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What is Planning Process Group?

July 4, 2008 | Author: admin | Filed under: Project Plan Development, PMBOK

What is Planning Process Group?
By Sivaraj Dhanasekaran

In layman term, the Planning process group is the place where the PM, project teams decides what they want, how to do, when to do, who to do, money needed, time needed and so on. Once these are decided, PM will pen down every thing in formal document & gets every one’s agreement and move to next phase. This process group is the key phase in all projects and decides the fate of the project.

As usual now, we will go for PMBOK 3 definition.

The Planning process is the process group of formalizing and confirming the project goals and objectives. It also creates the project management plan to achieve project objectives.

Planning process group literally visits & covers all areas of project management. It includes budgets,activity definition, scope planning, schedule development, risk identification, staff acquisition, procurement planning, and so on. Planning process group is the one group revisited during various phases of the project.

Objectives

  1. Define and Record Requirements, Constraints, and Assumptions
  2. Identify Project Team and Define Roles and Responsibilities
  3. Create the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
  4. Develop Change Management Plan
  5. Identify Risks and Define Risk Strategies
  6. Obtain Plan Approval
  7. Conduct Kick-off Meeting

Knowledge Areas & Processes

Knowledge Area Processes
Integration
  1. Develop Project Management Plan
Scope
  1. Scope Planning
  2. Scope Definition
  3. Create WBS
Time
  1. Activity Definition
  2. Activity Sequencing
  3. Activity Resource Estimating
  4. Activity Duration Estimating
  5. Schedule Development
Cost
  1. Cost Estimating
  2. Cost Budgeting
Quality
  1. Quality Planning
Human Resource Management
  1. Human Resource Planning
Communication
  1. Communications Planning
Risk
  1. Risk Management Planning
  2. Risk Identification
  3. Qualitative Risk Analysis
  4. Quantitative Risk Analysis
  5. Risk Response Planning
Procurement
  1. Plan Purchases and Acquisitions
  2. Plan Contracting

Note : Planning process group processes covers all nine knowledge Areas.

Dhanasekaran, Sivaraj is a certified PMP and works as a Senior Project Manager in one of the leading MNC banks in Singapore. He has over 13 years IT experience and handled banking projects as well as managed production support team for complex Treasury applications for various MNC banks.

He loves to share his experience and knowledge gained as Project Manager and also providing guidance to people who wanted to obtain PMP certification. He runs a project management forum at www.sgpm.wordpress.com.

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 4th, 2008 and is filed under Project Plan Development, PMBOK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 person has left a comment

Your article focusses on general project planning but how to do planning in a project management office? e.g. a project request is made to the pmo

Asif Khan wrote on July 7, 2008 - 5:05 am | Visit Link

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