Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme, Sixth Edition

Understanding Project Management Processes and Practices

Every effective project management process and CPIM must consider two aspects of project management: its process and its practice.

The Project Management Process

First, there is the project management process itself, which answers the following questions:

• How was it developed?
• How complete is it?
• How is it documented?
• How is it supported?
• How is it updated?

The answers to all five of these questions are critical to the quality of the project management process. I want to take a quick look at each one of these questions.

How Was It Developed?

There are two common approaches to developing a project management process: do it yourself or commission a task force to do it. The first approach is unacceptable. You may be the best project manager your organization has ever had, but if you develop the project management process in the back room and deploy it to the organization like Venus on the half-shell, don't expect a broad base of endorsement. It's the “not invented here” syndrome.

The second approach is the only one that makes sense to me. The task force should consist of representatives from each of the constituencies that will use the project management process. The constituency group should include each class of project managers and business analysts as well as any relevant resource managers. The PSO should provide the task force manager.

How Complete Is It?

Every PMLC model should include tools, templates, and processes ...