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3 - PROJECT MANAGEMENT PROCESSES FOR A PROJECT

As stated in Section 3.2 and Figure 3-3 of the PMBOK Guide: The process flow diagram provides an overall
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summary of the basic flow and interactions among Process Groups and specific stakeholders. A Process Group
includes the project management processes that are linked by the respective inputs and outputs where the result
or outcome of one process becomes the input to another. The Process Groups are not project phases.

Figure 3-1 in this Software Extension is an adaptation of Figure 3-3 of the PMBOK Guide Figure 3-3; the
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Planning, Executing, and Monitoring and Controlling Process Groups are highlighted. These three Process Groups
are often so closely interrelated that they are not distinguishable as separate Process Groups for software project
life cycles. For example, initiation and planning for entry to the construction phase of a predictive life cycle or an
iteration cycle may involve selecting the set of requirements or features to be implemented, but demonstration of
working software code may alter the planned set of requirements or features to be implemented next. Resources
used and software demonstrated will provide tangible evidence for monitoring and controlling.

Figure 3-2 of the PMBOK Guide illustrates the level of process interaction among the five Process Groups for
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a project or project phase; Figure 2-9 of the PMBOK Guide illustrates the cost and staffing level that results from
summing the effort for interactions across the five Process Groups. See Section 2.4.2 of this Software Extension for
a discussion of how the profiles in Figures 2-9 and 3-2 are altered for adaptive life cycle software projects.

Figure 3-2 in this Software Extension illustrates the interactions among Process Groups for successive iterations
of software development; each cycle involves the application of the five Process Groups in the PMBOK Guide.
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Project and product scope are defined during initiation and planning of the project; one or both may be modified as
the project and product evolve. The product is accepted when the final product scope is achieved or when one or
more project constraints (effort, schedule, budget, resources) are exhausted. In the latter case, it is important that
the most important features and quality attributes are developed first.

The profile for each iteration cycle in Figure 3-2 indicates effort build-up during the Initiating and Planning
Process Groups, level of effort throughout the Executing and Monitoring and Controlling Process Groups, and effort
build-down of the iteration cycle during the Closing Process Group. The sum of the overlapping levels of effort
across iterations results in an approximately constant level of effort, assuming a fixed number of team members,
which is typical of adaptive software development. The cadence of iteration cycles assumes that the team has the
skills needed to initiate, plan, execute, monitor and control, and close each iteration, rather than relying on other
elements of the organization to provide needed skills, except perhaps as needed on occasion (e.g., consultation
with a subject matter expert).

3.2 Project Management Process Groups

According to Section 3.2 of the PMBOK Guide, the five Process Groups have clear dependencies and are
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typically performed in the same sequence on each project. In contrast, and as indicated in Section 2.4 of this
Software Extension, the ways in which the five PMBOK Guide Process Groups are applied to software projects may
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vary from project to project, depending on the life cycles used.

40 ©2013 Project Management Institute. Software Extension to the PMBOK Guide Fifth Edition
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