1.3 What Is Project Management?

  Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project requeriments. Project management is accomplished through the use of use of the processes such as: initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing. The project team manages the work of the projects, and the work typically involves:

   Competing demands for: scope, time, cost, risk and quality.

   Stakeholders with differing needs and expectations.

   Identified requirements.

  It is important to note that many of the processes within project management are iterative in nature. This is in part due to the existence of and the necessity for progressive elaboration in a project throughout the project life cycle; i.e, the more you know about your project, the better you are able to manage it.
  The term project management is sometimes used to describe an organizational approach to the management of ongoing operations. This approach, more properly called management by projects, treats many aspects of ongoing operations as projects to apply project management to them. Although an understanding of project management is critical to an organization that is managing by projects, a detailed discussion of the approach itself is outside the scope of this document.
  Knowledge about project management can be organized in many ways. This document has two major sections and 12 chapters as described below.

1.3.1 The Project Management Framework
Section I, The Project Management Framework, provides a basic structure for understanding project management.
  Chapter 1, Introduction,defines key terms and provides an overview of the rest of the document.
  Chapter 2, The Project Management Context, describes the environment in which projects operate. The project management team must understand this broader context__managing the day-to-day activities of the project is necessary for success but not sufficient.
  Chapter 3, Project Management Processes, describes a generalized view of how the various project management processes commonly interact. Understanding these interactions is essential to understanding the material presented in Chapters 4 through 12.

1.3.2 The Project Management Knowledge Areas
Section II, The Project Management Knowledge Areas, describes project management knowledge and practice in terms of its component processes. These processes have been organized into nine knowledge areas as described below and as illustrated in Figure 1-1.
  Chapter 4, Project Integration Management, describes the processes required to ensure that the various elements of the project are properly coordinated. It consists of project plan development, project plan execution, and overall change control.
  Chapter 5, Project Scope Management, describes the processes required to ensure that the project includes all the work required, and only the work required, to complete the project successfully. It consists of initiation, scope planning, scope definition, scope verification, and scope change control.
  Chapter 6, Project Time Management, describes the processes required to ensure timely completion of the project. It consists of activity definition, activity sequencing, activity duration estimating, schedule development, and schedule control.
  Chapter 7, Project Cost Management, describes the processes required to ensure that the project is completed within the approved budget. It consists of resource planning, cost estimating, cost budgeting, and cost control.
  Chapter 8, Project Quality Management, describes the processes required to ensure that the project will satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken. It consists of quality planning, quality assurance, and quality control.
  Chapter 9, Project Human Resource Management, describes the processes required to make the most effective use of the people involved with the project. It consists of organizational planning, staff acquisition, and team development.
  Chapter 10, Project Communications Management, describes the processes required to ensure timely and appropriate generation, collection, dissemination, storage, and ultimate disposition of project information. It consists of communications planning, information distribution, performance reporting, and administrative closure.
  Chapter 11, Project Risk Management, describes the processes concerned with identifying, analyzing, and responding to project risk. It consists of risk management planning, risk identification, qualitative risk analysis, quantitative risk analysis, risk response planning, and risk monitoring and control.
  Chapter 12, Project Procurement Management, describes the processes required to acquire goods and services from outside the performing organization. It consists of procurement planning, solicitation planning, solicitation, source selection, contract administration, and contract closeout.