The first project management process in the Integration Knowledge Area is under the Initiating Process Group and it is called Develop Project Charter.
Here is a list of the inputs, tools & techniques, and outputs used in the Develop Project Charter process.
1. Inputs, Tools & Techniques, and Outputs–summary
| 4.1 DEVELOP PROJECT CHARTER | ||
| INPUTS | ||
| 1. | Project Statement of Work | Description of product, service or result to be delivered by project. |
| 2. | Business Case | Business need, cost-benefit analysis |
| 3. | Agreements | Contract or MOU (memorandum of understanding); used when project is being performed for external customer |
| 4. | EEFs | Government or industry standards, organizational culture, marketplace conditions |
| 5. | OPAs | Organizational policies and procedures, project document templates and corporate database of lessons learned |
| TOOLS & TECHNIQUES | ||
| 1. | Expert Judgment | Used for analyzing technical and management-related details of inputs in order to develop the output (project charter) |
| 2. | Facilitation Techniques | Brainstorming, conflict resolution, problem solving |
| OUTPUTS | ||
| 1. | Project Charter | Formally authorizes the project |
2. Inputs, Tools & Techniques, and Outputs–detail
In going over these elements, let’s start from the end and work backwards.
It should be no surprise that the Output of the “Develop Project Charter” process is the Project Charter.
The Tools & Techniques should be pretty understandable once it is understood what is in the Project Charter. It contains the high-level definitions of the project, the constraints, assumptions, risks and exclusions that determine the parameters within which the project must be carried out. Expert Judgment is a Tool & Technique because technical definitions of the product will require technical experts, and the justification of the project, the business case, will require experts familiar with the details of the external business need and the internal cost-benefit analysis.
To translate the requirements of the customer (or sponsor) into actual high-level objectives or deliverables requires the collaborative effort of many stakeholders, which is why Facilitation Techniques is the second Tool & Technique listed. Coming up with a list of requirements requires brainstorming, but if some of the requirements conflict with each other it is necessary to apply problem solving and conflict resolution in order to come up with a set of requirements that is consistent.
For the inputs, it should project statement of work, the “seed” of the project, is included, because it is the essence of “what” the project will create. The “why” of the project, its justification as far as the organization who is doing the project is concerned, comes up in the input of the “Business Case.”
If the project is external, the statement of work will come from a customer in the form of a contract or memorandum of understanding. This is the basis for the Agreements input.
The next two inputs are ones you will see throughout the processes: EEFs (Environmental Enterprise Factors) and OPAs (Operational Process Assets). For the EEFS, the external reasons for the project (part of the Business Case) are found in the governmental and industry standards, marketplace conditions, or organizational culture. The OPAs give the company the forms and templates for the project documents, the historical documents from previous projects to use as a reference, and the policies and procedures by which the project will be carried out.
This gives a general overview of these elements. In order to really understand the process in depth, however, we should look at the a) project statement of work and b) project charter to see exactly what are in each of them and how they compare and contrast. That will be the subject of the next post.
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