Project Management: Knowledge Areas

Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques applied to project activities used to meet project requirements. A previous post of mine described the processes that go into managing a project. Those processes outline the flow of essential tools and techniques needed to manage the project effort. However, a project manager cannot effectively employ these processes without having the requisite knowledge and skill set. The project management knowledge areas describe the project management skill sets that all project managers must have.

Project Integration Management
If each part of the project is a tree, then project integration management is the entire forest. It describes the activities needed to unify and coordinate the various processes and management activities across the whole project. It involves managing the interdependencies among all the project management knowledge areas and process groups.

Project Scope Management

Projects must deliver on all the work required, and only the work required, to meet the projects objectives. Project scope management is concerned with defining and controlling what is and is not included in the project. The goal of scope management is to define the project needs, set the project expectations, deliver on those expectations, all the while managing those changes and minimizing surprises during the project.

Project Time Management

The very nature of a project means that there is a defined beginning and end to the project work. Project time management is concerned with defining that beginning and end, and scheduling the work in between. The goal is to build a project schedule that estimates the sequencing and duration of project activities.

Project Cost Management

Money is a finite resource. Project cost management includes the processes involved in estimating, budgeting and controlling costs so that the project can be completed within the approved budget.

Project Quality Management

Projects may very well deliver on time and on budget, but a project is never successful if it does not deliver on the requirement expectations of a projects stakeholders. Project quality management includes the system of processes and activities used to satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken.

Project Human Resource Management

All projects are comprised of people with assigned roles and responsibilities for completing project activities. Project human resource management is the skill set used to organize and lead the project team. It also involves assigning staff, assessing performance of project team members, and overall management of the project team. The project manager is the “Boss” of the project and Human Resource Management is essentially the knowledge area of running the project in relations to the resources assigned to the project.

Project Communications Management

Since projects typically involve multiple stakeholders and resources, it is vitally important that all those people stay informed on project activities. Project communication management is the mixture of formal and informal, written and verbal dissemination of information about the projects progress. It includes the timely and appropriate generation, collection, distribution, storage and retrieval of project information.

Project Risk Management

Any project endeavor involves some level of risk. Project Risk Management involves planning how to handle those risks. Risks must be identified, analyzed and monitored over the life of the project, and a plan must be in place for to respond to both planned and unplanned risks.

Project Procurement Management

In a perfect world, a company will have all the resources required “in house” to complete a project successfully. However, this is often not the case. Companies must look outside the organization to obtain the goods and services needed to complement the existing in house resources. Project procurement management includes includes preparing procurement documents, requesting vendor responses, selecting the vendors, and creating and administering contracts with each outside vendor.