to the last monitoring point, when
a set of updates would have been released. These baselines are often integrated
into one combine performance baseline and earned value management techniques
are used to determine if deviations have occurred.
Subsidiary management plans that may be affected include scope and requirements
management plans, quality and process improvement plans, schedule and cost
management plans and risk management plans. Additional plans that may be
impacted include the communication, HR and procurement plans. All of these
being interlinked and mutually dependent, any changes in one will have
consequent effects on one or more of other plans. One of the major functions of
the integrated change control is to ensure changes ripple through all the
relevant areas and are thus a complete change.
Work performance reportsare generated and distributed at the frequent and planned monitoring points in
the project schedule. These reports collect information about deliverable
status, schedule progress and costs incurred. Depending on the nature of the
project and the organization other performance indicators may also be
collected. Based on the communications plan, these reports are distributed to
the interested parties.
Next step of the process is the generation of change requests. These may be generated by any of the stakeholders and could even be verbal,
but are always documented completely. These are generated when issues are found
in the project progress. The change requests are to take care of necessary
corrections to policies, procedures, scope, cost, schedule, quality or any
other relevant issues. The nature of the changes could be of following four
types. Preventive, corrective actions, defect repair or simply updates to
documentation are the actions required. Preventive actions define changes
required to prevent deviations noticed now while corrective active change is
meant to correct problems so that performance remains on track. Defect repair
takes care of one off situation which can be repaired. Updates are actions that
cause changes in plans and other controlled documents.
The enterprise environmental factorsthat can influence the integrated change control process include the project
information management system. Scheduling software tools, configuration
management tool, automated information collection and retrieval system and all
such IT tools affect the change control processes. Following organizational
process assets have an influence on the change control actions. Change control
procedures, change approvals and the authorizations of issuing such changes,
process database, project files and configuration management knowledge base are
the areas where formats, standards, knowledge, etc. apply to actions to be
taken.

Monitor and Control Project Overview

Puneet Kuthiala, PMP, ASQ CMQ/OE — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 21:30:39 +0000

Introduction
Once a project gets going it needs constant monitoring to track, review and
regulating the progress so that the performance remains within the planned
range. Measuring, collecting of performance information and distributing them
to the right people so that corrections can be made constitute the main
objective of this process.
A look at the process
The inputs that must be processed include the project management plan,
performance reports, enterprise environmental factors ad the organizational
process assets. Expert judgment is the only tool that can be used to process
these inputs to outputs required for controlling and regulating the project
execution. Change requests, updates to the project management plan and other
related documents are the outputs that can be used in regulating the project.
The performance data that is distributed is used to asses if a significant
trend is developing, which indicate the project going off the planned track. If
that is established, then preventive , corrective actions or defect repair
actions are to be decided on to apply to the process. Opportunities to improve
the process are always looked at. Continuous monitoring is an essential part of
being able to find these health indicators. In general then, following things
are the concerns of the process. Measuring the current performance in
comparison to the performance planned in the project management plan is the
prime concern. Analysis of the performance data to decide if preventive actions
or corrective actions are required to bring back the performance to the desired
region is of concern too. This monitored information is maintained right
through to project completion.
The progress status, measurements and forecasting are supported through these
monitored data and is part of the process. Forecasts that are useful for
updating the schedule and cost information are also provided through the
process. When the changes are implemented, this process monitors and confirms
that the changes have been implemented. Project documents that may need updates
include forecasts, performance reports and issue logs. Forecasts indicate what
the overall time and costs will be with the changes implemented. These
forecasts are a useful tool to get a sense of what is in store by the time the
project is done. Cumulative set of performance reports again gives you a sense
of how the project has performed over time. The issue logs has details of all
issues. Besides the historical perspective, the issue logs is a record of how
any particular issue developed and what was done about it due to approved
change requests. The document updates right up to the current instant is
essential.

Develop Project management Plan Tools & Techniques

Puneet Kuthiala, PMP, ASQ CMQ/OE — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 09:30:02 +0000

Introduction
The tool to be used in developing the project plan is essentially just one. It
is the expert judgment. The kind of experts to bring in to the development task
and their expertise levels will depend on the type of project and availability
of these experts of course. The availability of experts who can effectively
contribute to the plan development will also determine if outside help should
be sought. The in-house pool of experts grows in numbers as well as their
expertise levels as the organization works with projects of similar nature and
in similar technological areas. Difficulties may arise when enough resources
are not available and the external experts cannot be accessed for competitive
reasons.
Areas where Judgment is needed
The project management plan must include sufficient technical and management detailsfor the executors to take effective decisions during the execution of the
project. They would also need sufficient clarity in these details so that the
completeness of the outcome, variance and such other aspects are clear to them.
It is the precision of the relatedprocessesthat determine these aspects of the deliverables/outcomes. If the processes are
accurate enough, the quality of the outcomes/deliverables will also be ensured.
What is precise, accurate and above all effective are most often judgment calls
and takes the experts to define the details and even decide what s relevant. While standard and industry accepted practices may be available,
each project can do with some tweaking of these processes based on the type of
the project, its complexity, specific technology area and so on. The tinkering
necessary due to these actors can only be handled by subject natter experts.
That will contain any risks involved with making these changes. Without
effective modifications by experts who know the inside out of such processes
you may endanger the project outcome.
Configuration management determines many a issues related to carrying out a project. One of the
important aspects of configuration management is due to technological changes.
Typical decision issue in such situations are to decide how many generations of
technological changes to you keep a backward compatibility. Why this is
important is that depending on the nature of the technology, customers/users
may have products incorporating multiple such generations with them. It is also
possible that sub-systems used in making system may change. So an expert
assessment is certainly required to determine what configurations are to be
managed. Decision issues may need to take into account not only development
aspects but even after sales services, warranty maintenance, etc. So the levels
of CM to be done in the project will need to be specified clearly.
One of the very important issues that need expert judgment is the need for
human resources. Not only the need for actual resources but also their exact
skills required should be determined. This is a crucial requirement in most
projects but more so in forward boundaries of technology. There the decisions
regarding the personnel requirement can actually make or break a project. The
HR management plans take guidance from the details in his master plan and
develop it further to actually mobilize these resources and get them into the
project team.
Like any quality processes after the main process is designed you need to
design a feedback and change process so the process outputs are as designed.
The feedback and the correction loop determine the corrections needed on the
output and the drifts seen in them. This whole mechanism works well if proper
feedback in the right manner is done. In this planning and documentation
processes one need to determinewhat documents should trigger the changes. The changes will need to be through the change control process to ensure there are no superfluous changes that affect the master plan.

Direct and Manage Project Outputs

Puneet Kuthiala, PMP, ASQ CMQ/OE — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 21:29:28 +0000

Introduction
The project execution is characterized by the deliverables of course. As it is
being executed it is the work performance data that is an indicator of how the
project is progressing. Depending on how the progress is there may be a need
for preventive and corrective actions. You may simply get away by some defect
repair work too. These requirements will come up because of change requests,
particularly the ones that are approved. These approved change requests will
lead to changes in the project management plan as well as other project
documents. These items as a group constitute the outputs of this direct and
manage the project execution planning process.
Outputs of the planning process
Approved deliverables are the products, services or results that must come out
of a project or a specific phase of a project. A documented list of such a set
of deliverables is the reference against which a project is measured. Work
information or the measurement data of how the various parts of the project are
going is a very useful set of data. These results such as deliverables status,
schedule progress and costs incurred are a direct consequence of the
performance f the project. These are collected at regular intervals and act as
the health status of the project at these monitoring points. All the planning
usually is done under ideal conditions and tempered by the known threats to the
ideal conditions. In any practical situation, it is impossible to see all the
conditions that may affect the workings of a project over significant period of
time. Changes then are a part of the project execution life. These changes will
necessitate changes in the scope, schedule, costs and practically all areas of
a project.
The real challenge lies in the management of these changes. What is really
relevant, what would be the effects on the project and how best to incorporate
the changes into the project management plan are very crucial and important
issues. The first step in that process is to keep track of the changes and the
ones that have been approved. The changes, through the integrated change
management process, get integrated into the project management plans. This plan
has to be an evolving document to be able to respond to real life situations.
The changes may also result in the need for preventive and corrective actions.
One may even be able to get away with just some defect repair actions needed to
the deliverable, policies, procedures and so on.
The changes, thus, can affect every part of the project management plan
including the subsidiary plans. The parts of the project management plan that ll need updates will include updates to requirements, schedule and cost
management plans. Quality management plans could be affected too as could the
risk management plans. Thus the project baseline may need changes to it. Human
resources plans, procurement plans and the communications plans that support
all other activities may need changes in them. Depending on the nature of the
project or the nature of the organization there may be other areas that are
affected and need to be taken into account.
Several other projects related documents may need updates. Regular updates
based on the changes that have been approved is the only way one can keep
control on a project as otherwise project runaway is easily possible. Some of
the documents that need update to include the requirements’ documents, project
logs, risk register and the stakeholder register. Actual updates may affect
other documents too and type of the project and the type of the performing
organization can make other updates necessary. Changes in the requirements’
document can lead to changes in the scope statement, WBS and the WBS
dictionary, etc. The project logs that include issues and assumptions will need
careful updates when necessary. Risk and stakeholder registers may need updates
at times too.

Develop Project Charter- Inputs 5

Puneet Kuthiala, PMP, ASQ CMQ/OE — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 09:28:38 +0000

Introduction
Besides the project statement of works and the business case establishing the
need for the project, one other input required is contracts, if relevant. The
enterprise environmental factors and the organizations process assets are some
other inputs you would need to consider while developing the project charter.
The SOW and the business case aspects have been discussed in part 1 of these
articles. The relevance and implications of the contract, the environmental
factors and the process assets will be discussed in the part 2 of this
article.
Project Charter Inputs
A contract is a document that is part of the project when it is initiated by an external
customer. Contracts define the complete relationship between the initiator of
the project and the performing organization. A SOW defines the requirements of
the work to be performed under the contract while the actual contract document
lays down the legal and other requirements. The legal aspect would typically
cover the time and cost requirements, disputes and their redressal. Grievance
redressal covers even the mechanisms such as arbitration and mediation and how
that would be managed. Termination of a project without assigning a reason and
for a reason should also be clearly specified. Usually it is about what kind of
notice period will be provided and the mechanisms of payments for work
undertaken and not delivered until the notice period.
Enterprise environmental factorsaffect and influence many an activity in the organization. This is the kind of
boundary or the ecosystem in which all decisions are taken and the kind of
decisions that are take are obviously the result of his environment. The
specific factors that would be relevant to the development of project charter
include governmental and/or industrial standards and regulations,
organizational infrastructure and marketplace conditions. There may be other
factors that are relevant depending on the type of project, the
knowledge/domain area and many other aspects specific organization.
Similarly the Organizational process assets that represent the collective learning influences the way things are done while
developing the project charter. The specific items that have an impact on the
decision process are the standardized processes, policies of the organization
and standards of defining policies are a set of factors that are relevant. If
there is an existing template for the project charter and an other relevant
area. The other important factor is the accumulated knowledge base that really
represents the collected knowledge over time. As with the environmental factors
it s possible that there are other factors that have an impact/influence. That
would depend on the specific organization as well as specific area the
organization is operating in during he project.

Development of Project management Plan Inputs III

Puneet Kuthiala, PMP, ASQ CMQ/OE — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 21:28:10 +0000

Introduction
Of the several subsidiary plans the scope and requirements management, schedule
and cost management plans, quality management including process improvement
plans and the HR management plans have been discussed in two other parts of
this set of four articles. What remains to be discussed of the subsidiary plans
that are used as inputs to the project management plan are the communication
management plan, the risk management plan and the procurement management plans.
These are going to be discussed in the following.
Subsidiary plans as input
Like most of the plans developed the communications managementplan could be formal or informal, detailed or brief depending on the needs of
the project being handled. It will usually contain guidelines and applicable
templates related to communications events such as project meetings, project
team meetings, e-meetings and emails. Issues related to project websites such
as a collaboration software and other project related software also could be
included. Wiki sites used quite often these days may also be covered. Other
items that come out of the communication plan would include at a top level
information to be communicated along with the format, content, the details and
even the language to be used are specified. This is tempered by the need of the
stakeholders. The rationale for distributing the information and the time frame
and periodicity are included. A person who is the owner of the process, who is
responsible for distributing the information, is specified. A person authorized
to release confidential information also needs to be clearly mentioned. The
distribution list or the recipients should be listed along with details like
the means (technology) of communicating to them. A graphical aid that
illustrates the complete communication flow is also not uncommon. Besides
budget allocations, time, cost is included as a guide to authorized allocations
to the communications activities. Escalation and the process of modifying the
plan also will have to be specified too.
The risk management planis part of the perform the risk analysis process. This subsidiary plan defines
the structure of the risk analysis process and also how to perform the risk
management tasks. The plan must include the roles of responsibilities for
performing the risk analysis tasks. Schedule of risk management activities,
risk categories, definitions of probability and impact as well as the
probability and impact matrix is specified in the plan. Stakeholders risk tolerance is updated in view of the risk analysis, if required.
Methodology that defines sources of data, tools and approaches to be used for
risk management of the project is defined. Risk analysis schedules are decided
and integrated into the main the schedule. Risk categories list or a risk
breakdown structure (RBS) is used for identifying risks accurately. Definitions
of risk probabilities and their impact are arranged in a matrix to have a ready
recokner of the impact of risks on the project. Besides, prioritizing becomes
easy. Formats of risk reports are defined in the plan. This plan also sets down
tracking activities how risk activities will be recorded, used for updating for
the sake of process assets as well as how to audit the risk management
processes.
One other vital and crucial subsidiary plan is the procurement management plan. It is easy to see how timely acquisition of components, sub systems or
services can help run the project in a timely manner and break it, if
procurement fails. A procurement management plan manages all aspects of
procurements starting from development of procurement documents right through
to closure of a procurement contract. The plan lays down guidelines for using
an appropriate contract type, standardized procurement documents to be used,
risks involved and coordination of procurement actions with project activities,
etc. The last is possibly the most crucial part of the procurement activities.
This includes activities like matching buy lead times with the project
schedule, managing multiple sellers, making sure the project at the seller is
progressing as needed and so on. Finding sellers, taking them through a
pre-qualification process if required, etc. is part of the activities covered
under the plan.