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The process 4.2 Develop Project Management Plan is the first of the processes in the Integration Management knowledge area in the Planning process group.   The previous process 4.1 Develop Project Charter was in the Initiating process group.    In the 4.1 Develop Project Charter, the project manager is in contact with the project sponsor and the key stakeholders in order to develop the information in the project charter, the output of that process.

In the process 4.2 Develop Project Management Plan, the project manager is in contact with the project team and subject matter experts in order to develop the subsidiary management plans that end up being the main inputs to the process.   They are also the same people involved in the process of integrating them into the overall Project Management Plan.   Some of the subject matter experts the project manager can consult with may be key stakeholders.

The output of the process 4.2 Develop Project Management Plan is, not surprisingly, the Project Management Plan.   There are a total of 18 management plan components and 33 project documents.   Let’s organize these elements.

A.  Subsidiary management plans

These are the management plans that are the output of the planning processes for all of the other 9 knowledge areas:

• Scope management plan
• Schedule management plan
• Cost management plan
• Quality management plan
• Resource management plan
• Communications management plan
• Risk management plan
• Procurement management plan
• Stakeholder engagement plan

B.  Supplemental management plans

I list the knowledge area that these supplemental management plans are most closely connected with.

• Requirements management plan–establishes how the requirements will be analyzed, documented, and managed (Scope Management)
• Change management plan–describes how the change requests will be formally approved and incorporated into the project work (Integration Management)
• Configuration management plan–describes the version of the product, service or result that the project will create so that it will be produced consistently

C.  Baselines

• Scope baseline–consists of the scope statement, work breakdown structure (WBS), and its associated WBS dictionary
• Schedule baseline–approve version of the schedule model that is used as a basis for comparison to the actual results.
• Cost baseline–approved version of the time-phased project budget that is used as a basis for comparison to the actual results.
• Performance management baseline–an optional baseline that is an integrated scope-schedule-cost plan for the project work against which project execution is compared to in order to measure and manage performance (essentially a combination of the three baselines listed above)

D.  Additional components

• Product life cycle description–describes the series of phases that a project passes through from its initiation to its closure
• Development approach–describes the development approach, such as predictive, iterative/incremental, agile, or hybrid

E.   Project documents

They are usually the outputs of the planning process for each of the knowledge areas, and so they are listed below with the knowledge area they are related to.

• Integration–assumption log, change log, issue log, lessons learned register, milestone list
• Scope–project scope statement, requirements documentation, requirements traceability matrix
• Schedule–activity attributes, activity list, basis of estimates, duration estimates, project calendars, project schedule, project schedule network diagram, schedule data, schedule forecasts
• Cost–cost estimates, cost forecasts
• Quality–quality control measurements, quality metrics, quality report, test and evaluation documents
• Resources–physical resource assignments, project team assignments, resource breakdown structure, resource calendars, resource requirements, team charter
• Communications–project communications
• Risk–risk register, risk report
• Procurements
• Stakeholder–stakeholder register

As you can see, the only knowledge area that doesn’t have a project document associated with it is the procurements knowledge area, and that is because this is the only knowledge area that is optional:   if the project is done using only internal resources, then procurement of services and/or materials is not needed.

Most of these project management plan components, whether they are planning documents or are the repository of information such as the project documents listed above, will end up being inputs to the next process, which is 4.3 Direct and Manage Project Work.   This process will be the subject of the next post.

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