As a Project Management Professional (PMP), understanding the project management processes is essential for successful project execution. The Project Management Institute (PMI) defines 49 processes that are organized into five process groups and ten knowledge areas. In this article, we provide a complete list of all 49 PMP project management processes, highlighting their significance in project management practice.
Process Groups
The PMI organizes PMP project management processes into five process groups:
- Initiating: Processes that define and authorize a new project or phase.
- Planning: Processes that establish the project scope, objectives, and detailed project plan.
- Executing: Processes that coordinate people and resources to execute the project plan.
- Monitoring and Controlling: Processes that track, review, and regulate project progress and performance.
- Closing: Processes that formally close the project or phase and ensure project completion.
Ten Knowledge Areas
The 49 PMP project management processes are further categorized into ten knowledge areas:
- Integration Management
- Scope Management
- Schedule Management
- Cost Management
- Quality Management
- Resource Management
- Communication Management
- Risk Management
- Procurement Management
- Stakeholder Management
PMP Project Management Processes: Integration Management
Project integration management is the foundational task of project managers as it connects disparate knowledge areas. It is the method by which the project manager combines the various areas of a project together. In reality, the project manager can be considered an integrator since they are the ones that combine the efforts of colleagues and the various project management processes into a cohesive effort to achieve a successful project.
It covers the processes, actions, and tasks that are utilized to bring together disparate project initiatives into a coherent, goal-oriented effort. The Project integration PMP Process is something that project managers cannot delegate due to the aforementioned responsibilities and needed knowledge.
1 of 49 Project Management Processes: Develop Project Charter Process
The first of the PMP 49 processes is the Develop Project Charter Process. The goal of this step in Project Management is to establish the project and grant the project manager the authorization document needed to obtain all of the resources the project will require.
The Develop Project Charter Process is the primary process that should be followed, as it supports the work of the project manager. The main output of the Develop Project Charter Process is the project charter, which is the documentation created from project requirements, the business case, and the benefits management plan. This is an internal document for project verification and authorization, while contracts are used externally.
The main items on the project charter are the project objectives, as well as their top-level requirements and finalization processes.
Additionally, the process also creates an assumptions log, which is where a Project Manager or other eligible colleague makes projections regarding the project. To learn more in-depth about this process, sign up to a PMP Course which provides a full and in-depth look at everything needed to pass the PMP Exam.
2 of 49 Project Management Processes: Develop Project Management Plan Process
As we discussed in the introduction, the project manager acts as an aggregator of systems, individuals and processes. The Develop Project Management Plan Process connects all of the various plans into one master project management plan, integrated with all of the other process plans and systems.
This process is critical when it comes to developing a project plan as it ensures there is no mismatch between component plans. This process is critical for project success in this regard. Even if component plans are handled by experts, the project manager must stay on top of the process to oversee the project as a whole.
3 of 49 Project Management Processes: Direct and Manage Project Work Process
The third PMP project management process involves the leadership and control of the activities of the project. This process develops the work deliverables and change requests for project work. This is a good organizational tool for establishing the project’s initial workflow.
4 of 49 Project Management Processes: Manage Project Knowledge Process
The manage project knowledge process is a process used to generate higher quality results in a project, along with updating and improving upon team and company knowledge to improve not only the existing project’s results, but also that of future projects.
5 of 49 Project Management Processes: Monitor and Control Project Work Process
This process is a pivotal aspect of Project Management and involves the assessment, review and documentation of a project and its activities. The goal is to be able to display the status of a project along with providing the data to discover any issues in performance and display any areas for improvement. One of the main outputs for this PMP process are performance reports.
6 of 49 Project Management Processes: Integrated Change Control Process
Many Project Managers have to deal with change requests, and knowing how to handle them efficiently as a project progresses is imperative to the project’s success. Whether the project stakeholders need to request additional resources, or a change in deliverables is now needed, the integrated change control process will have all the documentation to explain the procedure for requesting and implementing these changes.
Along with this, it also provides an analysis of the change requests themselves, how it will affect the scope of the project and the various areas that are interconnected. A change request could potentially change many items of a project, such as the timeframe, the resources, the cost and the effort. Following an integrated change control process means that changes can be completed efficiently with minimum damage to the project as a whole.
7 of 49 Project Management Processes: Close Project/Phase Process
When a project (or part of a project) is completed, there is a process that must be followed to close it correctly. The Project Manager will perform this process each time a stage of a project is completed, and when the project in total has closed.
The process ensures that all of the project’s deliverables (or deliverables of a project phase) have been completed along with all the needed documentation that accompanies it is complete and organized correctly. In addition, it works as an official declaration that can be seen as the project progresses.
PMP Processes – Scope Management
When it comes to scope, the project manager acts as the auditor and controller that understands the consequences that can happen to a project without proper oversight. The Project Manager can prevent the project from running out of resources or over budget by managing the scope, ensuring each deliverable is completed correctly without additional features being worked on that are not part of a project. Disclaiming what is NOT in scope can be just as important as what IS in scope.
8 of 49 Project Management Processes: Plan Scope Management Process
The objective of this process is to establish a concrete Scope Management Plan which acts as a guideline for how to deal with the project and its scope as the project progresses – ensuring there is a structure that can be followed depending on how the project is developing, whether it is on time or behind schedule and what to do if these issues do arise.
9 of 49 Project Management Processes: Collect Requirements Process
Without requirements, a project cannot begin. This is why the Collect Requirements Process is so important, not only is it the process that collects all of the needed requirements for the project, but it also manages and organizes them in an appropriate and efficient way. It tracks the requirements and keeps the project progressing
10 of 49 Project Management Processes: Define Scope Process
This stage of project management is to build a comprehensive description for the project. In addition it is to define the work that the various teams within the project must complete in order to complete this product. It also establishes the project’s limits and acceptance criteria. The project team should have a project scope statement after going through this procedure.
11 of 49 Project Management Processes: Create WBS Process
The WBS, process, or work breakdown structure process is a manner used to design the project in such a way that the work is organized into small components rather than one large block. This way it allows the project to be more controllable. The final output of this process is a framework designed which lists all the deliverables and documentation that will need to be submitted to complete each section of the work project.
12 of 49 Project Management Processes: Validate Scope Process
Validation is important for any project, the scope of which is one a critical part of validation. This process therefore has the goal of confirming and finalizing the project deliverables and the outputs expected. Once this is formalized, the client is much more likely to accept the final product as it is clearly laid out what they will expect to obtain once the project is complete.
On top of this, it also provides a benefit to the project manager as it gives them a baseline for what is expected of the project, so they can analyze and notice any differences between what the client is expecting, the requirements agreed and the project’s work that is actually being developed and as such can correct this early.
13 of 49 Project Management Processes: Control Scope Process
Controlling the scope can be seen as something quite simple: Is the work being produced within the timeframe and budget and effort that was initially listed. However, in order to control it within an organized and efficient manner, the Control Scope Process must be developed. Creating correct change request systems to track and relate to the scope of work. This process provides an efficient way to maintain the scope of a project without seeing feature creep develop into the project, as the scope will warn of consequences of this.
PMP Processes – Schedule Management
Schedule Management revolves around the schedule, the timelines and keeping a project from not going over the deadline. The various processes are built to control this schedule and manage the project to keep it within schedule and scope. It also involves organizing and presenting these deadlines, as such these processes range from the planning aspect to also the controlling and monitoring aspects.
14 of 49 Project Management Processes: Plan Schedule Management
This process results in the creation of guidelines on how to plan and control the schedule within the project, taking into consideration issues that may arise and corrective steps that can be taken to return the schedule back to an acceptable limit.
15 of 49 Project Management Processes: Define Activities
Defining activities can be seen as a simple process, as far as its description goes, but it is an important one that must be done right. This process involves detailing the specific actions that each activity will require so that the in can develop the deliverable stated in the project. Generally, the output for this PMP Process is an activity list revealing what is needed to create the final product.
16 of 49 Project Management Processes: Sequence Activities
The Sequences Activities Process revolves around discovering and listing the project activities and how they relate to one another, if they are dependent on other activities and tasks and how they are related to activities being undertaken, external to the specific project being managed.
17 of 49 Project Management Processes: Estimate Activity Durations
This process involves defining the durations that each activity will take, estimating it and using this data to understand and predict the timeline and schedule of the project.
18 of 49 Project Management Processes: Develop Schedule
As an aggregator, a project manager will need to collect and collate all of the varying schedules that each part of the project will take and develop a complete timeline and schedule with this data. The Develop Schedule Process focuses on this and assists in building the schedule and timeline.
19 of 49 Project Management Processes: Control Schedule
Controlling the schedule is imperative to ensuring a project remains within the scheduled timeframe and deadlines are met. The project manager will ensure that the activities are on schedule, timelines flow and the project schedule documents are being filled as project components are being completed. To this end, the project manager will also manage change requests and analyze their effect on the schedule.
PMP Processes – Cost Management
This part of project management revolves around controlling and managing the project costs to ensure the project remains on budget — as such a monitoring system must be put in place.
20 of 49 Project Management Processes: Plan Cost Management Process
This process is the base for managing costs across the project. It involves creating the guides on the procedure for the estimates that are made at the start of the project (and as it progresses if needed), how the costs will be managed and importantly, how they will be monitored.
21 of 49 Project Management Processes: Estimate Costs Process
Estimating the cost that a project will incur is pivotal when organizing how a project will proceed, a Project Manager will use the Estimate Costs PMP Process to deliver, as accurately as possible, a projection of the costs that will be incurred during the project’s duration.
22 of 49 Project Management Processes: Determine Budget Process
As an aggregator, the project manager will once again collate information across all project areas to create an accurate estimate of the cost and define a budget for each section of the project. A formal cost baseline is established, a cost threshold that a project can acceptably run up to if it goes over this baseline, and additional budgets can be considered for contingency situations.
23 of 49 Project Management Processes: Control Costs Process
Project Managers use the Control Costs Process to monitor the project in relation to cost, with an eye to controlling and managing the cost baseline that may undergo changes or be affected. This process is what is needed to initiate a performance review should cost and schedule be affected too greatly.
PMP Processes – Quality Management
Delivering a high quality product is essential, when we look at Quality Management we must balance that with the scheduling and cost processes to deliver the product with the quality that is to be expected by our declared deliverables. QM contains almost all areas of a project.
24 of 49 Project Management Processes: Plan Quality Management
This process exists to plan ahead of time the quality of product that is to be delivered at the project end. It will include all of the information needed to be able to measure this, such as metrics, requirements and quality standards that a project must stick to. In addition to this, it will plan for and ensure compliance to these standards.
25 of 49 Project Management Processes: Manage Quality Process
Once the aforementioned plan has been developed, the Manage Quality Process converts it into relevant actions that can be incorporated to ensure the project follows the set standards.
26 of 49 Project Management Processes: Control Quality Process
This process is in regard to the overview of the quality of a project as it takes place. It involves creating a system to measure and monitor the standards of project deliverables being developed so that each component, and thus the whole project, is finished to expected standards. It is important that this Control Quality Process records the results of these activities and how changes are performed.
PMP Processes – Resource Management
Resources are the lifeblood of a project, properly managing them is critical to sustaining a project until completion and delivering a high quality product within budget and on schedule. The Resource Management Processes supports everything in relation to resources, from defining and obtaining them to managing, controlling and monitoring their usage.
27 of 49 Project Management Processes: Plan Resource Management Process
The Plan Resource Management process establishes a guideline that the project manager(s) can use for identifying resources, how to acquire them, the plan for managing the resources and the important process of how the Project Manager will be monitoring the resources usage throughout the project.
28 of 49 Project Management Processes: Estimate Activity Resources Process
This PMP process revolves around the projections and collection of knowledge of what resources will be required and how they will be divided through the various components and activities of the project.
29 of 49 Project Management Processes: Acquire Resources Process
This process involves the specific tasks of obtaining the required resources for the project.
30 of 49 Project Management Processes: Develop Team Process
This process involves integrating, aggregating and improving the resources as a whole, supporting improved teamwork and higher skills and abilities. This process acts as a way to collect the resources and integrate them into the teams as a core component, improving workflow and efficiency.
31 of 49 Project Management Processes: Manage Team Process
This is a tracking and controlling process that monitors the performance of the acquired resources and ensures that they are moving at the correct level. When issues arise, this process is used to support and resolve it quickly to prevent damage to the project’s budget, schedule and quality along with, if necessary, readjusting the resources to support restoring them to the expected levels.
32 of 49 Project Management Processes: Control Resources Process
Making sure that the resources that have been acquired are available to the teams that need them is a project manager’s responsibility. The Control Resources Process is used to coordinate the distribution of the resources as initially decided. In addition to this, the Control Resources Process also measures the actual resource consumption compared to what was planned, so if any variance is detected it can be solved before a problem arises.
PMP Processes – Communication Management
Communication is an important part of any project, the project manager will develop and ensure correct communication channels are used to divulge and deliver project information. In addition, it involves the processes that enable communication between stakeholders and the project team.
33 of 49 Project Management Processes: Plan Communications Management Process
To begin with, a plan must be developed to outline and define the correct manner of communication.
34 of 49 Project Management Processes: Manage Communications Process
The management aspect of communications ensures that correct usage of communication channels are followed.
35 of 49 Project Management Processes: Monitor Communications Process
Monitoring communications is a process that is organized so that the stakeholders of the project are receiving the relevant and required information.
PMP Processes – Risk Management
Risk Management involves premeditatively preparing for risks that could affect the project, along with the actions needed to be taken to alleviate the issues they could present. It also sets the foundation and guidelines for monitoring and responding to these risks.
36 of 49 Project Management Processes: Plan Risk Management Process
The initial Plan for risk management establishes a guideline for how a project manager can define and deal with the various risks that may occur during the project.
37 of 49 Project Management Processes: Identify Risks Process
This important process defines and identifies potential risks, where they could derive from and what variables these risks have.
38 of 49 Project Management Processes: Perform Qualitative Risk Analysis Process
This process involves the assessment of how likely risks are to affect the project, the level of impact they could have on project components and the project as a whole and defines which risks are the most important to protect against.
39 of 49 Project Management Processes: Perform Quantitative Risk Analysis Process
This PMP Process is used to convert the information that has been collected regarding risk and convert it into a quantifiable value. This allows for a cross-project analysis of all the various risks and supports risk prioritization.
40 of 49 Project Management Processes: Plan Risk Responses Process
This plan is established to provide an agreed upon solution on how to react to the risks as the project progresses.
41 of 49 Project Management Processes: Implement Risk Responses Process
This portion of the Risk Management collection of Processes revolves around the guidelines set to react to the risks when they do occur.
42 of 49 Project Management Processes: Monitor Risks Process
Not only does this process monitor the risks that could affect the project, but it also tracks the actions that are taken in response to them, allowing for an analysis of the strategies undertaken during the risk management. As the project progresses, new risks may be identified and this process is also used to capture that information.
PMP Project Management Processes – Procurement Management
Procurement Management revolves around the acquisition of resources and any contracts and agreements that must be made with external parties.
43 of 49 Project Management Processes: Plan Procurement Management Process
This plan is used to establish a guideline and documentation for contacting and dealing with providers that would supply the needed resources for a project.
44 of 49 Project Management Processes: Conduct Procurements Process
This process explains the system needed to analyze the various variables and options that must be taken into account when dealing with providers and suppliers of project resources.
45 of 49 Project Management Processes: Control Procurements Process
This PMP Process is used to control and manage the various interactions that are undertaken with third party providers and suppliers. It involves monitoring the performance of each and dealing with any issues that arise along with finishing contracts.
PMP Project Management Processes – Stakeholder Management
Stakeholders in a project will need varying levels of communication and integration with a project, as such the processes for managing how the stakeholders can interact with the project and with what portion of it they are involved are defined in the PMP Processes regarding Stakeholder Management. It will define exactly who may be related to the project and at what level along with an analysis of their role and power within the project.
46 of 49 Project Management Processes: Identify Stakeholders Process
This initial process is run to establish who the stakeholders of a project are, with which component they are impacted or impact and how they should or could interact with the project.
47 of 49 Project Management Processes: Plan Stakeholder Engagement Process
The engagement process plans in advance on how stakeholders should be dealt with. Different stakeholders will have different roles and therefore should be communicated with differently: this process also obtains the expectations of the stakeholders and works to manage them as needed.
48 of 49 Project Management Processes: Manage Stakeholder Engagement Process
This is the management portion of the engagement process, this can occur throughout the project and involves the process of contacting the stakeholders and controlling their needs and change requests.
49 of 49 Project Management Processes: Monitor Stakeholder Engagement Process
The engagement process also needs to be monitored, which is where this process comes in. Communication and engagement is monitored and the relationships that are being formed and affected are monitored and evaluated. If needed a custom approach is developed for each stakeholder to ascertain the engagement is smooth and positive.
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Conclusion
The complete list of all 49 PMP project management processes provides a comprehensive framework for successful project execution. By understanding these processes, project managers can effectively plan, execute, monitor, control, and close projects. Incorporate these processes into your project management practice to enhance project outcomes and deliver successful results.
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