1. Introduction
It should come as no surprise that the output of process 12.1 Plan Procurement Management is the Procurement Management Plan. The purpose of this post is to outline the various elements in the plan. They are listed in the 5th Edition of the PMBOK® Guide as a sort of laundry-list in bullet point format, but I felt it would be better to understand the contents of the plan by grouping each element with what knowledge area it most closely relates to, or whether the element has to do with Enterprise Environmental Factors (external to organization) or Operational Process Assets (internal to organization).
2. Elements of the Procurement Management Plan
| Knowledge Area | ||
| 1. | Integration | Project constraints and assumptions that could affect planned procurements |
| 2. | Scope | Direction to sellers on developing and maintaining work breakdown structure (WBS) |
| 3. | Format for procurement statement of work (SOW) to be put in contract | |
| 4. | Time | Coordination of procurement with project scheduling |
| 5. | Handling long lead times to purchase certain items from sellers and coordinating extra time needed with project schedule | |
| 6. | Linking make-or-buy decision with Estimate Activity Resources and Develop Schedule processes | |
| 7. | Setting scheduled dates for delivery and acceptance of contract deliverables | |
| 8. | Cost | Whether independent estimates will be used as evaluation criteria |
| 9. | Quality | Performance criteria for acceptance of deliverables |
| 10. | Human Resources | Roles and responsibilities for project management team coordination with the organization’s procurement or purchasing department |
| 11. | Communications | Coordination of procurement with performance reporting |
| 12.. | Risk | Risk management issues related to procurement |
| 13. | Requirements for performance bonds or insurance contracts to mitigate project risk | |
| 14. | Procurements | Types of contracts to be used (fixed price, cost-reimbursable, or time & material) |
| 15. | Identifying pre-qualified sellers | |
| 16. | Procurement metrics to be used in evaluating sellers and managing contracts | |
| 17. | Management of multiple suppliers | |
| 18. | Stakeholder | Include sellers as one of stakeholder groups to be managed |
| 19. | EEFs | Industry or professional organization information resources regarding potential sellers |
| 20. | OPAs | Standardized procurement documents |
Most of the knowledge areas were represented in the items listed by the PMBOK® Guide as elements of the Procurement Management Plan; I added some elements for those knowledge areas that were missing such as Quality Management (quality metrics to be used as performance criteria in final acceptance or rejection of deliverables), Stakeholder Management (including suppliers as stakeholder group to be managed), and EEFs (industry or professional organization information resources regarding potential sellers).
3. Conclusion
You can see from the Procurement Management Plan that all of the knowledge areas of the project management plan are addressed. This is understandable since, from the seller’s point of view, the production of the procurement for the buyer is a project in and of itself. The task of the buyer is to coordinate the seller’s “project” (the procurement) with the buyer’s project (the creation of the product, service, or result) for which the procurement from the seller will be used.
The next post will discuss another key output of the Procurement Management Plan, the Procurement Statement of Work.
Filed under: Uncategorized |
4squareviews 
Leave a Reply