PMP- Chapter 2- Organizational Influences and Project Life Cycle Notes

2.1 Organizational Influences on Project Management

• Organizational Cultures and Styles
• cultures and styles are group phenomena known as cultural norms, which develop over time.
• organization's culture is an enterprise environment factor
• Organizational Communications
• Organizational Structures
• Chart
• Functional Organization- employee has one clear superior, staff members are grouped by specialty, specialties may be further subdivided into focused functional units. Each department in a functional organization will do its project work independently of other departments. 
• Matrix Organization- a blend of functional and projectized characteristics. classified as weak, balanced or strong depending on the relative level of power and influence between functional and project managers.
• Weak matrix - maintain many characteristics of functional organization, PM more of a coordinator or expediter. Expediter cannot personally make or enforce decisions. Project coordinator have power to make some decisions, have some authority and report to higher level manager.
• Strong matrix - characteristics of the projectized org. full time PM with considerable authority and full time project admin.
• Balanced matrix - recognizes the need for a PM. Does not provide PM the full authority over project and funding.
• Projectized Organization - team members are often colocated. resources involved in project work and PM have great deal of independence and authority
• **composite organization
• Organizational Process Assets - plants, processes, policies, procedures, and knowledge bases specific to and used by the performing organization.
• Processes and Procedures
• Corporate knowledge base
• Enterprise Environmental Factors - conditions, not under the control of the project team, that influence, constraint, or direct the project.

2.2 Project Stakeholders and Governance

• Project Stakeholders
• all members of the project team as well as all interested entities that are internal or external to the organization
• stakeholders identification is a continuous process throughout the entire project life cycle
• Sponsor- person or group who provides resources and support for the project and is accountable for enabling success. initial, promote the project. spokesperson to higher level management. escalation path and authorizing changes in scope, phase-end review, go/no-go decisions.
• Customers and users- who will approve and manage the project's product, service, or results. Customer- entity acquiring the project's product, user - directly utilize the project's product.
• Sellers - vendors,suppliers, or contractors
• Business partners- provide specialize expertise
• Organizational groups- business elements of an org.
• Functional managers- management role within an administrative or functional area of the business.
• Other Stakeholders- procurement entities, financial institutions, government regulators
• **Project Team - Sponsor, Project Management Team, Project Manager, Other Project Team members.
• Project Governance
• oversight function that is aligned with the organization's governance model and that encompasses the project life cycle.
• it provides a comprehensive, consistent method of controlling the project and ensuring its success by defining and documenting and communicating reliable, repeatable project practices.
• Project Success
• success of project should be measured in terms of completing the project within the constraints of scope, time, cost, quality, resources and risk as approved between the project managers and senior management.
• project success should be referred to the last baselines approved by the authorized stakeholders.

2.3 Project Team

• Project management staff - scheduling, budgeting, reporting and control, communications, risk and administrative support. supported by PMO.
• Project staff- members of team carry out the work of creating project deliverables.
• Supporting expert- participate on the team when their particular skills are required.
• User or Customer- members of the organization who will accept the deliverables
• Sellers- vendors, suppliers or contractor that enter into a contractual agreement to provide components or services necessary for the project.
• Business partners member-
• Business partners- external companies through certification process. specialized expertise.
• Composition of project teams:
• Dedicated
• Partime
• Partnership based project - joint venture, consortium (offer flexibility at lower cost) but lower degree of control and need strong mechanisms for communication and monitoring

2.4 Project Life Cycle

• Characteristics of the Project Life Cycle
• cost and staffing level low at the start, peak as the work carried out, and drop rapidily as the project draw to a close
• risk and uncertainty are greatest at the start of the project and decrease over the life of project
• ability to influence the final characteristics of the product, without significantly impacting cost is highest at the start and decrease as project progress.
• Project Phases
• nature of the work to be performed is unique to a portion of project and typically linked to the development of major deliverable.
• can be overalap
• closure of a phase end with some form of transfer or hand-off of the work. maybe referred as stage gate, milestone, phase review, phase gate or kill point.
• Phase to Phase Relationships
• Sequential relationship- a phase start only when the previous phase is complete.
• Overlapping relationship- a phase start prior to completion of the previous one.(schedule compression- fast tracking). require additional resources to allow work to be done in parallel, may increase risk
• Predictive Life Cycles - fully plan-driven. scope, time and cost required to deliver that scope are determined as early in project life cycle as practically possible. preferred when the product to be delivered is well understood.may use concept of rolling wave planning.
• Iterative and Incremental Life Cycle - a series of repeated cycle while increments successively add to the functionality of the product.develop product both iteratively and incrementally. large and complex project are frequently executed in a iterative fashion to reduce risk by allowing team to incorporate feedback and lesson learned between iterations.
• Adaptive Life Cycles- change driven or agile methods- intended to respond to high levels of change and ongoing stakeholder involvement. also iteractive and increment but are very rapid(2-4 weeks) and fixed in time and cost. rapidly changing environment when requirements and scope are difficult to define in advance.

Reference: PMI PMBOK 5th Edition