It is also intended to provide a common lexicon within the profession for talking and writing about project management. It is also used by the PMI as a basic reference for its professional development programs, including the Certification of Project Management Professionals (PMP).
The PMBOK framework consists of five process groups, nine knowledge areas and 44 project management (PM) processes. The knowledge areas group the PM processes by project management content.
The process groups (Initiating, Planning, Executing, Controlling and Closing) organize the more detailed PM processes over time. Therefore, the process groups represent project states at various different times from start to finish.
The PMBOK Guide organizes the 44 PM processes into nine knowledge areas as illustrated in Figure 1.
SoftExpert's best-of-breed Enterprise Excellence and PMBOK Compliance solutions provide both business and project managers with the visibility and control they need to effectively manage projects, portfolios, and programs.
For each of the PMBOK knowledge areas and project management processes, SoftExpert provides a comprehensive and integrated application to effectively and efficiently manage the complete project management lifecycle.
| | Initiation | Planning | Execution | Controlling | Closing |
| Project Integration Management | Develop Project Charter.
Develop Preliminary Project Scope Statement. | Develop Project Management Plan. | Direct and Manage Project Execution. | Monitor and Control Project Work.
Integrated Change Control. | Close Project. |
 Initiative Request feature for each new initiative (investment, project proposal and services).
Forms and document management functionality to capture the charter and scope statements as documents.
Allows for the configuration of project attributes, activities, resources, etc. | Workflow engine automates team communication and collaboration.
Documents associated with a project management plan can be stored in the repository as a document under version control. | Workflows to start, communicate, expedite, and control the implementation of work.
Alerts to notify project team members and other stakeholders of important events.
Personal calendar for the user to see what activities are scheduled.
Resources enter time and effort to show progress and invoiced expenses to show accrued costs. | Textural and graphic analytical features to monitor a project, program, and portfolio.
Offers Gantt charts for viewing schedules.
Provides both standard planned versus actual work measurements and earned value measurements.
Risks, issues, changes or any exception can be characterized, resourced, scheduled and monitored. | Workflows can be used to begin closing out a project to obtain approval from all required stakeholders.
The entire project content can be archived or used as a template for future projects, the analysis of lessons learned, and audits. |
| Project Scope Management | | Scope Planning.
Scope Definition.
Create WBS. | | Scope Verification.
Scope Control. | |
| | Discover stakeholder needs, describe, qualify, quantify, estimate, and track everything from the scope statement to the project acceptance criteria.
Create, adjust, modify, change, delete, and add any WBS element. | | Workflow, scorecard and checklist for monitoring and controlling acceptance of delivered product/service.
Review document version history through the version control function. | |
| Project Time Management | | Activity Definition.
Activity Sequencing. Activity Resource, Estimating.
Activit Duration Estimating.
Schedule.
Development. | | Schedule Control. | |
| | Gantt chart functionality allows for activity description, scheduling and estimates, as well as the establishment of dependencies, allocation of resources, and calculation of constraints.
Resources can be defined based on their skills and competencies. | | Timesheet to enter time and effort for progress control.
Gantt charts to view the scheduled tasks and milestones with the option of exporting/importing Microsoft Project files.
Tables, charts and graphs can be created to show schedule variance in both the traditional formula and obtained value.
Planned vs. proposed Gantt schedule bars.
Views provide filters to show work that is starting/ finishing late, estimates for completing changes, schedule variance changes, dependency changes, late timesheets, and more. | |
| Project Cost Management | | Cost Estimating.
Cost Budgeting. | | Cost Control. | |
| | Financial feature to capture cost estimates and cost budgeting, cost centers and charge codes.
The user can enter rate-based cost (standard rates and overtime rates) for a resource (people, equipment and material).
The user can also import cost estimates from any ERP. | | Tables, charts and graphs can be used to show cost and budget variances, determine factors that might influence the project costs, and then appropriately manage change.
Import actual cost and other expenses from any ERP. | |
| Project Quality Management | | Perform Quality Planning. | Perform Quality Assurance. | Perform Quality Control. | |
| | Define policies and standards through document templates to support quality planning.
Ensure quality results by creating workflows for quality review or due diligence.
Scorecards can be used for quality ratings. | Workflow for checkpoint reviews.
Scorecards for asking weighted questions about the execution of the process, policies or standards.
Provides a document version history with a review to meet regulatory requirements. | Measure process and product results with statistical analysis, volume of change and multiple health indicators (cost, schedule, resource allocation) with upper and lower control limits represented by color and images. | |
| Project Human Resources Management | | Human Resource Planning. | Acquire Team.
Develop Project Team. | Manage Project Team. | |
| | Easily establish the project roles, skills, competencies, and their associated relationships.
Search for people to be assigned to the project considering availability, how well they match the skills and competencies listed, their educational background, geographic location, industry experience, and more. | Project managers can request resources, creating a workflow to send a staffing request to multiple resource managers, as necessary.
Develop and evaluate or rate a resource's skills, competencies and overall performance to identify new skill needs. | Allows for team communication and collaboration through forums and workflows, where team members can discuss issues, the project progress and activities, and address them as a team.
A project manager can view WBS roles, task skills and competency requirements, resource assignments, and each resource's record for individual performance appraisal on a project. | |
| Project Communications Management | | Communications Planning. | Information Distribution. | Performance Reporting.
Stakeholder Management. | |
| | Use workflows to control and share information among stakeholders.
Configure alert functionality to automatically notify, warn, and inform stakeholders of events.
Personal calendar informs resources of their project activities and responsibilities.
Allows for preconfigured reports and design of personalized reports. | Workflows, notification e-mails, personal calendars, alerts, reports, charts, and documents all contribute to the distribution of project information. | A variety of tables, charts and other visual analytics allow the user to view the project performance information.
Compare a project's health to other projects in a portfolio. | |
| Project Risk Management | | Risk Management Planning.
Risk Identification.
Qualitative Risk Analysis.
Quantitative Risk Analysis.
Risk Response Planning. | | Risk Monitoring and Control. | |
| | Allows for the identification of the risk, and the planning and scheduling of a response for each project activity.
Configure qualitative risk analysis in risk scorecards, and quantitative risk analysis in a probability and impact matrix. | | Monitor risks through performance measurements, workflows, and communication tools.
Issues are owned, tracked, and monitored throughout their life cycle using comprehensive workflow management and flexible functional capabilities. | |
| Project Procurement Management | | Plan Purchases and Acquisitions.
Plan Contracting. | Request Seller Responses.
Select Sellers. | Contract Administration. | Contact Closeout. |
| | Easily upload and identify contracts, purchase orders, request for quotes and other procurement documents, associating them with any project activity.
Create procurement processes using the comprehensive process management tool.
Import procurement cost estimates from any ERP. | Workflow can request seller responses and other procurement- related tasks. | Track contract information in document repository.
Resources can enter time or effort employed for procurement activity, which can then be billed with a cost center.
Import actual procurement expenses from any ERP. | Workflows can be used to close contract with vendors.
All documents, such as contracts, purchase orders, etc., can be archived for future reference and audits. |
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