dgrimm100Over the weekend, the local PMI chapter announced their Winter 2012 courses. Included with them is a 6 session PMP Exam Prep course. I spoke to my manager at work, and while I need to front the $850, I got the commitment that the company will reimburse me, so it looks like I’ll be taking the class throughout the month of January and into February.
We’re continuing on about Integration management. We’ve already looked into what goes into a project charter, which is part of integrating activities into the unified whole of the project. One of the inputs to integration management is the statement of work (PMBOK 75). Essentially, this is the narrative description of products or services to be delivered by the project. This includes the business need, the product scope description and the strategic plan.
The second critical input to the charter is, a a rather circular manner, the business case (PMBOK 75). It’s in a circular manner in that the SOW includes the business need description, which is identified in the business case. So, the business case is required because it’s required for the SOW. It seems a little repetitive, but I’m finding that there are times that PMBOK documentation is like that.
Anyway, the business case! It “provides the necessary information from a business standpoint to determine whether or not the project is worth the required investment (PMBOK 75).” The business need and the cost/benefit analysis are included here. The business case argues for the project, and could have ramifications on the project implementation.
Rita Mulcahy goes on to describe methods of selecting projects, by breaking them down into ‘benefit measurement methods (comparative methods)’ and ‘constrained optimization methods (mathematical methods)’ (Mulcahy 106). She provides a lot of detail about economic models, which are categorized under comparative methods, but then indicates that all you need to know is the difference between benefit measurement and constrained optimization methods. So, I won’t go into worrying too much about the Present Value and Net Present Value calculations.
Finally, the last two inputs for the project charter are essentially the same thing: the working environment. We saw these in the initiating process group: 1) Determine company culture and existing systems and 2) Collect processes, procedures and historical information (Mulcahy 43). These, which are listed here as enterprise environmental factors and organizational process assets, are directly linked to 1) and 2), above (Mulcahy 111). The modify how the charter is drafted, and even how the business case was selected.
Thank goodness this post was about the Initiating phase. If it was about the Planning phase, I would be screwed. Why? Because I had intended the post to be about project selection methods. Instead, I wobbled to a number of different topics, because I didn’t plan how I was going to write it, or how I was going to have the time to finish it. Sorry.
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