Project Management: Process Groups and Knowledge Areas

This article discusses the five process groups and ten knowledge areas of project management, including scope, schedule, cost, quality, resource, communication, risk, procurement, and stakeholder management. It also explores the components of a quality project plan for global projects.

Running head: PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Project Management
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Question 1:
The entire life cycle of the project can be classified into five major categories and this
includes the initiation process, the planning group, and the executive group, the group
responsible for monitoring and lastly the group associated with project closure. All the
process related to project management belong to these process groups (Kerzner & Kerzner,
2017). Along with the process groups, there also exists 10 major project management
knowledge areas which are also termed as the PMP knowledge area. This project
management knowledge consists of several processes and these processes belong to the
process groups. Ten knowledge areas have been discussed below:
Integration Management knowledge area:
This is generally considered to be the project management knowledge area which is
present in all the five process groups. The processes which are generally involved is
responsible for the development of the project charter, project directing, the project
management plan and lastly managing of the project work associated with the monitoring and
controlling of the various project work (Turner, 2014). Once all these processes are
completed the integrated change control is performed which is followed by the closure of the
project. The main aim of integration management knowledge area process it to execute and
deliver the project successfully.
Scope management knowledge area:
Scope management knowledge area is consisting of six major processes. Amongst the
six major processes, four of them belong to the planning phase which mainly includes the
making of the plan for managing the scope, a collection of the requirements, providing a
definition of the scope and lastly creating the WBS or the Work Breakdown Structure. Two
of the processes belongs to the monitoring and the controlling process groups (Harrison &

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Lock, 2017). This is associated with the validation of the scope along with controlling the
scope of the project. This scope management process is aimed at controlling the scope that
the project is having along with proving protection to the project from any kind of creep in
the scope.
Schedule management knowledge area:
This is the project management knowledge area which consists of seven processes.
Amongst the seven processes, six of them belong to the planning phase whereas one belong
to the monitoring and controlling phase. The six processes included in the planning phase
mainly involves the making of plans for having a scheduled management, defining of the
activities, sequencing of the activities, estimating the activity resources, estimating the
duration of the activity, development of the schedule and lastly comes the controlling of the
schedule (Marchewka, 2014). The major aim of this knowledge area is to complete the
project within the scheduled time without any kind of variance.
Cost management knowledge area:
This the project management area which consists of four process which mainly
includes the making of plans for managing the cost, making estimations of the needed cost,
determining the budget and lastly controlling the costs (Nicholas & Steyn, 2017). The cost
management process is aimed at completing the project within a budget that has already been
planned.
Quality management knowledge area:
Four major processes are included in this particular project management area. Making
of plans regarding the resource management is included in the planning phase where the other
three belongs to the executing process group. The three processes included in the executing
process group mainly includes the acquiring of the project team, developing the project team

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and lastly managing the project team (Heagney, 2016). The different activities of the project
are conducted by the members who are included in the project team. The main aim of this
knowledge area is t manage the peoples who are associated with the project resources.
Resource management knowledge area:
This knowledge area is consisting of four processes. This processes includes the
resource management process which belongs to the planning phase and the other three
processes generally belongs to the executing process group. This three includes the acquiring
of the project team, development of the project team and lastly management of the project
team. Various activities of the project are generally conducted by the project team members.
Communication management knowledge area:
The communication knowledge area mainly consists of three major processes. Each of
this processes belongs to a different phase. The communication management is the process
which is included in the planning phase whereas, managing the communication belongs to the
execution phase and lastly, the managing of the communication belongs to the monitoring
and the controlling phase. Communication would take place inside the project as well as
outside the project (Larson et al., 2014). Along with this in this knowledge area, the
managing of the information dissemination is also done by taking help from the
communication management process.
Risk management Knowledge area:
This knowledge area includes the evaluation of the various kind of risks and this can
be classified into six processes which belong to the planning phase. This processes mainly
includes the management of risks, identification of the risks, performing of the qualitative
risk analysis, performing of the quantitative risk analysis and lastly making plans for
responding to the risks Meredith et al., 2014). The last one that is the controlling of the risks

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is included in the monitoring phase. The risk management process is associated with reducing
the impacts of the risks to the project that has occurred once or more than once.
Procurement Knowledge area:
This is the knowledge area which consists of four major processes amongst which the
planning procurement management belongs to the planning, conducting and procurement
belongs to the execution phase and the last one that is the closing procurements generally
belongs to the project closure phase (Kerzner, 2018). The main aim of this knowledge area
includes the management and coordination of the various purchasing activities of the project.
Stakeholder Management Knowledge area:
This is the project management knowledge area which can be classified into four
major processes. This processes mainly includes the identification of stakeholders associated
with the project, planning of the stakeholder management process, managing the process of
stakeholder management and controlling of the stakeholder management process (Mir &
Pinnington, 2014). The process of the stakeholder management process is associated with
helping in the management of the expectations that the project stakeholders are having while
the project is being initiated.
Question 2:
Depending upon the type of the industry and the type of the global projects certain
components or areas are to be considered by making of the quality plan which might vary
from time to time.
The project quality plan is associated with the management of the responsibilities of
the global projects. In this aspect, the responsibilities of the management are considered
which are responsible for achieving the quality of the project. Due to this reason, the
management of the global projects is entirely dependent upon the quality management plan.

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This plan is associated with the controlling and monitoring the various functions of the global
projects.
This plan also helps in the management and controlling of the documents of the global
project. Documents act as a major method of communication between the members of the
team, the management of the global project, senior management, and the clients (Binder,
2016). So the project quality plan is associated with describing the appropriate ways of
managing and controlling the documents that are being used for the project. Usually, there
exists a common documentation repository which is having a controlled access so as to store
and retrieve the documents.
Besides this, the plan would also be including the requirement scope which is to be
implemented and this is an abstraction of the requirements of the sign-off document. This
noting down of the requirement helps in improving the project quality plan which is initially
responsible for helping the quality assurance team to correct and validate the plans.in this
way, the quality assurance functions are capable of knowing the exact place of test and
determine what are the aspects that are to be kept out of the scope.
The designing of the global projects are also controlled by the project quality plan.
This plan is associated with the process of specifying the controls and the procedures that are
to be used for the purpose of designing the global projects (Lock, 2017). Certain steps are
needed so as to review the designs and analyze the correctness of the techniques that are
proposed. In order to have fruitful design reviews, it is essential to include senior designers
along with the architects of the respective domain. After the review of the designs are
received and are agreed they are forwarded to the clients. After this, the client may come up
with a demand for making changes to the requirements or may come up with new
requirements.

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The development is also controlled by this plan. Once the construction of the global
project is initiated then all the processes, procedures and the activities would be monitored
closely along with being measured. In this way, it is possible to make sure that the project is
progressing as desired.
The project quality plan is associated with defining the main quality assurance
function that the projects are having. This section helps in clear identification of the quality
objectives that the global projects are having which is initially followed by an adaptation of
the procedures needed to achieve the project. Quality risks are also identified which helps in
the adaptation of appropriate mitigation plans so as to address all these risks.
The projects must a quality audit so as to measure the adherence of the various quality
standards and this audit is generally done by the internal team of the global project or by an
external team (Martinelli & Milosevic, 2016).
This plan is associated with the determination of the projects are standardized across
the other business units or geographies
There must exist a robust as well as a stable governance model so as to contribute in
the process of providing a better clarity to the directions, cohesiveness of the team as well as
the alignment of the team. Besides this, the effective governance plan is associated with
containing a decision making authority along with an escalation path for the issues which
requires attention from the sponsors, leadership team and the quality and risk management
teams (Heldman, 2018). Besides this, a framework is also provided so as to transfer the
knowledge and to build the capabilities of managing the future complex global projects.
Some of the major aspects of quality project plan include the following;

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 Defining of the set of governance guiding principles before the projects are initiated
and all this are to be used through the entire designing and implementation phase of
the global project (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017).
 Management of the stakeholder alignment and the expectations in a proactive way.
 An integrated set of collaborative tools for risk or issue logging, monitoring, and
resolution, monitoring of the status and escalations processes are to be implemented.
Building and leading the cohesive global project team is a very challenging and
rewarding task so some common and practical steps are to be taken so as to make the global
teams buy-in and put their best effort so as to succeed. The core beliefs of the project are
developed and communicated so as to make sure that a team is capable of understanding and
believing the common goals of the project so as to put the best effort and deliver the project
with high quality (Kerzner, 2018). Along with this, a strong method is to be employed and
adopted which would be well-defined and the standard processes would be associated with
describing the ways by which the team plans and the executes the activities so as to produce
the deliverables and also to provide artifacts that are very important for the global team to
succeed. The methodology would also be responsible for providing the structure or
framework, lingo and the common processes which are used by the virtual team to
collaborate their work.
A proper communication plan is also needed so as to achieve success in the global
projects which is only possible by the adaptation of certain controls and this mainly includes
the following:
 The stakeholders are to be identified who would be impacted by the project and
besides this, the audiences are to be segmented by considering the common profiles so
as to send the messages to the targeted audience (Nicholas & Steyn, 2017).

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 The communication vehicles are to be identified in a comprehensive way so as to
leverage the conventional as well as the contemporary channels.
 The frequency of communication is to be increased along with specifying them.

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Binder, J. (2016). Global project management: communication, collaboration and
management across borders. Routledge.
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& Sons.
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