Identify Stakeholders Process in Project Management

Establishing stakeholder identification is a fundamental part of the Waterfall project management methodology, as well as the Agile approach. Stakeholders are those people or entities who have the potential to facilitate or obstruct the project goals, or who may be affected by the project. To guarantee success, the proactive and reactive involvement of all related stakeholders must be actively managed. Hence, the primary step is to determine who these stakeholders are and to accurately assess their interests, needs, and qualities.

Resource Management Knowledge Area

In resource management knowledge area, resources refer to more than just human resources. It also includes the materials, equipment supplies, and anything else needed to complete the project. Resource management in PM Exams is an important knowledge area among the project management concepts as it deals with mainly the resourcing part of a project requirement. The human resources part of resource management basically consists of well-known management and leadership theories and applications with a form adapted to project management. 

Cost Management Plan | How to Create?

What is the cost management plan?

In general, a cost management plan establishes how related business processes will work, what to call the main unit of cost, how measurements will be performed, and any features of how performance will be evaluated.

How to Create?

To create a cost management plan, the project manager must first consider all relevant factors. This requires being systematic. In other words, we can say that you need a plan to create a cost management plan. You can start by determining the cost targets of the project. Having a goal is the first step. In this context, you must first determine what the project's budget is using the determine budget process. Issues such as which financial resources are available and which costs will be included are given within the scope of the project.

Another important issue is the cost constraints. This financial or budgetary constraints that may affect the budget of the project should be well known and managed by the project manager. For example the project may have a fixed budget or there may be limitations on the amount of money that can be spent on certain activities. After these constraints are determined, it should be analyzed which constraints have priority and how these priorities have an impact on the management of constraints.

Cost estimation techniques and budget tracking tools are used in the stage of creating a cost management plan. Cost control measures such as risk management strategies are determined.

Plan Cost Management Process

Plan cost process is a project management process in which a cost management plan is prepared to guide how, where, with what resources, and using what criteria the other three processes in the cost management knowledge area will be implemented.

In general, in this process, we will reveal a document that will describe how to manage the project cost, how to estimate the cost, how to determine the budget, and how to monitor and control the cost, how to use measurement methods of the costs realized and provide some kind of guidance to the project team.
Plan cost management process is a part of the planning process group and cost management knowledge area. It is conducted once or at predefined points in the project management life cycle.

It is considered a project artifact that is likely to be used in the planning performance domain.

Inputs to the plan cost management process

  • Project charter: Since the summary budget contained in the project launch document will be included in the cost management plan, the launch document is used as input.
  • Schedule management plan: It involves everything related to the schedule that can affect the cost of the project.
  • Risk management plan: Project risks, as well as contingency and management reserves, are directly related with cost aspect of the project.
  • Enterprise environmental factors: EEF's like organizational culture, market conditions, currency exchange rates, any commercial information, PMIS are useful factors to use as an input.
  • Organizational process assets: Financial procedures used by the organization, historical data about cost management, lessons learned repository, financial databases, and sectoral guidelines about cost estimation and cost management are good examples of OPA in this process.

Tools and Techniques of plan cost management

  • Alternatives Analysis: When the subject is cost management, there are many points to make decisions and therefore evaluate alternatives. 
  • Meetings: Helps to get opinions and engagement of stakeholders and keeps the project integrated along with the efforts of the project manager.
  • Expert judgment: This is a very basic but useful tool to use as it reflects the opinions of people who have knowledge about the subject. Expert judgment can be gained from a large variety of professionals including independent consultants, cost accountants, representatives from the accounts
  • department, PMO members, former project managers, team members of different projects, etc.

See also our other articles:

Project Charter - Tools and Techniques - How to Develop

Each project needs a formal procedure for its initiation, its adoption by the organization and its authorizations, and another saying to come to the world.  The most important aspect of the project charter document is that the project charter gives the project manager the authority to manage the project and use the facilities and resources of the organization in which the project is performed in order to implement the project. 

A project charter is an important project management artifact recommended to be used in the following project performance domains:

Processes in Project Management

49 Processes in PMBOK:

Initiating Process GroupPlanning Process Group
Executing Process Group
Monitoring and Controlling Process GroupClosing Process Group

Before trying to explain what are 49 project management processes are recommended by PMI to be used in projects, maybe we should discuss a little about the general term," process".

In the project management world, a project management process may be defined as a set of related actions and activities performed to create a predetermined product, outcome, or service and to manage a specific aspect of a project, such as cost, scope, or risk. In descriptive project lifecycles, there are 49 different processes that project managers who are preparing for the project management certification exams should know about. These processes are defined and applied by tailoring according to the needs of the project. A process is the progression of an event, subject, or effort in accordance with a certain result, developing and maturing through regular successive changes.

In project management, a process in project management is a set of related activities performed in order to create a planned product result or service and to manage a particular aspect of a project such as cost, scope, or risk.

In the traditional way, each process is categorized under a knowledge area and a process group. Of course, you don't have to use all of these 49 processes when managing a project, the processes you will use will vary depending on the characteristics of your project, but PMI offers these processes to us as part of a methodology. The fact that different methodologies describe different processes does not change the fact that we need to know about these processes. Because no matter how much the content, the method, the ranking change, we will learn the same things under different names. We'll learn the basics of Project Management. Nothing learned in other words will be learned in vain.

There are several inputs that must be included in the process in order for all project management processes to be implemented, outputs obtained at the end of the processes, documents and documents that are updated when the processes are completed, and tools and techniques that are recommended to be used when the processes are running. When you understand the logic of all these inputs, outputs, tools, and techniques, you actually figure out how to operate the processes.

Comments:
1- ejrmy 01.06.2021
Thanks for the info, i wonder if you give related links about all processes mentioned here. A good study material for PMBOK 6 and PMBOK 7. What i mean is i can reach this list anywhere i wish with an easy search. If you could provide a website with a surfing option from process to process, it would be wonderful. I am planning to take PMP certificate this year.

Closing Process Group

All projects come to an end, and with them, all the activities within them. The closing process group is responsible for ensuring that all the project's activities are formally terminated in a systematic way. This includes ensuring that all the necessary documentation is created and that all the stakeholders are properly informed of the project's closure.