pm4dev, 2020 –management for development series ©

The Project
Management
Processes
PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR
DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATIONS
 The Project Management Processes

PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR

DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATIONS

A methodology to manage development

projects for international humanitarian
assistance and relief organizations

© PM4DEV 2020
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The Project Management Processes

PROJECT MANAGEMENT PROCESSES

Project management is a process of leading a team of capable pe ople

in planning and implementing a series of related activities that need to
be accomplished o n a specific date with a limited budge t. Because of
its nature, coordinating all these activities requires a process
approach.

Because many times de velopment project take on unexpl ored

territory, assumptions about the projec t must be listed, e valuated, its
risks assessed and contingency plans developed. It also requires a
close monitoring of the budget , scope and schedule to deliver the
project objectives under the expect ed quality. Each one of these
elements needs to be managed in a systematic manner with the
development of plans to identify the roles and resources needed.

There is also the complexity of de velopment projects that requi re a

different approach and a new way at managing the limited resou rces
and the increasing demands from all stakeholders. To manage this
complexity the project needs to be de-constructed into manageable,
interrelated parts; or processes, by separating the project into
different management process th e project manager has a better
chance to control the outcomes of the project and manage the
challenges that can never be fully predicted during its design.

Managing a project requires that or ganizations take in consideration a

system approach to manage the different elements of a project. A
systems approach includes a holisti c view of a project environment,
and an understanding that the pr oject is made of a series of
interacting components wo rking to meet an objective in order t o
obtain the desired benefits.

A systems approach requires the iden tification of the processes that

make up the entire project manage ment framework. This framework
helps understand the basic structure required to properly manage a
project, by identifying the most im portant elements that need c lose
supervision and careful analysis.

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The Project Management Processes

There are nine manageme nt processes on a development pro ject.

These are designed to help manage the different elements of a project,
different projects may have different needs from each process; for
example, a project that has identified that cost is a critical success
factor will spend more time and effort i n developing a cost
management plan. These processes are the key knowledge areas or a
project manager must master.

One of the most critical roles of th e project manager is the integration

of these nine processes to ensure th ey all are properly coordinated. In
many cases it could result in maki ng trade-offs among the different
competing expectations from stakeh olders. These nine processes are
all integrative, that is, they need to be managed in a combining and
coordinating manner to bring these diverse elements into a whole. The
nine management processes occur du ring the entire project life cycle
and each one of them requires a cy clical approach that consists of
planning, doing, checking and learning to ensure process quality.

The effort and detail required for ea ch process depends entirely on the
size, complexity and risk of the project. Large, highly complex projects
will require specialized resources to manage each process making the
role of the project manager as the coordination of these processes.
Smaller less complex projec ts may no t even need all nine processes,
the project manager after making a n analysis of the project risks and
constraints will decide which processes require more effort than others

The nine project management processes are:

1. Scope Management
2. Schedule Management
3. Budget Management
4. Quality Management
5. Team Management
6. Stakeholder Management
7. Information Management
8. Risk management
9. Contract Management

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The Project Management Processes

In this book we have divided these processes into two groups:

 Enabling processes
 Facilitating processes

The project management processes interrelated wi th the project

management phases during the entire project manageme nt cycle. The
graphic below shows the relationship between the project phases and
the project management processes:

Scope Schedule Budget Quality

Management Management Management Management

Enabling Processes

Project Phases

Initiate Plan Implement Monitor Adapt Close

Facilitating Processes

Contract Team Stakeholder Information Risk

Management management Management Management Management

Figure 4.1 Project Management Processes and Phases

Depending on the scope, large, comp lex projects will require a more
rigorous application of project management processes than small, non-
complex projects. The Project Manager assesses the proje ct

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The Project Management Processes

characteristics to determine how to customize the pro cesses for a

specific project an d determine which project management processes
will be required. The effort to custom ize the project is reflected in the
Project Management Plan.

Project Management Processes are over lapping activities that occur at

varying levels of i ntensity throughout each phase of the project. A
process is defined as a set of acti vities that must be performed to
achieve a goal, in this case the project goal.

Enabling Processes

Enabling processes include scope, sch edule, budget and quality. T hey
are enabling because they lead to specific objectives of the project and
are the basis to d efine a project su ccess; on time, under budget , as
requested by the donor and by the quality needed by the beneficiaries.

Scope Management

Includes the processes involved in defining and controlling what is or is

not included in the project; re quired to complete the pr oject
successfully. Scope is the way to describe the boundaries of the
project. It defines what the projec t will deliver and what it will not
deliver. This proce ss ensures that th e project h as identified the goals
and objectives an d those have b een documented and that each
objective has a well-defined set of indicators to monitor their progress.

During this process a scop e management plan is created to help

manage any changes to the projects. This is a critical process and one
that will help the project manager deal with scope creep, which is
when a project includes additional work after a project has started
without considering the impact on the resources or schedule of the
project. Request for additional work may come from many of the
stakeholders the problem arises when the project manager decides to
the additional work without a corresp onding increase in the time or
budget, this is one of the leadin g causes for project failures. To
manage scope creep the project needs to establish a scope change
control plan that will facilitate how, when and why any changes to th e
scope are made. The steps include an assessment, impact to the
budget and/or schedule the correspo nding authorization, incorporation

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The Project Management Processes

of changes to the project plans an d implementation of the approved

change of scope. It is a good practice for the project to define wha t is
not included in the project, by defining what is out of scope the project
stakeholders can have a better understanding of the p roject
boundaries.

During the scope management proc ess the project manager develops
a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) wh ich is a management technique
of breaking the project down into a hierarc hy of work tas ks which
represent the work to be done. This s chedule then is us ed as an input
to define the time and budget of the project.

Schedule Management

This process includes the actions required to ensure the timely

completion of the project. Schedu le management is the develop ment
of a project schedule that contains all project activitie s, the pr oject
schedule is a communication tool that informs project stakeholders the
status of the project and gives th e project team information in the
form of g raphs and charts, as to when each activity must begin and
end.

The first step in schedule management is estimating the time each one
of the activities ide ntified in the WBS would take to be c ompleted, the
relationships among the activities and the sequence they should start.
A network diagram is a to ol used to graphically displ ay the activity
sequence and dependencies . The project schedule is also used to
assign project staff with their task s. Monitoring t he schedule i s an
ongoing task, as each activity is performed the project manager must
review the progress made against the schedule baseline and determine
what schedule variance have occurred, the schedule management plan
should include instructions on how to proceed when schedule variances
occur.

Another element of schedule manageme nt is the procedure to control

schedule changes and define who can authorize changes to the
schedule. It is not uncommon that at the moment of planni ng the
project some oversi ght occurred that did not plan for situations w hen
the beneficiaries are involved in ot her events, such as festivitie s or

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The Project Management Processes

social events; this can also includ e unpredictable events such as the
weather or political events that can disrupt any project schedule.

Schedule reporting includes tech niques to compare the project

baseline with the actual dates and us es variance analysis to determine
project progress, i f the project is behind schedule then the project
must determine the best options to bring the project back to schedule
using methods such as making trad e-offs to compress the schedule or
fast tracking which involves doing more activities in parallel.

Budget Management

Budget management processes are requ ired to ensure the project is

completed within the approved budget. This is the area that receives a
lot of scrutiny duri ng and after the project is completed. The proj ect’s
ability to manage the financial resources obtained by the organization
will be a measure of the organization s probity, not only in complia nce
with donor’s requirements but also a measure of its efficiency. Risks in
this area have the highest i mpact to the project, the organizatio n and
to the beneficiaries; inade quate budget ma nagement can lea d to
misappropriations of funds, improp er assignment of expenses and
losses that the organization may have to cover using its limited funds.

Budget management process include the activities to develop a budge t

to meet the requir ements of the pr oposal (in case of a donor funded
project) and a budget to meet the monitoring and accounting needs of
the organization. A leading cause for project failure is poor estimating
of the project budget; it is not unusual that during the proposal
process the organization in its rush to meet the deadlines tried to short
cut the budget creation process. This can lead to estimates that during
the project imple mentation do not reflect the actual needs of the
project.

One of the tools u sed during this process is u sing the activity based
budget, which is a closer approximation to the project real needs. It
uses the Work B reakdown Structure (WBS) to estimate the value of
each task or activity and then adds up the values until a total budget is
achieved. With thi s technique the project can determine the cost of
each objective and the total cost of the project.

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The Project Management Processes

The main steps of budget management include; the definition of all

resource requirements the project w ill use, from consultants, material,
and equipment; development of a co st estimate of all the resources
including human resources, and the development of a budget baseline
that will be used to track and report budget expenditures.

Outputs from this process includ e; a project budge t, a budget

management plan that defi nes the levels of authority for charging
items to the budget, and a budget co ntrol plan that defies revision to
the budget, budget updat es and a budget monitoring pla n. An
important technique in budget management is the use of Earned Value
Analysis (EVA) which is basically a tracking metric which measures the
actual amount of work the project has accomplished, regardless of the
effort expended or the time elapsed.

Quality Management

Quality management is the process to ensur e that the project will

satisfy the needs of the benefici aries. Quality is defined as a
commitment to deliver the project ou tputs and meet the expectations
of the beneficiaries, whic h means that quality is ultimately defined by
the beneficiary.

Quality is not about deliv ering the most e xpensive materials or

services; is ensuring the project ou tputs are relevant to the needs of
the beneficiaries, that they are de livered in a timely ma nner and are
adequate to the c onditions in which they have to be used. It is not
necessarily doing additional work if it does not add value or benefit to
the beneficiaries, it’s about deliv ering on the c ommitment the pr oject
made at its initiation, and it’s doin g what the project said it was go ing
to do.

During the quality management proc ess the project manager develops
a quality management pla n which identifies the quality standards that
are relevant to the project, some of these standards may be initially
set by t he organization, t he donor or are part of the techni cal
competence area the project is focusing, such as health or education.

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The Project Management Processes

The second process in quality management includes quality assurance,

which implies the execution of the qu ality plan; this process includes
quality audits performed by the pr oject team during every project
deliverable and reevaluating the quality standards and any
assumptions made in the quality pl an. Quality assurance focuses on
prevention measures during the project implementation phase and
checks to see that project staff, consultants or proj ect partners a re
following the quality standards. In certain conditions meeting quality
standards could mean meet ing legal and regul atory standards se t by
the local government or the donor agency.

The third process in quality manage ment is quality c ontrol; this is

where the project measures the resu lts of the deliverables or outputs
and check to see i f they meet the quality standards. The final process
is quality improvements is making changes to the quality plan and
identifying ways to improve quality an eliminate causes of
unsatisfactory quality discovered during quality control.

Quality management outputs include a quality management plan,

quality audit reports, and quality im provement records. A such quality
is also maintaining the four p roject constraints in balance,
implementing the project by deliv ering all that the projects was
designed to deliver in the time allotted and under the approved
budget.

Facilitating Processes

The facilitating process areas are team , stakeholder, information, risk,

and contract mana gement, they ar e facilitating areas because they
assist and make possible for the project to achieve its objectives.

Team Management

During the definiti on of the projec t activities a list is created that

identifies the skills needed by the project. These range from highly
technical to administrative a nd support functions. The project team is
after all the team responsible for th e project and the project needs to
be clear in acquiring the skills it needs.

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The Project Management Processes

Team management includes the proc esses required to make the most
effective use of th e people involved in the project. The first step is
identifying the roles, responsibilitie s and reporting relationships . The
second step is getting th e people that will be a ssigned to the pr oject.
These can come from within the or ganization or hired throug h the
Human Resource function o f the or ganizational. This is where th e
project manager needs to be heavily involved and pa rticipate in all
interviews with possible candidates ; the success of t he project will
depend on the quality and commitment of the team.

Once the team has been assigned to the team the next step is to
develop the team, most projects do not have the luxury of time to fully
develop a team, but the creation of a plan, that defines the
development strategies and goals, c an help the project mana ger as
the project gets impleme nted and t he team starts to produce. Team
development includes hard and soft skills, hard skills like technical
training to learn n ew methodologies or practices, and soft skills such
as time management, communicatio ns, facilitating a nd negotiating
skills.

Organizations also include an inductio n process to new hires were the

mission, norms and culture of the organization are d escribed and
guidelines and other internal proc esses are fully explained that will
help new staff navigate throug h the organizations policies and
procedures. Part of team ma nagement also includes team evaluation ;
this should not be done once a year or at the end of the project but on
a continuous basis to provide feedba ck and opportunit ies for staff to
know about their performance and identify ways to improve it.

Stakeholder Management

Stakeholder management is one of the areas t hat receives the least

amount of thought and planning i n development projects, this is due
to the limited understanding and agreement on who are the
stakeholders and their role in the project.

Stakeholders are all the people who have an interest in the project and
they are the most c ritical element for the success of the project. They
include donors, beneficiaries, loca l government, partner organizations
and anyone who will be impacted by the project. Each project has a

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The Project Management Processes

different list of stakeholders , a range that can include the local press,
local organizations, institutions and even watchdog organizations.

Managing stakeholders is not an easy task; the project’s objective is to

improve the way the relationship s between the project and the
stakeholders are managed, this is achieved by taki ng a proactive
approach that builds trust.

Stakeholder management i ncludes the processes of stakeholder

analysis, planning, and communication. Stakeholder Analysis is the
technique used to i dentify who are the project stakeholders, the next
step is to identify their level of in terest and influence in the project,
and identify their fears and concerns about the project. The final step
is to develop a good understanding of the most important stakeholders
and develop a com munications strategy and a stakeholder map that
will help manage the relationships.

Stakeholder management also he lps manage expectations, each

stakeholder has a different idea or expectation of what the project is;
this is common at the start of th e project when limite d information
about the project has been distribu ted. When beneficiaries are not
involved in the pla nning or consulted on their needs and expectations
they can easily turn their ba ck to the project and without beneficiaries
the project doesn’t have a reason to continue.

Failing to identif y stakeholders can lead to difficult situations,

especially when the project has to deal with a key stakeholder who has
the power to disrupt the proj ect. By identifying early in the project the
needs, concerns and issues of th e stakeholders, the project has
developed an advantage that can use to its favor. Insufficient
involvement and infrequent communi cation with stak eholders is a
leading cause of project failure.

A project should never try to take st akeholders for granted, or assume

they will all support the project unconditionally; good stakeholder
management helps manage the poli tics that can often come wi th
development projects. It helps win support for the projects and

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The Project Management Processes

eliminates a major source of projec t stress. The success or failure of

the project is ultimately judged by stakeholders, not project managers.

Information Management

Includes the processes re quired to ensure timely and appropriate

generation, collection, dissemination, storage, and ultimate dispo sition
of project information. 80% of a project managers’ time is spent
communicating via reports, email, telephone, meetings and
presentations. The first step of the plan is to de fine the i nformation’s
needs of the stak eholders, determine when they need it, how the
information will be distributed and how to evaluate the relevance and
effectiveness of the information.

The information manageme nt plan contains a list or description of all

the information that needs to be communicated by the project; it
identifies who will be responsible for collecting, editing and distributing
the information. Donors h ave specific information needs from the
project and provide formats that describe the content and ti ming of
the information required. Distributing information goes beyond the act
of sending informa tion and includes steps to ensure the information
was received and understood by t he intended recipients, this is
important specially when developi ng donor reports or reports to
comply with local laws or regulations.

Information management also includes an analysis or evaluation of the

effectiveness and relevance of the info rmation distributed, this step is
useful when information is used as a tool to build stakeholder support
and build relationships with benefi ciaries, communities and other key
stakeholders. A key component of th e information management is the
development of a communications pl an. The communication plan is
influenced by the type and needs of the pr oject stakeholders, one
message or one type of report cannot be used to inform all
stakeholders, each has a different in terest on the project, a different
need for information and all requir e information in different formats
and mediums, even the frequency of communications can be different.

Having a successful communications plan depends to a large extend to

the ability of the project to listen, c ommunication is not just a bout

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The Project Management Processes

sending information, but learning to listen first and then define what
information is missing. The goal of communication is the acceptance of
the project’s message by the rece iving audience. If the receiver
understands the meaning of the me ssage which asks for action, but
fails to act, the goal of communica tions is not achieved. But if the
receiver responds to the message by taking the appropriate action, the
goal of the communication has been achieved.

Risk Management

Risk Management includes t he processes concerned with identifying,

analyzing, and responding to project risk. Risk in projects is defined as
something that may happen and if it does, will have an adverse impact
on the project. There are four stag es to risk management planning,
they are: risk identification, risk analysis and qua ntification, risk
response, risk monitoring and control.

Risk identification deals with findin g all possible risks that may impact
the project, it involves identify ing potential risks and documenting
their characteristics. The project team members identify the potential
risks using their own knowledge of the project, its environment, similar
projects done in t he past. Risk iden tification results in a deliverable,
the project risk list.

The next step is the quantitative an d qualitative analysis of the project

risks. Qualitative risk analysis assesses the importance of the
identified risks and develops prioritized lists o f these risks for fu rther
analysis or direct mitigation. The team assesses each identified risk for
its probability of occurring and its impact on project objectives. Part of
risk management includes the revisi on of ris k analysis during the
project’s lifecycle.

 Quantitative risk analysis is a way of numeric ally estimating the

probability that a project will meet its cost and time objectives.
 Quantitative analysis is based on a simultaneous evaluation of the
impact of all identified and quantified risks.

Risk response planning focuses on th e high risk items e valuated in the

qualitative/quantitative risk analysis . It identif ies and assigns staff t o

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The Project Management Processes

take responsibility for each risk event. The project manager and the
team identify which strategy is be st for each risk, an d then design
specific actions to implement that strategy.

Risk monitoring and control keeps trac k of the identified risks, residual
risks, and new risks. It also ensu res the execution of r isk response
plans, and evaluates their effectiven ess. Risk monitoring and control
continues for the life of the project. The list of project risks changes a s
the project matures, new risks develop, or anticipated risks disappear.
Risks management is the management of events t hat may or may not
occur, and planning for their possibl e range of impacts to the project.
Because of this probabilistic and speculative nature of risk
management, many project manager s feel it’s is not necessary and
prefer to deal with only when the risk occurs.

Contract Management

Contract Management incl udes the processes requir ed to acquire

goods and services needed by the project from th ird parties, for mos t
projects the procurement pr ocess is usually managed by a support or
administrative function of the organi zations. The role of the project is
to supply, as detai led as po ssible, all the procurement requirements
including all the technical specificat ions, quantity and the date when
they will be needed; this is created in a project procurement plan.

Contract management consists of four steps; develop the resource

plan, implement the plan, review an d update the plan. The resource
plan identifies the what, when and how many of the goods and
services needed within th e budgeted limits. It also identifies potential
sources and the strategies that the pr oject will use to procure; this is
done in conjunction with the organizations’ procurement function

Implementing the plan is the proc ess of developing the procurement

documents such as the Request for Proposal (RFPs), developing the
selection criteria a nd contract terms; it also involves t he process to
solicit the goods an d services, obtaining quotations, bids, proposals or
offers. Selecting the vendor or so urce involves choosing from the
potential suppliers, verifying their qualifications and capacity and
negotiating and awarding the contract.

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The Project Management Processes

Most of the time spent in contract management consist of following the

due diligence process required to en sure the project obtains the goods
and services under the req uired specifications. This is a process of
systematically evaluating vendor in formation, to identif y risks and
issues relating to the proposed tran saction and then select the offers
that meet the requirements of the solicitation.

Monitoring the plan involves mana ging the relationship with the
supplier, monitoring contrac t performance, ensuring payments are
made on time and goods and services are delivered under
specifications. When all contract ob ligations have been achieved (or
when they have not) the project w ill close the contract which includes
the completion and settlement of th e contract, resolution of open
issues, final verifi cation, formal a cceptance and, if required by the
donor, a contract audit.

Contract management will not only identify all the goods and services
the project needs and acquiring them, but also identify the
organizations procedures, donor restrictions and host country
government regulations tha t apply to them. This process involves
deciding how to procure, when to procure, what to procure and how
much to procure. This process has as an objective to ensure the
projects gets what it needs without creating risk to the project and the
organizations. Risks can come in th e form of i mproper or inadequate
controls to manage the contract relationships between the vendor and
the organization. There are also risk s related to the ina ppropriate use
of donor funds to purchase the g oods and services that do not meet
the donor requirements; the purpos e is to ensure the goods and
services meet the needs of the projec t and ultimately the needs of the
beneficiaries.

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The Project Management Processes

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 Effective Project Management

An advanced level, hands-on course, that will give you the

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The Project Management Processes
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