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2 - PROJECT LIFE CYCLE AND ORGANIZATION

• Laws, regulations, and policies;

• Infrastructure (e.g., facilities and capital equipment);
• Human resources; 2

• Personnel administration;
• Political climate; and

• Project management information systems.

2.2 Project Stakeholders and Governance

2.2.1 Project Stakeholders

A software project stakeholder is any individual or organizational entity that affects or is affected by a
software project or the resulting software product. Stakeholders include both internal and external stakeholders.
Internal stakeholders include the project team and other organizational entities such as a marketing or contract
administration department. External stakeholders include acquirers, integrators, customers, and users and may
include policy makers and regulatory agencies.

Because of software’s abstract nature, software project deliverables are subject to broader and more variable
interpretations by project stakeholders than are physical entities. It is important to engage, coordinate, integrate,
and proactively manage the appropriate stakeholders in issues of relevance to them as often as is appropriate
in order to manage expectations for the project deliverables and project governance. Some stakeholders may be
designated at key stakeholders for different aspects of a software projects and at different times during a project.
Stakeholder satisfaction is cited as a project deliverable in the PMBOK Guide. This topic is explored in depth in
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Section 13 of this Software Extension.

2.2.2 Project Governance

According to the PMBOK Guide, “project governance is the alignment of project objectives with the strategy
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of the larger organization by the project sponsor and project team.” Governance is concerned with issues such as
decision making, prioritization, and alignment of vision and strategy with an organization’s work. Organizational
governance for software projects may include elements such as a project management office, project portfolio
management, or an IT strategy group. The intangible nature of software may result in a high level of formality in
the governance model, in an attempt to bring visibility to an inherently invisible product. Software projects typically
involve discovery of requirements and constraints within a learning environment as the projects evolve. Formal
governance models that treat software development as a linear, predictive process may exert a detrimental impact
on the software projects conducted by the organization. While different types of projects call for different levels
of governance formality, it is important that governance models are suited to the nonlinear, adaptive learning
environment of software development.

©2013 Project Management Institute. Software Extension to the PMBOK Guide Fifth Edition 23
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