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3.2 Process Groups

Project management processes can be organized into five groups of one or more processes each:

   Initiating processes—authorizing the project or phase.

   Planning processes—defining and refining objectives and selecting the best of the alternative courses of action to attain the objectives that the project was undertaken to address.

   Executing processes—coordinating people and other resources to carry out the plan.

   Controlling processes—ensuring that project objectives are met by monitoring and measuring progress regularly to identify variances from plan so that corrective action can be taken when necessary.

   Closing processes—formalizing acceptance of the project or phase and bringing it to an orderly end.

  The process groups are linked by the results they produce—the result or outcome of one becomes an input to another. Among the central process groups, the links are iterated—planning provides executing with a documented project plan early on, and then provides documented updates to the plan as the project progresses. These connections are illustrated in Figure 3-1. In addition, the project management process groups are not discrete, one-time events; they are overlapping activities that occur at varying levels of intensity throughout each phase of the project. Figure 3-2 illustrates how the process groups overlap and vary within a phase.
  Finally, the process group interactions also cross phases such that closing one phase provides an input to initiating the next. For example, closing a design phase requires customer acceptance of the design document. Simultaneously, the design document defines the product description for the ensuing implementation phase. This interaction is illustrated in Figure 3-3.
  Repeating the initiation processes at the start of each phase helps to keep the project focused on the business need that it was undertaken to address. It should also help ensure that the project is halted if the business need no longer exists, or if the project is unlikely to satisfy that need. Business needs are discussed in more detail in the introduction to Section 5.1, Initiation. Although Figure 3-3 is drawn with discrete phases and discrete processes, in an actual project there will be many overlaps. The planning process, for example, must not only provide details of the work to be done to bring the current phase of the project to successful completion, but must also provide some preliminary description of work to be done in later phases. This progressive detailing of the project plan is often called rolling wave planning is an iterative and ongoing process.