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Chapter 4 – Organisation And Governance

Paul Naybour Paul Naybour

Published: 19th February 2016

List and describe five key components of a project management method

1) People

2) Processes

3) Templates

4) Tools

5) Products

1) This aspect of the project management method defines roles and responsibilities of people working on the project.  It is important to define this so that everyone knows what they are doing when.  For example the role of the sponsor for the delivery of the benefits and the role of the project manager for delivery of the project should be defined in the project management method.

2) This part of a project management method defines how to deal with certain aspects in a project.  For example risk, issue and change management will be some of the key processes and this will clearly define how this will be executed by the project ensuring a consistency of approach across the board.

3) Templates are typically documents with a predetermined format and are often populated with text and helpful hints that have been incorporated as a result of experiences on previous projects.  Examples of templates are the Business case, Project Management Plan, Risk Log, Issues Log, Reporting template etc. Templates ensure consistency across the project which builds familiarity within the organisation and allows for rollup of information to a summary level for reporting purposes.

4) Some project management methods includes tools that the project team can use to assist them with their day to day activities on a project.  Example of tools that can be used are planning software (MS Project), flow charting (MS Visio) or document management system (Documentum).  Use of tools as part of a method will again encourage consistency in approach.

5) A project management method will describe which products will be produced by when and by who.  There is two parts to products 2) products as part of the effective running of the project and includes items such as a project management plan, schedule, risk log etc.  b) the outputs of the project that form part of the deliverable to the user i.e. product marketing plan, product test plan, cutover plan (for a new system) etc.  This all contributes to the success of a project and everyone knows what they are working towards.