Nine Major Knowledge Areas

Knowledge areas represent a set of competency skills and processes that must be properly utilized by the project manager throughout the life cycle.The guide outlines nine knowledge areas: Scope, Time, Cost, Quality, Human Resources, Communications, Risk, Procurement, and Integration.A detailed discussion on scope and integration management is given here.While as for other knowledge areas, which will be expanded at length in separate chapters, only a brief description of each knowledge area role is summarized in the sections below.

Project Scope Management

Scope management plays a key role during the project initiation, project execution, and scope change control to keep the work aligned with its original intent, so that changes do not affect the project’s scope when the boundaries are set and the scope is verified and the emphasis of the project is built into the plan.The PMBOK Guide defines this activity as follows:

Project scope management includes the processes required to ensure that the project includes all the work required, and only the work required to complete the project successfully, and it is primarily concerned with defining and controlling what is or is not included in the project.

Once your team is in place, an initial meeting to discuss the project’s scope can be enlightening.Even if you believe you have a thorough grasp of the project, you may be surprised to learn quite a lot from team members.This is likely to expand the project to include valuable benefits or processes you have not anticipated before.You need to make sure that your team members understand exactly what the project is designed to accomplish, which is not always possible by project title alone.So you can start from explaining such issues as why the project is being done, what problems it is intended to solve, and how improvements are going to work.This requires not only a clear definition of what needs to be done, but also of the desired outcome.As obvious as all this might seem, many plans are launched without this initial discussion among leaders and team members, posing a significant challenge for successful project management.

As a secondary point, it is essential to discuss how this project fits into the larger organizational puzzle.Many people, even including managers, have a myopic view of the organization and how their functions fit into it.For example, a mailroom employee might say that the business of the organization is to receive and send mail.An accountant may say the business of the organization is to document expenses and write checks, and a marketing employee sees the business as entering a larger market.These are all aspects of the overall company, but invariably there is much more to it.The discussion that any group of organizational employees can have about this question is going to be enlightening, especially if your team includes people from different departments.

If the project crosses departmental or sector lines, the scope is going to be more complex than a project existing within departmental lines.You have to consider territorial interests, schedules, and possibly even conflicts among supervisors and managers, some of whom may view a change in agenda as a direct threat.

Finally, invite team members to talk about the stakeholders to the project.These are often much more complicated than some people will assume.Every business operating unit affected by the process is also a stakeholder.If your project has a direct impact on sales and marketing, you need employees from those departments on your team, so that impacts on those departments and on customers will be monitored and considered.In some very formalized projects, especially those operated as part of a Six Sigma venue, stakeholders are named to sit on a steering committee overseeing the project or assigned a position on the team.

According to PMBOK Guide (2008), the following five processes are included in project scope management.Requirements collecting process defines and documents stakeholders’ needs to meet the project objectives.Scope defining process involves developing a detailed description of the project and product.WBS creating process subdivides project deliverables and project work into smaller, more manageable components.Scope verifying process formalizes acceptance of the completed project deliverables.Scope controlling process involves monitoring the status of the project and product scope and managing changes to the scope baseline.

Project Schedule (Time) Management

This area deals with the mechanics and management requirements for translating the defined scope into work unit activities and then monitoring those activities to ensure “on time”completion.The guide defines six processes in this area: activity defining, activity sequencing, activity resources estimating, activity durations estimating, schedule developing and schedule control.

Activity defining process translates the identified scope requirements deliverables into a set of work activities required to complete the deliverables.Activity sequencing process involves linking the work activities into a network plan structure.Step three in the time management planning process involves estimating resource requirements for the defined activities, which in turn leads to a resource allocation process and an activity duration estimate.Once the various work units have been translated into duration estimates, they can be sequenced together to create an initial project plan.

Project Cost Management

This knowledge area includes various activities and processes that guide the budget creation process, then establish a control function to guide the project through the execution process.The PMBOK Guide defines three processes related to this knowledge area: cost estimating, cost budgeting, and cost control.

In order to meet the cost goals of the project, the project must be completed within the approved budget.Cost estimating develops an approximation or estimate of the costs of the resources needed to complete a project.Cost budgeting organizes the values and estimates from the various sources and produces a cost baseline that is used to measure project performance.Cost control deals with monitoring costs and understanding observed variances that occur as the project progresses.

Project Quality Management

This knowledge area focuses on all aspects of both the product and project quality processes.The three-model defined processes are: quality plan, quality assurance and quality control.

Project quality management processes take place during the planning, execution, and control phases of project management.Quality plan is the practice used to identify quality management actions that will be applied to ensure conformance to requirements.Quality assurance is done throughout the execution phase to evaluate the overall project performance, and to ensure the project product satisfies the applicable quality standards while identifying ways to improve overall quality.Quality control is accomplished during the controlling phase by monitoring specific project results to ensure that they comply with the relevant quality standards.

Project Human Resource Management

This knowledge area focuses on actions related to the human element of a project.These activities consist of four operational processes: human resources plan developing, project team acquiring, project team developing, and project team managing.These processes ensure that the human resources assigned to the project are used in the most effective way.

Project human resource management includes the processes that organize, manage, and lead the project team.The project team is comprised of the people with assigned roles and responsibilities for completing the project.The type and number of project team members can change frequently as the project progresses.Early involvement and participation of team members adds their expertise during the planning process and strengthens their commitment to the project.

Project Communications Management

Communication problems represent one of the most causal reasons for project failure.The communications management includes the processes required to ensure timely and appropriate generation, collection, dissemination, storage, and ultimate disposition of project information.It is shaped by the leadership behavior and communications style of the management team, articulated in the communications plan, implemented through information distribution of various types of media to the team and project’s stakeholder audiences during the project’s execution, and assessed through performance reporting, monitoring, and oversight and finally in records during administrative closure.The PMBOK Guide specifies five basic communications processes: stakeholders identifying, communications planning, information distributing, stakeholders’expectations managing and performance reporting.

Project Risk Management

Project risk management is defined in the guide model as risk management planning, risk identifying, risk assessing, risk responses planning, risk monitoring and control.Its basic goal is to minimize the probability of negative events affecting the project and maximizing any opportunities that exist for positive events.The management of this class of activity is very difficult in that a risk event has not occurred during the planning cycle, but if does occur later, the plan will be potentially affected.It is important for project teams to understand the vulnerability of risks areas and have plans in place to deal with them.

Project Procurement Management

The procurement management processes are utilized to manage the acquisition of various items needed by a project.These are defined in the guide model as: procurement planning, procurement conducting, procurement administering, and procurement closing.

The procurement management knowledge area concerns the purchasing of goods or services from external vendors, contractors, and suppliers.These processes deal with preparing requests for information from contractors, evaluating responses, and selecting the contractor to perform the work or supply the goods.It also deals with contract administration and contract closeout.

Project Integration Management

Most experienced project management practitioners know there is no single way to manage a project.They apply project management knowledge, skills, and required processes in a different order and with varying rigor to achieve the desired project performance.The need for integration management is evident in project management context where individual processes inter-relate and interact with one another.

Project integration management includes the processes and activities needed to identify, define, combine, unify, and coordinate the various processes and activities within the project management process groups.It is a subset of project management that includes the processes required to ensure that the various elements of the project are coordinated properly, and it is applied during every phase of the project whenever changes reshape and realign the project’s progress—project plan development, project plan execution, and integrated change control.In the project management context, integration includes characteristics of unification, consolidation, articulation, and integrative actions that are crucial to project success.