PMBOK Description

PMBOK Knowledge Areas

Project Integration Management

I Includes the processes required to ensure that the various elements of the project are properly coordinated. It involves making tradeoffs among competing objectives and alternatives in order to meet or exceed stakeholder needs and expectations.

Project Plan Development — taking the results of other planning processes and putting them into a consistent, coherent document.
Project Plan Execution — carrying out the project plan by performing the activities included therein.
Overall Change Control — coordinating changes across the entire project.

Project Scope Management

Includes the processes required to ensure that the project includes all the work required, and only the work required, to complete the project successfully [1]. It is primarily concerned with defining and controlling what is or is not included in the project.

Initiation—committing the organization to begin the next phase of the project.
Scope Planning — developing a written scope statement as the basis for future project decisions.
Scope Definition — sub-dividing the major project deliverables into smaller, more manageable components.
Scope Verification — formalizing acceptance of the project scope.
Scope Change Control — controlling changes to project scope.

Project Time Management

Includes the processes required to ensure timely completion of the project.

Activity Definition — identifying the specific activities that must be performed to produce the various project deliverables.
Activity Sequencing — identifying and documenting interactivity dependencies.
Activity Duration Estimating — estimating the number of work periods which will be needed to complete individual activities.
Schedule Development — analyzing activity sequences, activity durations, and resource requirements to create the project schedule.
Schedule Control — controlling changes to the project schedule.

Project Cost Management

Includes the processes required to ensure that the project is completed within the approved budget.

Resource Planning — determining what resources (people, equipment, materials) and what quantities of each should be used to perform project activities.
Cost Estimating — developing an approximation (estimate) of the costs of the resources needed to complete project activities.
Cost Budgeting — allocating the overall cost estimate to individual work items.
Cost Control — controlling changes to the project budget.

Project Quality Management

Includes the processes required to ensure that the project will satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken. It includes “all activities of the overall management function that determine the quality policy, objectives, and responsibilities and implements them by means such as quality planning, quality control, quality assurance, and quality improvement, within the quality system”.

Quality Planning — identifying which quality standards are relevant to the project and determining how to satisfy them.
Quality Assurance — evaluating overall project performance on a regular basis to provide confidence that the project will satisfy the relevant quality standards.
Quality Control — monitoring specific project results to determine if they comply with relevant quality standards and identifying ways to eliminate causes of unsatisfactory performance.

Project Human Resource Management

Includes the processes required to make the most effective use of the people involved with the project.

Organizational Planning — identifying, documenting, and assigning project roles, responsibilities, and reporting relationships.
Staff Acquisition — getting the human resources needed assigned to and working on the project.
Team Development — developing individual and group skills to enhance project performance.

Project Communications Management

Includes the processes required to ensure timely and appropriate generation, collection, dissemination, storage, and ultimate disposition of project information. It provides the critical links among people, ideas, and information that are necessary for success. Everyone involved in the project must be prepared to send and receive communications in the project “language” and must understand how the communications they are involved in as individuals affect the project as a whole.

Communications Planning — determining the information and communications needs of the stakeholders: who needs what information, when will they need it, and how will it be given to them.
Information Distribution — making needed information available to project stakeholders in a timely manner.
Performance Reporting - collecting and disseminating performance information. This includes status reporting, progress measurement, and forecasting.
Administrative Closure — generating, gathering, and disseminating information to formalize phase or project completion.

Project Risk Management

Includes the processes concerned with identifying, analyzing, and responding to project risk. It includes maximizing the results of positive events and minimizing the consequences of adverse events.

Risk Identification — determining which risks are likely to affect the project and documenting the characteristics of each.
Risk Quantification — evaluating risks and risk interactions to assess the range of possible project outcomes.
Risk Response Development — defining enhancement steps for opportunities and responses to threats.
Risk Response Control — responding to changes in risk over the course of the project.

Project Procurement Management

Includes the processes required to acquire goods and services from outside the performing organization.

Procurement Planning — determining what to procure and when.
Solicitation Planning — documenting product requirements and identifying potential sources.
Solicitation — obtaining quotations, bids, offers, or proposals as appropriate.
Source Selection — choosing from among potential sellers.
Contract Administration — managing the relationship with the seller.
Contract Close-out — completion and settlement of the contract, including resolution of any open items.