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3 - PROJECT MANAGEMENT PROCESSES

3.2 Project Management Process Groups

The following sections identify and describe the five Project Management Process Groups required for any
project. These five Process Groups have clear dependencies and are typically performed in each project and
highly interact with one another. These five Process Groups are independent of application areas or industry focus.
Individual Process Groups and individual processes are often iterated prior to completing the project and can have
interactions within a Process Group and among Process Groups. The nature of these interactions varies from project
to project and may or may not be performed in a particular order.

The process flow diagram, Figure 3-3, provides an overall summary of the basic flow and interactions
among Process Groups and specific stakeholders. The project management processes are linked by specific
inputs and outputs where the result or outcome of one process becomes the input to another process but not
necessarily in the same Process Group. the Process Groups are not project life cycle phases. In fact, it is
possible that all Process Groups could be conducted within a phase. As projects are separated into distinct phases
or subcomponents, such as concept development feasibility study, design, prototype, build, or test, etc., all of the
Process Groups would normally be repeated for each phase or subcomponent along the lines explained previously
and illustrated in Figure 3-2.

The project management processes are shown in the Process Group in which most of the related activities takes
place. For example, a process that normally takes place in the planning phase is put into the Planning Process
Group. When this process is updated by an Executing Process Group process or activity, it is not considered a new
process within the Executing Process Group but is still a Planning Process Group process or activity. The iterative
nature of project management means that processes from any group may be reused throughout the project life
cycle. For example, in response to a risk event, executing a risk response may trigger further analysis, which leads
to another iteration of the Identify Risks process and the associated Perform Quantitative Risk Analysis and Perform
Quantitative Risk Analysis processes to evaluate the impact.

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