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Initiating

The initiating processes determine the nature and scope of the project. If this stage is not performed well, it is unlikely that the project will be successful in meeting the business' needs. The key project controls needed here are an understanding of the business environment and making sure that all necessary controls are incorporated into the project. Any deficiencies should be reported and a recommendation should be made to fix them. The initiating stage should include a plan that encompasses the following areas:

• Analyzing the business needs/requirements in measurable goals.
• Reviewing of the current operations.
• Financial analysis of the costs and benefits including a budget.
• Stakeholder analysis, including users, and support personnel for the project.
• Project charter including costs, tasks, deliverables, and schedule.

Planning and design

After the initiation stage, the project is planned to an appropriate level of detail (see example of a flow-chart). The main purpose is to plan time, cost and resources adequately to estimate the work needed and to effectively manage risk during project execution. As with the Initiation process group, a failure to adequately plan greatly reduces the project's chances of successfully accomplishing its goals.

Project planning

Generally consists of:

• Determining how to plan (e.g. by level of detail or rolling wave).
• Developing the scope statement.
• Selecting the planning team.
• Identifying deliverables and creating the work breakdown structure.
• Identifying the activities needed to complete those deliverables and networking the activities in their logical sequence.
• Estimating the resource requirements for the activities.
• Developing the schedule.
• Developing the budget.
• Risk planning.
• Gaining formal approval to begin work.

Additional processes, such as planning for communications and for scope management, identifying roles and responsibilities, determining what to purchase for the project and holding a kick-off meeting are also generally advisable. For new product development projects, conceptual design of the operation of the final product may be performed concurrent with the project planning activities, and may help to inform the planning team when identifying deliverables and planning activities.

Executing

Executing consists of the processes used to complete the work defined in the project plan to accomplish the project's requirements. Execution process involves coordinating people and resources, as well as integrating and performing the activities of the project in accordance with the project management plan. The deliverables are produced as outputs from the processes performed as defined in the project management plan and other frameworks that might be applicable to the type of project at hand

Monitoring and controlling

Monitoring and controlling consists of those processes performed to observe project execution so that potential problems can be identified in a timely manner and corrective action can be taken, when necessary, to control the execution of the project. The key benefit is that project performance is observed and measured regularly to identify variances from the project management plan. Monitoring and controlling includes:

• Measuring the ongoing project activities ('where we are').
• Monitoring the project variables (cost, effort, scope, etc.) against the project management plan and the project performance baseline (where we should be).
• Identify corrective actions to address issues and risks properly (How can we get on track again).
• Influencing the factors that could circumvent integrated change control so only approved changes are implemented.

In multi-phase projects, the monitoring and control process also provides feedback between project phases, in order to implement corrective or preventive actions to bring the project into compliance with the project management plan.