Category Archives: Project Management Body of Knowledge

14 – Definition and Skills of a Project Manager

Project Management Body of Knowledge

– See All The PMBOK Lessons – 

Definition and Skills of a Project ManagerThe Skills of a Project Manager

We’ve previously looked at the different environments that projects might operate in, and the types of projects that will happen and occur. We’ve looked at the reasons for initiating those projects and many other things in the lead up to the start of a project. Now we’re looking at the role of a project manager, and this is so important because the project manager ultimately is the glue that gels everything together and helps deliver that business value through a project. In other words the project manager plays a critical role in the leadership of a project team in order to achieve those project objectives.

The project manager the role also changes to fit an organization. There’ll be many different project types and styles, and many different organizational ways of working. This includes varying degrees of authority and responsibilities depending on the type of organization.

We might have things like working before the project initiation, for example tailoring the ideas to executives, coming up with a business case to help initiate that project and start with a Project Charter. After the project happens we might be measuring business benefits and making sure that we’ve actually delivered what we said we were going to deliver, and that we got the business value that we said we were going to get.

This is before and after, not to mention all the things that go on during the execution and planning, monitoring and controlling of the project itself. There’s a great analogy that the PMBOK guide gives us, and that is likening the Project Manager role to an orchestra. For example, in an orchestra your overall objective is to play beautiful music or a beautiful song. With a project it’s not a song but you’re delivering value to your audience and to your customers – simiarly an orchestra is helping change their mood you’re making them melancholy or making them excited or happy through your music. You’re delivering business value through a project but you you need someone to manage that entire Orchestra, and to manage that entire project team. You’re not going to do it all alone, you’re not going to do it by yourself.

As the project manager you’re going to have team leaders for each different section in the same way that you’ve got a trumpet section, a saxophone section, a timpani or drums or percussion section, and then the actual instruments themselves playing that music. Just like the team members within your project teams leading up to the project manager that are delivering your business value. The project manager also helps to find those roles, for example those team leader roles, the roles that you know you will need to deliver that value within the project, securing those team members and helping fulfill those project objectives and we do that initially through the project Charter, which is a document that helps build a business case, an initial idea, the reason why we’re starting the project, the initial stakeholders, initial risks and maybe even a potential small amount of scope, a small flightplan idea to kick off a project and initiate that project.

Then we actually run the project through the Project Management Plan. This document gets baselined for a snapshot or a moment in time and then it gets adjusted as the project goes along, to how things are going. Like the orchestra, a large project might have more than a hundred project team members and it’s all led by the project manager. They need to coordinate those team members who may fulfill many different roles, in different industries such as IT, design, development, communications, testing and you’ve got the integration of these environments.

All of those things need to be thought of and aligned when you’re in the project manager role.

Even though a project manager doesn’t need all of that actual information themselves – they don’t need to be able to play every single instrument – it does have help to have a little bit of technical knowledge. For example, the conductor will need to know how to read music, and they’ll need to know if someone’s going too fast too slow, or is in the right section or the wrong section at a given time. So for that they need a little bit of technical knowledge about the environment that they’re in, whether it’s IT, or in construction, or in automotive. Along with that technical knowledge, even though it doesn’t have to be vast, part of it is influencing, communicating and managing. All of that is basically what we would call leading, and leadership as a project manager is to help make those things happen.

Sometimes you have to cajole people into trying to do these things, maybe it’s not their usual job but you do need them to get things done even though you’re not their usual manager. It can be very difficult. But these are the skills that you need.

For those reasons the project manager is quite a different role to other functional managers. For example, you’ve got your functional manager who might provide oversight for a functional business unit, and this is just the usual BAU, business as usual. There’s an Operations Manager who is responsible for ensuring that business operations are efficient. Operations managers really are streamlining things and helping things run as best as they possibly can. The project manager being on a project that takes us from one state to another desired state (hopefully better) and a project manager is assigned to lead the team responsible for delivering that change in business value.

– David McLachlan

– See All The PMBOK Lessons – 

13 – Three Levels of Integration

Project Management Body of Knowledge

– See All The PMBOK Lessons – 

Three Levels of IntegrationThree Parts To Integration

There are three parts to integration within project management, and integration is the first process group that you’ll come across in the PMBOK guide.

The project sponsor usually kicks off a project through a business need or a business charter and they are also usually the ones funding the project. You will need to understand the strategic objectives from them and then ensure alignment of your project to meet those project objectives.

It is continuous communication that you’ll need to go through with the project sponsor to make sure that you are always going to be on track to delivering that business value.

Underneath that we’ve got the project team and the team members, and all the different moving parts of a project. We need to work with that team to focus on what’s really essential. We’re integrating all the processes, all the knowledge and all of the people involved to make it happen.

When we’re integrating something, whether it’s the project management processes or the different knowledge areas of a project, or the teams that we were talking about before, there are three levels of integration that you’ll come across whether in everyday life or as a project manager.

As a project manager we’re using a process level of integration, such as the processes outlined in the project management body of knowledge (the PMBOK guide). Knowing when they overlap and knowing when to use some or to discard some is important.

Cognitive level of integration involves a deep understanding of all of the processes the skills and the tools to drive a project success.

Context level of integration is where we’re changing the way a process is used, given a different context, situation or scenario.

So we’ve got processes up the top, we understand them deeply in the middle with a cognitive level of integration, and lastly we know when to change them or when to modify them at the context level, because we know them so deeply and so well. And that is the ultimate aim for you as a project manager, and a person doing the PMP.

There are different levels of complexity with integration – you might have system behavior, the interdependencies of components and their systems and how they interact and are related. This can get quite complex. Human behavior is always complex as well, and if someone’s having a bad day they may act differently. All these things are diverse and individuals are very different and groups can have set ways of working that you need to be aware of when you are managing a project.

Lastly ambiguity and uncertainty of emerging issues. These things can come out of left field, and they do. You will come across this quite often – something will happen maybe it’s a regulatory change, maybe it is a business change, maybe it’s an organizational change but something will happen and you will need to manage the ambiguity that arises out of that when you’re going through your project.

– David McLachlan

– See All The PMBOK Lessons – 

12 – Politics and Power and Getting Things Done

Project Management Body of Knowledge, , , , , ,

– See All The PMBOK Lessons – 

Types of Power

Politics and Power and Getting Things Done

In a project manager role you will experience politics and power, and you’ll need to understand both of those things in order to get things done in an organization.

“Leadership” and “management” involve getting things done, but to do that a project manager needs to understand how an organization works. What is the culture? And what are the unwritten laws of getting things done? That will give you a higher chance of success, and that’s where you need to have a hefty serve of emotional intelligence to understand the politics and the power sources, and how to use those to your advantage. You’ll need to influence and guide and help deliver that business value as a project manager.

There’s a great list from the PMBOK guide on the types of power that you will come across.

  • You’ve got positional power, where you’re directly in the position of power as a manager or a leader.
  • Informational power, where you have information and you don’t need to share that with everyone – they need to come to you for that information.
  • Referent power, where you’re saying “The CEO asked me to do this, so everyone gather round and let’s get this done.” – we’re referring to someone else’s credibility.
  • Situational power, where maybe there’s a crisis involved and now all of a sudden we have more power because we need to really urgently get something done.
  • Personal power, using charm and attraction.
  • Relational power, where you are using your network of people
  • Expert power, where you have expertise in a certain area.
  • Rewards, where you can give rewards for certain things and that makes people want to do things for you.
  • Coercive power, where you might say “Something bad will happen if you don’t do this,” you’re coercing people into doing what you need.
  • Ingratiating power, where you’re using flattery – “Look how wonderful you’re doing, such a great job, you’re a wonderful person because you’re helping me out.”

All of these are valid, and you’ll find that when you’re aware of them you’ll see them more and more in your own workplace, and even in your day to day life. Within your family, within your friendship groups, it’s really great to be aware of.

And there are more.

  • You have pressure based power, limiting that freedom of choice.
  • Guilt based power, where maybe you did something for them and now you’re putting a bit of a guilt on them.
  • Persuasive power where you’re simply providing the right arguments, and lastly;
  • Avoiding power, where you’re simply refusing to participate.

These types of power will be on the PMP exam you’ll usually encounter them in some way shape or form simply because they’re part of everyday life and getting things done.

Types of Power

There are also different personalities that you’ll come across in your life as a project manager, and they are:

  • Authentic,
  • Courteous,
  • Creative,
  • Cultural where you’re measuring the sensitivity to other’s cultural values,
  • Emotional, being able to perceive other’s emotions quite easily,
  • Intellectual, which is just human intelligence and management practice
  • Political, understanding the political environment and how to make things happen,
  • Service-oriented where we’re serving others, maybe as a servant leader.
  • Social,
  • Systemic, where we’re understanding the need to build systems around things and ways of work and making it easier for people through processes as opposed to just forcing things through.

Those are the types of power and types of personalities you will find in your career and on the PMP Exam.

– David McLachlan

– See All The PMBOK Lessons – 

10 – The Project Manager’s Sphere of Influence

Project Management Body of Knowledge, , , ,

Project Managers Sphere of InfluenceThe Project Manager’s Sphere of Influence

When you are working as a project manager, you don’t necessarily own a team of your own inside the business. Instead, you’re usually coming in and using business resources to help you deliver something, and they may not report to you on a daily basis.

Because of that it’s very interesting to look at the project manager’s sphere of influence, because it really does vary and it is different to a normal manager’s sphere of influence. For example, the normal manager will have direct influence over their team – they can pretty much hire or fire, they can tell their people exactly what to do with real consequences. Sure, a project manager can in some ways do that as well, but it’s much more prominent as a functional manager will have direct control over those people.

A project manager will need to have influence over the project team, and the managers and the resource managers for those people. But it extends out even further. They need to work with and ensure influence and responsibility for the project sponsors – who we’re delivering that business value to. There are also governing bodies around the project such as the steering committee of the project. There’s project management organizations or PMOs – all of these within an organization will need to be worked with, and you’ll need to provide information make sure that they’re working with you not against you, and ensure there’s little friction so that you can help get those things delivered nice and smoothly.

And that’s all part of being in the project manager role.

Beyond that we’ve got stakeholders of the project, for example suppliers who are supplying either resources or tools or things or information into the project. The end customer and the end users as well – all of these people will ultimately be influenced by the work that we do and so are subject to the project manager’s influence over the project.

A project manager needs to lead the project team and meet the project objectives, and meet or manage their stakeholder’s expectations. If things need to change over time a project manager will need to use their skills to ensure that stakeholders support the project instead of going against the project (which definitely can happen if things go sideways) and even to support the project decisions even when they don’t agree with them sometimes.

That can be a very challenging situation but it will be something that you do need to work through. It was noted in the PMBOK guide that the top 2% of project managers demonstrate superior relationship and communication skills, while displaying a positive attitude.

Even when things get tough, they still are able to display a positive attitude and work through those issues in a positive way. This is so they can keep those good stakeholder relationships as well, and work through those things in the future. It’s very, very important.

A project manager must also have influence over the organisation, working with other project managers in the organization. Maybe you’ve got 10 projects going on at the same time and maybe there are different resources required – this project needs some of your resources and now you have to ensure that you’re using your power and influence and your skills to make sure that your stuff still gets done at the same time as helping out other projects around the organization.

It can be a tough situation, but it is something that you will need to be aware of. Other projects may impact yours due to demands on the same resources, funding (maybe they need money and it’s coming out of the same bucket of money), impacts of the change to the business. Sometimes the business can only handle so much change going into it, such as training and communication and process changes that need to be done, and they have their business as usual work that they need to do as well, so sometimes they just run out of capacity to take it all on.

As project management capability is increased it’s also important throughout the organization that everyone is operating from the same playbook, the same strategic steps, the same tactical steps (such as processes that you go through to complete a project), so that everyone is is on the same page and knows what you’re talking about. It’s a much nicer shortcut to working with others when everyone is working from the same process steps.

But that is not all.

The project manager needs to work with the industry as well. We need to stay informed about current industry trends, no matter what industry you’re in all of these things are constantly changing and it’s up to us to be aware of what’s happening in our industry because they might impact our project. Something could come out of the blue and completely change the landscape, and we need to be aware of that.

We might have product technology development, new market niches. You might have broader economic forces, for example maybe the stock market is starting to fall, or maybe money is flowing out of this particular industry. We’ve got new tools, new skills or disciplines (for example Agile coming into IT around 15 years ago and now into project management, and also into operations management).

We’ve got new competitors, new threats and of course new laws and regulations. We seen our fair share of of regulation changes over the last few years in almost every industry.

But that is still not all.

A project manager needs to influence and be aware of their own professional discipline as well. That means continuing our professional development, continuing to learn, continuing our education and sharing that knowledge, the things that we’ve learned with others within our organization to help everyone sing from the same hymn book, to work from the same process steps. Beyond the organization is helping other organizations improve their way of work and their methods for delivering projects as well. It might include standards for delivering change around the world, whether it’s in your industry or other industries. This is a wonderful thing because now we’re not just helping ourselves, but we’re going out there and helping others where we can as well – we’re developing our project management knowledge, our knowledge in our related profession and we share that at local, global and national levels.

Lastly the project manager’s sphere of influence will occur across disciplines. And that’s part of the real value of project management because project management is a skill set that will sit across almost any industry, because any industry will require to put change into an organization or to go from point A to point B at some point, and to do that you need a project. To do that change you need to manage a project from start to finish. In using a project management process that works across disciplines we can help coach, improve and inspire others in that method to help them get the business value that they need.

– David McLachlan

11 – The Role of the Project Manager

Project Management Body of Knowledge

– See All The PMBOK Lessons – 

The Role of the Project ManagerThe Role of the Project Manager and Leadership Types

Part of managing a project and being a project manager is having the skills and qualities of a leader. The reason for this is because we have to lead people and influence people and help people and smooth over situations, or help go through situations or assist in situations to get the desired result. And all of that comes down to being a leader.

The qualities and skills of a leader according to the PMBOK guide (The project management body of knowledge) for project management is communication. Often what is quoted is nearly 90% of the time a project manager will be communicating with others, helping all those different bits and pieces come together, getting information into the right areas and making sure that communication is taking place.

We also need to be giving feedback constructively and accepting feedback graciously, and managing expectations in the right way. Being a leader also means being respectful, kind, being honest, being loyal and being ethical in the way that we do business. It means giving credit to others where credit is due.

Usually as a leader myself I would prefer to give credit to my team and if something goes wrong then I would take the blame for that, and help improve the process and help coach and improve team members. Taking the blame myself as the leader for anything that goes wrong, while giving praise to everyone when a team effort or even an individual effort goes right.

Being a leader also means being a lifelong learner. Continuing to learn and continuous improvement, being able to sift through massive amounts of information to get to the important information. Wow is that a good one! You’ll see this in the project management tools and techniques for each process as you go through the PMBOK guide – you will see expert judgment and data analysis are actually the top two tools and techniques, along with meetings.

Long story short, if you don’t like meeting with people and sifting through amounts of information and data and communicating a lot then those are the skills that you will need to work on to help do this in the best way possible.

You’ll need critical thinking, and to be service oriented for the people who you’re delivering that business value to.

The Six Types of Leadership

There are many different leadership styles as well.

  • There is the laissez-faire leader, which is a hands-off approach allowing the team to make their own decisions.
  • There is the transactional leader, where we’re focusing on achievements, and “I’ll do this for you if you do this for me,” where we’re transacting instead of maybe doing other management or leadership things.
  • The servant leader will focus on others’ growth and their learning, it’ll be a coaching role but also someone who coaches. They carry food and water for the team (metaphorically) and they will really get in and get their hands dirty. They will facilitate all that communication as opposed to just directing things all the time.
  • There is a transformational leader, a visionary leader, and they’re inspiring and they’re motivational.
  • The charismatic leader is high energy, they’re self-confident and they hold strong convictions. Usually people are drawn to these charismatic leaders because they are naturally people who draw other people to them. That can help them get things done in an organization – which is really great.
  • There is an interactional leadership style, which is a combination of a few – the transactional, transformational and charismatic leadership styles.

The Difference between Leadership and Management

Leadership and management are not the same thing. You have probably heard this before but project managers will need both to pull off the work that they do. For example “management” – even though being a boss instead of a leader could be seen as being a bad thing – sometimes you do need to work on your management skills to manage things and get them done.

Whereas leadership and guiding and coaching and being more visionary, that is also important from a strategic perspective. Seeing the bigger picture for example. Through leadership you’ll be guiding and influencing and collaborating with people, you’ll be focusing on the systems, the broader systems and the structure of things instead of the nitty-gritty.

You’ll be looking at the long term vision, inspiring trust with your people, and looking at the “why”. “Start with why”is that famous book by Simon Sinek. They start with the broader “why” behind things and then work on how and what we’re doing.

Management on the other hand is that smaller day to day nitty-gritty stuff. It’s your near term goals, really getting things done, relying on control such as the direct control you have over your team, and then focusing on the how and when things are getting done instead of just the why. It’s the bottom line, managing that cost and that’s still important. You do need both and you need it in a balance to be a good project manager.

– David McLachlan

– See All The PMBOK Lessons – 

Video Lessons from the Project Management Body of Knowledge

Project Management Body of Knowledge, ,

2_Importance of Project Management

Lessons from the PMBOK Guide

Below you will find all the project management lessons so you can learn all about Project Management. Direct from the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), these lessons will help you navigate the often difficult waters that are a part of completing a project or change in your organisation.

Project Management Introduction, Overview and Basics

Project Management Knowledge Areas to Master

Click each knowledge area below to see multiple videos in each section and learn to master project management.

01 – Project Integration Management

02 – Project Scope Management

03 – Project Schedule Management

04 – Project Cost Management

05 – Project Quality Management

06 – Project Resource Management

07 – Project Communications Management

08 – Project Risk Management

09 – Project Procurement Management

10 – Project Stakeholder Management

Well done for working towards a better career and improving your life and knowledge! Project Management is one of the best overall disciplines to help you navigate difficult organisation situations when you are trying to delivery value and make a positive difference.

– David McLachlan

09 – Enterprise Environmental Factors (EEF) and Organisational Process Assets (OPA)

Project Management Body of Knowledge, ,

EEFs and OPAsEnterprise Environmental Factors and Organisational Process Assets

It’s time to look at the environment in which projects operate.

The environment can really change the way you need to manage a project, and this is why it is included in the PMBOK Guide. The way it is outlined is through two things: Enterprise Environmental Factors (EEFs) or the overall environmental factors involved, and Organizational Process Assets which will help us to operate within the project environment that we’re delivering in.

These are the two main things that you’ll see come up time and time again in each of the project management processes as we go through the PMBOK guide.

Organizational process assets or OPAs could be processes, procedures, policies or a corporate knowledge base. Enterprise environmental factors or EEFs are enterprise conditions, and they’re usually not under the control of the project team (which can make things a little bit difficult) but they still influence, constrain or direct the project.

Let’s have a look at what some of the Internal EEFs are. We’ve got organizational culture, any structure and governance that’s in place, we’ve got the geographic distribution of facilities and resources (are they all in the one place or across multiple states or countries?). We’ve got the actual physical infrastructure, and sometimes the I.T. infrastructure involved. We’ve got the information technology software that we’re using, the resource availability (how available are the resources that we’re needing to help deliver these projects), and of course the capability of all these people (have they delivered projects before? Are they familiar with the process?)

Many different things will influence the internal EEFs. To complicate things there are external EEFs as well.

We’ve got government or industry standards, we’ve got social and cultural influences, marketplace conditions, legal restrictions, cost constraints and financial considerations (do we actually have the money to to do what we need to do?) and physical environmental elements (are we in the right place physically to be able to do these things?). These are just a few examples of enterprise environmental factors or EEFs that will influence and change how you need to deliver your project.

But that’s not the only thing we have to consider. The other side of the coin is our OPAs, our Organizational Process Assets. These are the plans, the processes, policies, procedures, all of these documents and knowledge bases, things that are used by the performing organization that you’re working with and usually delivering into. OPAs will influence the management of the project because we’ll have things like specific organizational standards. You might have certain product or project life cycles that are already used in that organization (such as Agile or Waterfall). You might have pre-approved supplier lists lists or contractual agreements already in place that you need to abide by.

There are knowledge repositories as well – so you might have configuration management knowledge repositories, containing versions of things, of your baselines for your scope or maybe of the cost of the project. Historical information, lessons learned, data repositories for measuring your benefits, project files from previous projects. All of these things will impact your OPAs and your project.

As a project manager you will need to find all this out when you’re delivering a project, so you can make sure that you work within these Organizational Process Assets and ways of working that are already in place.

– David McLachlan

08 – The Influence of Organisational Systems On Your Project

Project Management Body of Knowledge, ,

Influence of Organisational SystemsThe Influence of Organisational Systems on your Project

An organizational system is something that encompasses the whole organisation and involves things like the culture, the governance frameworks in place and the management elements that are already in place.

There are a few things that influence the organisational structure of a company.

The first is governance frameworks.

With governance frameworks we ask, what are the rules that we have in place? We might have rules, policies, procedures, norms, even just cultural norms that are accepted within an organization. Existing relationships can also be very important, for example Billy might have an existing relationship with Anne and he can say: “Hey Anne could you just do this for me – I know it usually takes four weeks, but maybe you could do it for me this time?” And that will happen if they have a really great existing relationship within the organization.

You might have existing processes in place which apply for projects, programs and portfolios, where lots of projects will make up one program, and then multiple programs will make up one portfolio.

Management has a very specific role in organizational systems – it is how it works on a daily basis with responsibilities, discipline of action, how much action actually gets done and what happens if it’s not done, unity of direction and unity of command. Ensuring there is one clear strategic direction. Or perhaps everyone’s just sort of going for their own little team and trying to make that work – each company will be different and you may need to adjust. Safety of the people, ensuring optimal morale, ensuring clear security of work positions – all of these things are part of the management when we’re managing in within an organizational system.

The Project Manager’s Sphere of Influence

Within a company itself there are certain influences on these organizational structures and systems. It starts at the bottom where the influence of the project manager is very low. If we’ve got a project that’s just organic, where has been kicked off between a bunch of people and it’s not really formal – maybe we’re just trying to make an improvement in some way – then usually the influence of the project manager will be quite low.

But it goes up as we go into these different structures, and a functional system is where we have a functional manager who is leading a project and trying to do something, usually within their own department. They’re actually the one in charge. If a project manager comes on board usually they will report to that functional manager, within that particular team.

The influence of the project manager goes up as we move through virtual teams, hybrid teams, Weak, Balanced and Strong matricies. If you’ve got a weak matrix you’ve still got low influence, balanced is where you’ve got a balanced influence usually between the business and the project manager or the project management office, and then the strong matrix is where you have a lot more control and as a project manager you have more directive control over the resources, over the cost, over the scheduling, and all of that is more up to you as opposed to being up to the functional or the BAU environment.

Lastly the Project Management Office is where all of the projects are collected within a PMO and they are brought down the lines specifically within their own governance structures, where everyone has to go through the PMO to get anything done, and they have the most influence in a PMO structure.

– David McLachlan

07 – Project Management Office Types

Project Management Body of Knowledge, ,

7_Project Management Office Types

Project Management Office Types

The PMO or the project management office itself is quite important and there are a few different types of PMO that you will come across in your career and in the CAPM and PMP exams.

Supportive PMO

A supportive PMO is more of a consultative role. They will supply templates, best practices, and they don’t really have a high degree of control they just give people guidelines in what to do and say.

For example, “Here’s a good way to do it, but what you do is up to you.” They’re just supporting you. They’re not really directing or controlling anything.

Controlling PMO’s give more of a specific project management framework or methodology, such as the use of specific templates, forms and tools. They also ensure you use them, so they’re saying “Here are the things that you have to use, and this is the way you have to do your project.” It’s controlling the project, but through the use of templates forms and tools that the company uses. A controlling PMO asks for conformance to those governance frameworks. They might have project specific methodologies and specific ways of work.

Lastly the most controlling is the Directive PMO, which is what I personally found a little bit confusing. But directive project management offices take complete control of their projects by directly managing those projects. They have specific project managers, assigned by the PMO, and they report back to the PMO. They have a very very high degree of control in this environment.

So you have supportive, controlling (where we control through templates, governance frameworks and adhering to these) and then directive (where we’re actually taking the direction of the project through the project management office

The primary function of a PMO, no matter what type it is, is to support those project managers in a variety of ways. These ways could include managing shared resources across all projects and this is really important. You might have 10 projects but you only have enough resources for six projects, so you need to shift these around and the PMO can keep an eye on all of this. A PMO will usually have a portfolio view of things and help manage the use of those resources across those different projects.

They can help with coaching, mentoring, training and oversight, monitoring the compliance requirements and the standards and policies and procedures, helping people work with the policies and procedures within an organization, and coordinating communications across projects.

It really does come back down to that project, program and portfolio view where they have a great view of all the things that are going on. In the individual projects they can help with the communication, help with the management of it, and basically are there to support those project managers and help get the job done. And these are the Project Management Office Types.

– David McLachlan

06 – Project Management Data, Information and Reports

Project Management Body of Knowledge, ,

Project Management DataProject Management Data, Information and Reports

Within your project there are three types of data that you’ll come across.

The first is the most raw type of data, things such as raw observations during activities performed to carry out the work. For example, how many times did you do “X”? It’s also called work performance data and you’ll come across this in your CAPM and PMP exam. There’s data, there’s information, and then there’s reports. Each of these feed into each other so it’s quite important to take note of.

Work Performance Data

Data is the raw stuff, raw observations such as a count of “this many actions” or “this many dollars”. Project Management Data is often captured in your Project Management Information System, which is the overall process and software you use to capture and hold project information. Examples include:

1. Work physically completed
2. Quality and technical performance measures
3. Start and finish dates of schedule activities
4. Number of change requests submitted, or approved
5. Number of defects
6. Actual costs or money spent
7. Actual durations of activity

Work Performance Information

We analyze the work performance data to turn it into work performance information, analysing against other information it to give a status, such as estimates to complete on the project. This is where we turn it into things like variances, percentages or charts and information that people can use more readily than just the raw numbers. It’s things such as the cost performance index (which you’ll come across) or the schedule performance index which we’ll need to calculate to see how a project is going.

It also includes things such as:
1. Status of deliverables
2. Implementation status for change requests
3. Forecast estimates to complete

Work Performance Reports

This is where we put all of of that information into a nice pretty document, usually that someone can read quite easily and we turn that into our work performance report. Another way to look at this is we’re executing the processes and physically doing them that’s the work performance data. As we’re controlling those processes we need to analyze them and see how they’re going maybe they’re 80% complete for example that’s our work performance information. Then when we’re wanting to report on our overall project and control that within the business and maybe report up to our executives, managers, sponsors or the stakeholders who are involved then we’re wanting to do a work performance report so they can see how it’s tracking as well.

This really feeds into our project change control and our project communications that help us to show how everything is going.

– David McLachlan