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The 10 Project Management Knowledge Areas (PMBOK)

What do you need to know to succeed at project management? Everything! While there’s some truth to that joke, this answer can be narrowed down by looking at the project management knowledge areas as defined in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), a book by the Project Management Institute (PMI), which compiles the fundamental concepts of project management .

What Are the Project Management Knowledge Areas?

The project management knowledge areas can be simply defined as the key aspects of project management that should be overseen by project managers so they can plan, schedule, track and deliver projects successfully with the help of the project team and project stakeholders.

Each of these project management knowledge areas needs to be managed throughout the five project life cycle phases, which are project initiation, project planning, project execution, monitoring and controlling, and project closing. These are the chronological phases that every project goes through, also referred to as project management process groups in PMI’s PMBOK.

The PMBOK knowledge areas take place during any one of these process groups. You can think of the process groups as horizontal, while the knowledge areas are vertical. The knowledge areas are the core technical subject matter, which is necessary for effective project management.

The 10 Project Management Knowledge Areas

Here’s an overview of each of the 10 knowledge areas of project management, including a brief description of the key project management documents needed to control each of them. All of these project documents are part of the project management plan which includes information about all knowledge areas of project management.

1. Project Integration Management

Project integration management can be simply defined as the framework that allows project managers to coordinate tasks, resources, stakeholders, changes and project variables. Project managers can use different tools to make sure there are solid project integration management practices in place. For example, the project management plan is important for project integration because it works as a roadmap for the project to reach a successful end. Once created, the project plan is approved by stakeholders and/or sponsors before it’s monitored and tracked by the project management team.

Project management software, like ProjectManager , is ideal for project integration management because it’s an online platform that project managers can use to create a project plan, oversee project management knowledge areas and collaborate with their teams online. Choose between online Gantt charts, kanban boards, project calendars and other project management views to plan, schedule and track your projects. ProjectManager also has project reporting features that allow project managers to create project reports they can share with project stakeholders to keep them informed.

The project integration area also includes the directing and managing of the project work, which is the production of its deliverables. This process is monitored, analyzed and reported on to identify and control any changes or problems that might occur.

Also, any change control will be carried out. That might require request forms, approval from stakeholders and/or sponsors or another admin. This area is also part of the project closure at the end of the project.

2. Project Scope Management

Project scope management is one of the most important project management knowledge areas. It consists of managing your project scope, which refers to the work that needs to be executed in a project. To manage your project scope , you’ll need to build a project scope management plan, a document where you’ll define what will be done in your project.

To start building your scope management plan , begin by writing a scope statement. This statement is anything from a sentence to a bulleted list that’s comprehensive to reduce major project risks. Another part of this area is a work breakdown structure (WBS), which is a graphic breakdown of project work.

Validate scope during the project, which means making sure that the deliverables are being approved regularly by the sponsor or stakeholder. This occurs during the monitoring and controlling process groups and is about accepting the deliverables, not the specs laid out during planning.

The scope statement is likely going to change over the course of the project to control the scope, such as if a project falls behind schedule.

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3. Project Time Management

Project time management involves estimating your project duration, creating a project schedule and tracking the project team’s progress to ensure the project is completed on time. To do so, the first thing to do is to define your project scope to identify the tasks that should go into your project schedule.

Those project tasks are then put in an order that makes sense, and any dependencies between them are noted. These dependencies are then determined to be either finish-to-start (FS), finish-to-finish (FF), start-to-start (SS) or start-to-finish (SF). This is mostly for larger projects.

With the tasks now sequenced, the project resources required for each must be estimated and assigned. The duration of each task is also determined at this point. All of this leads to a schedule by first determining the critical path and float for each task. You should use project management tools like Gantt charts , kanban boards or project calendars to place the tasks on a timeline, and then work on resource leveling to balance resource usage.

Once the project schedule is made, plans to control the schedule are necessary. Earned value management is performed regularly to make sure that the actual plan is proceeding as planned.

4. Project Cost Management

This project management knowledge area involves estimating project costs to create a project budget . To do so, you’ll need to use cost-estimating tools and techniques to make sure that the funds cover the project expenses and are being monitored regularly to keep stakeholders or sponsors informed.

As with other project management knowledge areas, the cost management plan is the document where you’ll explain the method to establish the budget, which includes how and if it will change and what procedures will be used to control it. Each project task will have to be estimated for cost , which means including all resources such as labor, materials, equipment and anything else needed to complete the task.

5. Project Quality Management

A project can come in on time and within budget, but if the quality isn’t up to standard, then the project is a failure. This means that quality management is one of the most critical project management knowledge areas. Your project management plan should include a quality management plan section that specifies the quality control and quality assurance guidelines for your project.

Therefore, to control quality, the deliverables must be inspected to ensure that the standards outlined in the quality management plan are being met.

6. Project Human Resource Management

The project team is your most important resource, so it’s crucial to assemble the best team and make sure they’re happy. But also you need to track their performance to ensure that the project is progressing as planned. A human resource management plan identifies the roles and requirements for those positions, as well as how they fit into the overall project structure.

After you’ve determined the project roles , it’s time to fill those positions and acquire a project team. This can be done in-house by drawing from other departments in the organization, getting new hires or a combination of both. The team needs development, possibly training and other things that’ll make them viable for the project.

Managing the project team is an ongoing responsibility of the project manager. The team is monitored to make sure they’re working productively and that there are no internal conflicts, so everyone is satisfied.

7. Project Communications Management

All knowledge areas of project management are important, but communication management might be paramount as it informs every aspect of the project. Communications inform the team and stakeholders, therefore the need to plan communications management is a critical step in any project.

Related: Free Communication Plan Template

It’s at this point that the dissemination of communications is determined, including how it’s done and with what frequency. Target who needs what and when. Also, note how communications will occur when issues such as changes arise in the project.

Manage the communications when the project is executed to make sure it runs as planned. This also involves controlling communications by reviewing their effectiveness regularly and adjusting as needed.

8. Project Risk Management

Risk management plans identify how the risks will be itemized, categorized and prioritized. This involves identifying risks that might occur during the execution of the project by making a risk register .

Perform qualitative risk analysis after the biggest risks have been identified and classified by likelihood and impact. Then prioritize them. Then perform quantitative analysis according to their impact on the project, such as its budget, schedule, etc.

Now you’ll need to plan risk responses . If those risks in fact become issues, then a response needs to have been written in advance, with an owner who can make sure the risk is properly identified and handled. Controlling risk involves regularly reviewing the risk register and crossing off those risks that are no longer going to impact the project.

9. Project Procurement Management

This project management knowledge area deals with outside procurement, which is part of most projects, such as hiring subcontractors. This will impact on the budget and schedule. Procurement management planning starts by identifying the outside needs of the project and how those contractors will be involved.

Now conduct those procurements by hiring the contractors, which includes a statement of work , terms of reference, request for proposals and choosing a vendor. You’ll want to control the procurement process by managing and monitoring, and then closing the contracts once the work has been done to everyone’s satisfaction.

10. Project Stakeholder Management

The stakeholders must be happy, as the project has been created for their needs. Therefore, they must be actively managed like any other part of the project. To start, identify the stakeholders through stakeholder analysis and find out what concerns they have. It’s not always easy, but it’s a crucial part of starting any project.

Now plan stakeholder management , which means listing each stakeholder and prioritizing their concerns and how they might impact the project. This will lead to managing stakeholders’ expectations to make sure their needs are met and that you’re in communication with them.

Throughout the project, you’ll want to control stakeholder engagement by determining if the stakeholders’ needs are being addressed. If not, figure out what changes need to be made to either satisfy those needs or adjust the expectations.

Project Management Knowledge Areas vs. Project Management Process Groups

Now that we have a better understanding of what the project management knowledge areas are, let’s explore the differences between them and other similar project management concepts.

We’ve discussed the project management knowledge areas and they’re related to the project management process groups , but they’re not the same thing. The project management knowledge areas are guidelines for the technical side of running a project.

The project management process groups, on the other hand, work with the project management knowledge areas to run the project. The project management process groups are the five main phases of a project: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling and closing.

Project Management Knowledge Areas vs. Project Management Skills

Again, the project management knowledge areas are how the project is managed. They offer various methods to get work planned, managed, tracked, etc. Project management skills , like process groups, work together with the knowledge area. For example, many of the project management skills are technical, or hard, skills. These include those key knowledge area disciplines from planning to risk and everything in between.

But project management skills go beyond technical skills. These are called soft skills and include things such as being a good leader, having strong communication skills and facilitating collaboration. While these skills are often harder to teach, they’re no less important to the success of the project. Project managers need to be problem-solvers, manage their time wisely, be organized and have critical thinking skills or all the hard skills in the world won’t deliver a successful project.

ProjectManager Helps You Apply the Project Management Knowledge Areas

Project management knowledge areas need powerful tools to be implemented throughout the project’s life cycle. ProjectManager is award-winning project management software that has the features you need to plan, manage and track your project in real time. Our task management, risk management and resource management features give project managers and their teams the tools they need to deliver their projects on time and within budget.

Use Multiple Project Management Views

Every project has a diverse team working together for the same goals, but not necessarily using the same tools. When you’re applying all the project management knowledge areas, you need diversity. That’s why our software gives project managers robust online Gantt charts to plan and schedule their projects while teams can choose between task lists and kanban boards. Stakeholders, who don’t need to get into the weeds of the project, can view progress on calendars. All project views update simultaneously in real time so everyone is on the same page.

Monitor With Real-Time Project Tracking

The project management knowledge areas require monitoring and control to work. You can’t expect the executed project to align with the project plan; you need to review and revise as needed. That is why our software has a variety of tracking tools. You can get a high-level overview of the project with our real-time dashboard , which automatically tracks time, cost and more with easy-to-read graphs and charts. Also, there’s no time-consuming setup required as with other software. We also have secure timesheets to monitor your team’s progress on their tasks and a color-coded workload chart that makes it easy to balance workload and keep teams productive and working at capacity.

Create Project Reports in Minutes

Another tool to track progress and performance is our customizable reports . You can get more data than from the dashboard by generating a report in only a couple of keystrokes. Get reports on project or portfolio status, workload, timesheets, variance and much more. All reports can be filtered to focus on only what you want to see. Then they can be shared in a variety of formats to keep stakeholders informed.

Project management knowledge areas bring a project to life, but life can be chaotic and complex, which is why project managers need a tool to help manage all these moving parts of a project. ProjectManager is online project management software with real-time dashboards and Gantt charts to monitor the project accurately throughout its many phases. See how it can help you manage your projects by taking this free 30-day trial.

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Top 15 Project Management Case Studies with Examples 2024

Home Blog Project Management Top 15 Project Management Case Studies with Examples 2024

Having worked for more than 9 years in the dynamic field of project management, I would strongly refer to real-world case studies as invaluable resources for both budding and experienced professionals. These case studies provide critical insights into the challenges and triumphs encountered in various industries, illustrating the application of project management principles in practical scenarios.   I have curated the project management case studies as a part of this article in such a way that it delves into a selection of compelling case studies, ranging from the healthcare sector to infrastructure and technology. Each case study is a testament to the strategic planning, adaptability, and innovative problem-solving skills necessary in today's fast-paced business environment. These narratives not only highlight past successes but also offer guidance for future projects, making them essential tools for anyone eager to excel in project management.

What is Case Study?

A case study refers to an in-depth examination of a specific case within the real-world context. It is a piece of content that sheds light on the challenges faced, solutions adopted, and the overall outcomes of a project. To understand project management case studies, it is important to first define what a project is . A project is a temporary endeavor with a defined beginning and end, aimed at achieving a specific goal or objective. Case studies are generally used by businesses during the proposal phase. However, they are also displayed on the websites of companies to provide prospects with a glance at the capabilities of the brands. It can even serve as an effective tool for lead generation. In simple words, case studies are stories that tell the target audience about the measures and strategies that the organization adopted to become successful.

What is Project Management Case Study?

A project management case study is a piece of content that highlights a project successfully managed by the organization. It showcases the challenges that the organization faced, the solutions adopted, and the final results. Keep reading in order to explore examples of successful project management case studies.

Top 15 Project Management Case Studies and Examples 

Are you looking for some project management case study examples? If yes, here are some of the best examples you can explore. Let’s dive in! Before diving in, here is the list of top 15 project management case studies: 

• Mavenlink Helps Improve Utilization Rates by 15% for BTM Global
• Boncom Reduces Billing Rate Errors by 100%
• whyaye! Reaches 80% Billable Utilization
• Metova Increases Billable Utilization by 10%
• Appetize Doubles Length of Forecasting Outlook
• RSM Improves Client Satisfaction and Global Business Processes
• CORE Business Technologies Increases Billable Utilization by 35%
• Health Catalyst Improves Business Processes and Increases Consistency in Project Delivery
• Optimus SBR Improves Forecasting Horizon by 50%
• PlainJoe Studios Increases Projects Closing Within Budget by 50%
• RPI Consultants Decreases Admin Time by 20%
• CBI's PMO Increases Billable Utilization By 30%
• Butterfly Increases Billable Time by 20%
• TeleTracking Increases Billable Utilization by 37%
• Taylors Improves Utilization Rates by 15%

1. Mavenlink Helps Improve Utilization Rates by 15% for BTM Global

The case study is all about how Mavenlink helped BTM Global Consulting to save hours of work and enhance utilization with resource management technology. BTM Global Consulting offers system development and integration services to diverse clients. The challenges that the company faced were that tools like Netsuite OpenAir and Excel spreadsheets were not able to meet the customization needs as the company grew. It impacted their overall productivity.

BTM Global saw the following benefits: 

• 15% increase in utilization for project managers
• 10% increase in companywide utilization
• 4-hour resource allocation work reduced to 10 minutes
• 100% Company-wide time tracking adoption

In order to overcome the challenge, the solution they adopted was to switch to Mavenlink. The result was that it increased the utilization of the company by 10% and enhanced project manager utilization by 15%. It also reduced resource allocation work from 4 hours to just 10 minutes.

2. Boncom Reduces Billing Rate Errors by 100% With Mavenlink

Boncom is an advertising agency that collaborates with different purpose driven brands to create goods worldwide. The challenge was that the company relied on several-point solutions for delivering client-facing projects. However, the solutions failed to offer the required operational functionality. An ideal solution for Boncom was to adopt Mavenlink. The result was that the billing rate error got reduced by 100%. Accurate forecasting became possible for Boncom, and the company could generate reports in much less time.

3. whyaye! Reaches 80% Billable Utilization with Mavenlink

Here are the top benefits whyaye got: 

• 6% increase in utilization
• Tripled company size
• Doubled in number of new clients every quarter
• Support through constant business scaling

whyaye is a digital transformation consultancy delivering IT transformation solutions to businesses operating in diverse sectors. The challenge was that whyaye used to manage resources and projects using tools such as emails, PowerPoint, and Microsoft Excel. However, with the growth of the company, they were not able to access project data or gain insights for effective management of the projects . The ultimate solution to this challenge was to make a switch to Mavenlink. The result was an increase in the utilization by 6%, doubling of new clients, tripling of the company size, and seamless support through business growth.

4. Metova Increases Billable Utilization by 10% With Mavenlink

If you are looking for a project planning case study, Metova can be the right example. Metova is a technology firm, a Gold Partner of Microsoft, and an advanced consulting partner of AWS. The challenge was that the company handled several projects at a time. However, its heavy dependence on tools like Google Sheets limited the growth capabilities of the organization. So, the company looked for a solution and switched to Mavenlink. The result was that it was able to increase its billable utilization by 10%, increase its portfolio visibility, and standardize its project management process.

5. Appetize Doubles Length of Forecasting Outlook with Mavenlink

Here the the benefits Appetize got with Mavenlink: 

• Forecasting horizon increases to 12 weeks
• Management of 40+ major projects per quarter
• Support for rapid companywide scaling
• Salesforce integration supports project implementation

Appetize is one of the leading cloud-based points of sale (POS), enterprise management, and digital ordering platform that is trusted by a number of businesses. The challenge of the company was that its legacy project tracking systems were not able to meet the growing needs of the company. They experienced growth and manual data analysis challenges. The solution they found was to switch to Mavenlink. The result was an increase in the forecast horizon to 12 weeks, support for effective companywide scaling, easy management of over 40 major projects, and Salesforce integration for project implementation.

6. RSM Improves Client Satisfaction and Global Business Processes with Mavenlink

RSM is a tax, audit, and consulting company that provides a wide array of professional services to clients in Canada and the United States. The challenge of the company was that its legacy system lacked the necessary features required to support their work- and time-intensive projects and delivered insights relating to the project trends. An ideal solution to this challenge was to switch to Mavenlink. The result was better to risk mitigation in tax compliance, improved client-team communication, templatized project creation, and better use of the KPIs and project status.

7. CORE Business Technologies Increases Billable Utilization by 35% with Mavenlink

Here are the top benefits CORE Business Technologies got with Mavenlink: 

• Simultaneous in-progress projects doubled
• 100% company-wide time entry compliance
• 35% Increase in Billable Utilization
• 50% Increase in Team Productivity

Another top project management case study is the Core Business Technologies. CORE Business Technologies is a reputed single-source vendor self-service, in-person, and back-office processing to the clients. It offers SaaS-based payment solutions to clients. The challenge faced by the company was that its tools like spreadsheets, Zoho, and Microsoft Project led to a hectic work schedule owing to a huge number of disconnected systems. The solution to the challenge was to switch to Mavenlink. The result was the enhancement of team productivity by 50%, time entry compliance by 100%, and enhancement of the billable utilization rate by 35%.

8. Client Success: Health Catalyst Improves Business Processes and Increases Consistency in Project Delivery with Mavenlink

Here are the top benefits Health Catalyst saw with Mavenlink:   

• Consistency in Successful Project Delivery 
• Improved Interdepartmental Communication 
• Deeper Resource Data Insights 
• Stronger Resource Forecasting

Health Catalyst is a company that delivers data and analytics services and technology to different healthcare organizations. The firm provides assistance to technicians and clinicians in the healthcare sector. The challenge of the company was that the tools like Intacct and spreadsheets that is used for project management were not able to provide the required data insights and clarity for better project management. It also limited effective resource management. The solution was to embrace Mavenlink. The result was better resource forecasting, enhanced interdepartmental communication, consistency in project delivery, and better resource data insights .

9. Client Success: Optimus SBR Improves Forecasting Horizon by 50% with Mavenlink

Optimus SBR is a leading professional service provider in North America. It offers the best results to companies operating in diverse sectors, including healthcare, energy, transportation, financial services, and more. The challenge was that legacy software tools that the firm used gave rise to project management issues. The company was not able to get a real-time revenue forecast or gain insights into its future financial performance. The solution that the company adopted was to switch to Mavenlink. The result was better data-driven hiring decisions, efficient delivery of remote work, and enhancement of the forecasting horizon by 50%.

10. Client Success: PlainJoe Studios Increases Projects Closing Within Budget by 50% With Mavenlink

Here are the benefits how Mavenlink helped PlainJoe: 

• Improved data insights for project success
• Enablement of fast shift to remote work
• Improved budgeting
• Increased rates in billing

PlainJoe Studios is an experimental design studio that focuses on digitally immersive and strategic storytelling. The company has a team of strategists, architects, and problem solvers to create value for the clients. The challenge of the company was that the manual processing of the company affected its ability to grow and manage the diverse project effectively. They lacked clarity about their project needs and profitability. The solution to deal with the challenge was to switch to Mavenlink. The result was an enhancement in the billing rates by 15%, better project closing within budget by 50%, better data insights for the success of different projects, and a faster shift to remote work.

11. Client Success: RPI Consultants Decreases Admin Time by 20% With Mavenlink

If you are looking for an example of one of the best software project management case studies, then RPI Consultants can be the ideal one. RPI Consultants offer expert project leadership and software consulting services for enterprise-level implementation of solutions and products. The challenge was that the task management solutions adopted by the company gave rise to a number of complications. It resulted in poor interdepartmental transparency and time-consuming data entry. The ultimate solution that the company embraced was to switch to Mavenlink. The result was a rise in the utilization rate by 5%, lowing of admin time by 20%, better forecasting and resource management, and a single source for gaining insights into the project data.

12. Client Success: CBI's PMO Increases Billable Utilization By 30% With Mavenlink

CBI is a company that is focused on protecting the reputations, data, and brands of its clients. The challenge that the company faced was that the solutions used were unable to meet the growing needs of the organization. The systems were outdated, data sharing was not possible, and time tracking was inconsistent. The solution to the challenge was to switch to Mavenlink. The result was better interdepartmental alignment, enhancement of time tracking to support business growth, an increase in the billable utilization rate by 30%, and detailed insights for a greater success of the projects.

13. Client Success: Butterfly Increases Billable Time by 20% with Mavenlink

Butterfly is a leading digital agency that provides digital strategy, website design and development services, and ongoing support to businesses across Australia. The challenge was that the different legacy systems used by the agency limited its capability of effective project management and reporting. The systems were time consuming and cumbersome. In order to deal with the challenge, the solution was to make a switch to Mavenlink. The result was the enhancement of billable time by 20%, fast reporting insights, enhancement of productive utilization by 16%, and better Jira integration.

14. Client Success: TeleTracking Increases Billable Utilization by 37% With Mavenlink

TeleTracking Technologies is a leading provider of patient flow automation solutions to various hospitals in the healthcare sector. The challenge of the company was that it used different systems such as Microsoft Excel, Sharepoint, MS Project, Jira, and Netsuite. The use of a variety of solutions created a number of challenges for the company. It had poor forecasting capability, an insufficient time tracking process, and unclear resource utilization. The solution was to switch to Mavenlink. The result was the enhancement of time tracking compliance by 100%, rise in hours to date by 18%, and enhancement of billable utilization by 37%.

15. Client Success: Taylors Improves Utilization Rates by 15% with Mavenlink

This is a perfect example of a construction project management case study. Taylor Development Strategists is a leading civil engineering and urban planning organization in Australia. The challenge that the company faced was that the systems that it used were not able to support the growth of the business. There were a lot of inefficiencies and limitations. The solution to the challenge was to switch to Mavenlink. The result was better global collaboration, an increase in the utilization rate by 15%, consistency of timesheet entry, and in-depth insights relating to utilization and project targets.

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Start Creating Your Project Management Case Study

Not that you have a detailed idea about project management case studies, it is time to prepare your own. When doing the project management case study exercise, make sure to focus on covering all the important elements. Clearly stating the challenges and the solutions adopted by the company is important. If you want to get better at project management, getting a PMP Certification can be beneficial.

Case Study Best Practices and Tips 

• Involve your clients in the preparation of the case study. 
• Make use of graphs and data. 
• Mix images, texts, graphs, and whitespace effectively.

Project Management Case Studies Examples

Hospital el pilar improves patient care with implementing disciplined agile.

If you are looking for an example of one of the best hospital related project management case studies, then Hospital El Pilar can be the ideal one. Hospital El Pilar is a private hospital in Guatemala City, Guatemala, that provides comprehensive care to patients in various medical specialties. The challenge was that the hospital’s application development team faced several obstacles in managing and delivering projects, such as unclear priorities, a lack of visibility, little interaction with users, and competing demands. The solution that the team adopted was to use Disciplined Agile® (DA™), a flexible and pragmatic approach to project management that optimizes the way of working (WoW). The result was improved project outcomes, increased user satisfaction, greater transparency, and more trust from stakeholders and customers.

British Columbia’s Ministry of Technology and Infrastructure (MoTI) gets its principal corridor for transportation up in 35 days

Reconnecting Roads After Massive Flooding (2022) is a case study of how the British Columbia Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure (MoTI) used a project management approach based on the PMBOK® Guide to restore critical routes after a catastrophic weather event. It is one of the examples of successful project management case studies you can look into. The challenge was that an atmospheric river caused severe flooding, landslides, and bridge collapses, cutting off the lower mainland from the rest of Canada2. The solution was to prioritize the reopening of Highway 5, the principal corridor for transportation of goods and people, by creating scopes, work breakdown structures, and schedules for each site3. The result was that Highway 5 was reopened to commercial traffic in 35 days, despite additional weather challenges and risks4. The construction project management case study we discussed demonstrated the benefits of flexibility, collaboration, and communication in emergency response.

Project Management Case Study Template 

To create a well-crafted and highly informative case study template in the realms of project management, you should start by providing a brief overview of the client's company, focusing on its industry, scale, and specific challenges. Follow with a detailed section on the challenge, emphasizing the unique aspects of the project and obstacles faced. Next, you might want to describe the solution implemented, detailing the strategies, methodologies, and tools used. Then, you would need to present the results, quantifying improvements and highlighting objectives achieved. Finally, please conclude the case study with a summary, encapsulating key takeaways and emphasizing the project's success and its implications for future endeavors. By following this structure, you can present a comprehensive yet concise analysis that is ideal for showcasing project management expertise and insights. You can also refer to the template for crafting a better case study on project management – Template for writing case studies.

By now, you must have gained a comprehensive knowledge of preparing a project management case study. This article elaborately explains the significance of real life project management case studies as vital tools for demonstrating a company's expertise in handling complex projects. These case studies, showcasing real-world scenarios, serve as compelling evidence of a firm's capability to navigate challenges and implement effective solutions, thereby boosting confidence in potential clients and partners. They are not only a reflection of past successes but also a lighthouse guiding future project endeavors in the discipline of project management within the fields of construction, pharmacy, technology and finance, highlighting the importance of strategic planning, innovation, and adaptability in project management. If you are aspiring to excel in this field, understanding these case studies is invaluable. However, you would also need to learn from project management failures case studies which would provide a roadmap to mastering the art of project management in today's dynamic business landscape.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

In order to write a project management case study, keep everything brief but mention everything in detail. Make sure to write it with clarity and include graphs and images. 

A project study must include information about the client, how your company helped the client in resolving a problem, and the results.

The best-case studies on project management have been listed above. It includes BTM Global, Butterfly, Boncom, and more.

Kevin D.Davis

Kevin D. Davis is a seasoned and results-driven Program/Project Management Professional with a Master's Certificate in Advanced Project Management. With expertise in leading multi-million dollar projects, strategic planning, and sales operations, Kevin excels in maximizing solutions and building business cases. He possesses a deep understanding of methodologies such as PMBOK, Lean Six Sigma, and TQM to achieve business/technology alignment. With over 100 instructional training sessions and extensive experience as a PMP Exam Prep Instructor at KnowledgeHut, Kevin has a proven track record in project management training and consulting. His expertise has helped in driving successful project outcomes and fostering organizational growth.

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The 10 PMBOK Knowledge Areas

June 8, 2021 by Jon Hartney 3 Comments

In the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) the process groups are the chronological phases that the project goes through, and the knowledge areas occur throughout any time during the process groups.  The process groups are horizontal, and the knowledge areas are vertical.  They are the core technical subject matter of the project management profession, and they bring the project to life.

These are the 10 Project Management knowledge areas:

Project Integration Management

Project scope management, project schedule management, project cost management, project quality management, project resource management, project communications management, project risk management, project procurement management, project stakeholder management.

This knowledge area contains the tasks that hold the overall project together and integrate it into a unified whole.

• Develop Project Charter.   One of only two processes during the Initiation phase, the development of a project charter initiates the project and authorizes the project manager.
• Develop Project Management Plan.   This is the primary guiding document for the project manager and end result of the planning phase.  It is used to ensure a successful outcome to the project.  The project management plan is distributed and approved by relevant stakeholders, particularly the project sponsor, and changes are tracked through the change log.
• Direct and Manage Project Work.   This process encompasses the production of the project’s deliverables.
• Manage Project Knowledge.   Most projects require the acquisition of additional knowledge.  This requires active management to ensure the project finishes on time and budget.
• Monitor and Control Project Work.  This process contains the work necessary to monitor the project, perform earned value analysis and project status reports, and identify potential project changes.
• Perform Integrated Change Control.   In this process the change control is carried out.  Whether your project requires change request forms, project sponsor approvals, and other adminstration or if its a basic change log, this process manages project changes.
• Close Project or Phase.   This process contains the tasks necessary to close the project, or the project phases.

When competing for (or obtaining) work, we are motivated towards the minimum scope.  But when the project has begun we are motivated towards the maximum.

• Plan Scope Management.   The Scope Management Plan is part of the project management plan and can be a section within it rather than a stand alone document.
• Collect Requirements.   At this stage the detailed requirements of the final product or service are assembled and itemized.
• Define Scope.   A scope statement is created which can be in sentence form or bulleted.  You can’t delineate every project boundary, but the scope statement should be comprehensive enough that it reduces some of the major risks to the project.
• Create WBS.   A Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) contains either a graphical or table-style breakdown of the project work.
• Validate Scope.   During the project the deliverables are “validated” meaning they are approved by the recipient.  Note this appears during the Monitoring & Controlling process group, and it refers to the formal acceptance of the deliverables after they have been submitted, not the specifications for the deliverables during the planning phase.
• Control Scope.   The scope statement must be revisited regularly in light of the project work that has been completed and current project status.  If you are behind schedule, for example, you may wish to gravitate toward a minimum acceptable scope rather than all the bells and whistles you wanted to produce in the beginning.

• Plan Schedule Management.   The Schedule Management Plan contains information such as how the schedule will be created, who will be responsible for it, how aggressive it will be, and under what circumstances it will be changed.
• Define Activities.   The project is divided into tasks.  Note that according to the PMBOK this process is different from Create WBS within the Scope Management knowledge area, but in practice they are generally the same.  A task list is produced which defines all of the project (not most of it!).
• Sequence Activities.  The tasks are “sequenced” that is, they are ordered and the relationships between them are established. These relationships take the form of Finish-to-Start (FS), Finish-to-Finish (FF), Start-to-Start (SS) and Start-to-Finish (SF).  For small projects with simple schedules this is not necessary.
• Estimate Activity Durations.   Using its resource list, a duration is estimated for each task.
• Develop Schedule.  Firstly, a network diagram is produced which determines the critical path as well as floats for each task.  Secondly, a graphical bar chart schedule is created with each activity plotted on their early start dates.  Lastly the resource usage is plotted and tasks are moved along their floats to flatten the resource usage.  This is called resource levelling.
• Control Schedule.   Earned value analysis is performed on regular project status intervals to determine whether the project is ahead or behind schedule, and by how much, at that status point.

• Plan Cost Management.   The Cost Management Plan establishes things like the methodologies with which the project budget will be established, the criteria for changes, and control procedures.
• Estimate Costs.  The cost of each task is estimated, taking into account the resources, labor, materials, equipment, and any other item of cost necessary to complete the task.
• Determine Budget.   The task budgets are rolled up into an overall project budget.
• Control Costs.   Earned value analysis is performed on regular project status intervals to determine the project status at that status point.

• Plan Quality Management.   The Quality Management Plan can be a section of the project management plan or a stand alone document, and it contains the quality specifications for the product or service.  There should be no doubt whether the product being produced is a Mercedes-Benz or a Pinto.
• Manage Quality.   The processes that ensure the quality of the deliverables must be inspected regularly to ensure they are working.
• Control Quality.   The deliverables themselves are inspected to ensure they conform to the quality standards.

• Plan Resource Management.   The Human Resource Management Plan identifies the roles/positions required by the project, the minimum requirements for those roles, and how they fit into the overall project structure.
• Estimate Activity Resources.   To ensure the necessary resources are available, the quantity of each resources needs to be estimated.
• Acquire Resources.   Once the required number of resources has been estimated, the resources can be can be acquired.
• Develop Team.   The project team often requires training to develop the necessary competencies to complete the project, but the development of the team environment and interaction between team members is also actively managed.
• Manage Team.   The project team is actively managed to ensure their production is maximized and they are satisfied.
• Control Resources.   The resources are monitored and their performance evaluated to ensure maximum productivity.

• Plan Communications Management.  The Communications Management Plan identifies the regular communication requirements of each stakeholder, such as investor circulars, progress updates, and so forth.  It also identifies any specific communications procedures for unexpected issues or project changes.
• Manage Communications.  During project execution the communications plan is put into practice and communications are actively managed.
• Monitor Communications.  During regular status points the project communications are reviewed and revisions to the communications plan are initiated.

• Plan Risk Management.   The Risk Management Plan identifies how the risks will be itemized, categorized, and prioritized.
• Identify Risks.  The major risks to the project are identified and placed into a risk register (list of risks).  Most projects have one or two risk that take significant precedence over all others, and these should often get special attention.
• Perform Qualitative Risk Analysis.   Once the biggest risks are identified, they are classified into categories of likelihood and impact, and then ranked according to priority .
• Perform Quantitative Risk Analysis.   Once the risks are ranked according to priority, the biggest priority risks are numerically analyzed according to their impact to the project budget, schedule, or any other part of the project.
• Plan Risk Responses.   For the most important risks, response plans are drafted such that all parties are aware of how to respond to the occurrence of the risk.
• Implement Risk Responses.   The risk responses identified in the previous step are carried out.
• Monitor Risks.   At regular status points the risk register is inspected and risks that have expired are crossed off.

• Plan Procurement Management.   The Procurement Management Plan identifies the outside procurement needs of the project and parameters under which the contractors will be procured.
• Conduct Procurements.   The contractors are hired.  This process involves producing the statements of work, terms of reference, request for proposals, and such, as well as soliciting the responses and choosing a vendor.
• Control Procurements.   During project execution the contractors must be managed and the contracts monitored to provide early warning of project changes.

• Identify Stakeholders.  During the project initiation phase the major stakeholders are identified and their concerns established.
• Plan Stakeholder Engagement.  The Stakeholder Management Plan lists each stakeholder and prioritizes their concerns and potential impacts on the project.
• Manage Stakeholder Engagement.   During project execution the stakeholders must have their needs addressed and communication lines must remain open.
• Monitor Stakeholder Engagement.   During status intervals each stakeholder must be considered to determine if their needs and being addressed and if changes need to made to ensure that they are.

These project management knowledge areas bring the project management process to life and ensure that the project meets its success criteria .  Please let me know in the comments how these knowledge areas have worked for you.

UPDATE: This article has been updated to the Sixth Edition of the PMBOK Guide, released in October 2017.

Related posts:

Hello. Could u please tell , which of these areas can be described as two most important ones ?? As I read your article , human resources, communication and stakeholder managements were given the most highlight . Maybe these ones ? But I need to know only two ))

Thanks a lot for this presentation… Now, my question is : how can you explain that “Develop Project Management Plan” receives in input processes that receive in input PMP ? Thanks in advance for your quick replay. BR

Fidele MALONGA

Most important of all would be the Time, Cost and Scope. Others are only support. Note that if you have the right schedule / program …… these 3 items are incorporated into one component wherein the complete schedule is derived. Others are only support to these 3 items. Thus, if the complete schedule is well propoerly supported by the other 7 items…the delivery of the project will be attained on time, in cost and in a complete agreed scope.

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The 10 Knowledge Areas & 49 Processes (PMBOK®, 6th ed.)

The PMI framework of project management consists of 49 processes which are categorized in 10 knowledge areas as set out in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®, 6 th edition). This is based on the philosophy that project management consists of a one-off and recurring processes for which the PMBOK describes common good practices.

When you are managing a project in line with the PMI methodology or when you are preparing for your CAPM or PMP certification exam, you will need to be familiar with these processes and knowledge areas.

This article provides you with an overview of the 10 knowledge areas and 49 processes in a nutshell (source: PMBOK®, 6 th ed.)

Overview of the PMBOK Knowledge Areas

Develop project charter, develop project management plan, direct and manage project work, manage project knowledge, monitor and control project work, perform integrated change control, close project or phase, plan scope management, collect requirements, define scope, validate scope, control scope, plan schedule management, define activities, sequence activities, estimate activity durations, develop schedule, control schedule, plan cost management, estimate costs, determine budget, control costs, plan quality management, manage quality, control quality, plan resource management, estimate activity resources, acquire resources, develop team, manage team, control resources, plan communications management, manage communications, monitor communications, plan risk management, identify risks, perform qualitative risk analysis, perform quantitative risk analysis, plan risk responses, implement risk responses, monitor risks, plan procurement management, conduct procurements, control procurements, identify stakeholders, plan stakeholder engagement, manage stakeholder engagement, monitor stakeholder engagement.

The following table contains the 10 knowledge areas and the 49 processes:

Read on to find a short description of each of these processes “in a nutshell”.

1) Project Integration Management

In this process, a project charter is developed that authorizes the project and links it with the strategic objectives of the organization.

Frequency: once or at specified points during the project

The content and goal of this process are defining, preparing and coordinating all plan components,

This process comprises leading and performing the work that was defined in the project management plan as well as implementing approved changes,

Frequency: ongoing

This process describes the use of existing and the creation of new pieces of knowledge in order to achieve the project objectives and support organizational learning.

In this process, the overall progress is tracked, reviewed and reported to meet the performance objectives defined in the project management plan.

The content of this process is reviewing all change requests, getting approval for changes, and managing changes to deliverables, documents and plans. This also includes the communication of those changes.

In the ‘close’ process, all activities of a project, a phase or a contract are finalized. This includes archiving project or phase information as well as releasing team resources

2) Project Scope Management

The goal of this process is to create a scope management plan that sets out the framework of the definition, validation and controlling of the project and product scope.

In this process, the determination, documentation, and management of stakeholder needs and requirements are performed in order to meet the project objectives. This process helps create the foundation of the project and product scope.

This process is about developing a detailed description of the project and product, incl. the result boundaries and acceptance criteria.

Frequency: n/a

Creating the work breakdown structure means breaking down project deliverables and project work into relatively small and manageable components.

This process formalizes the acceptance of the completed project deliverables. It sets out the objectivity and the procedure of acceptance of the final product based on the acceptance of each deliverable.

Frequency: when necessary

This process sets out the monitoring of the project status and product scope as well as the management of changes to the scope baseline . It also ensures that the scope baseline is accurately maintained and updated ongoing.

3) Project Schedule Management

This process contains the establishment of policies, procedures, and documentation of the project schedule management.

In this process, the actions needed to produce the project deliverables are identified and defined.

This process comprises the identification and documentation of the relationships among the project activities.

In this process, the durations to perform each activity are estimated.

When developing the project schedule , activity sequences, durations, resource requirements, and schedule constraints are taken into consideration.

This process defines the monitoring of the project status in order to update the project schedule as well as the management of changes to the schedule baseline .

4) Project Cost Management

This process is about defining the approaches and procedures to estimate, budget, manage, monitor and control project costs.

In this process, an approximation of the cost of required resources is estimated.

Aggregation of the estimated cost of all activities and work packages which is the foundation of the authorized cost baseline.

This process is about monitoring, managing and updating actual and planned project costs as well as the cost baseline.

5) Project Quality Management

In this process, quality requirements and standards are identified. One of the outputs is the documentation of how they are maintained ongoing.

This process is the transformation of the quality management plan into individual activities that incorporate the quality requirements/standards into the project. Thus, it facilitates achieving the quality goals and identifying ineffective processes and causes of poor quality.

The content of this process is the monitoring and controlling of the results of quality management activities. This also includes verifying that project deliverables and the project work are in line with the requirements for final acceptance.

6) Project Resource Management

This process is about defining how the team and physical resources will be estimated, acquired, managed, and used during the project.

This process contains the estimation of the team headcount and physical resources that are needed to perform project work.

Frequency: recurring, when necessary

In this process, team members are hired and on-boarded and physical resources are acquired. This includes the selection of sources as well as the assignment of resources to specific activities.

This process aims to improve skills and competencies, interactions and the environment of project teams in order to enhance the overall project performance.

This process includes performance tracking, feedback, and management of changes and adjustments to the project team.

This process helps ensure that the physical resources are available and utilized as planned. This may also include corrective actions if required.

7) Project Communications Management

In this process, the approach and plan for project communications are developed. Thereby, stakeholders’ and the project’s information needs as well as available organizational assets are taken into account.

Manage communications is the ongoing process of ensuring timely and appropriate communication in order to facilitate an efficient and effective information flow between the project team and stakeholders.

This process makes sure that the information needs of the project and the stakeholders are met properly and timely.

8) Project Risk Management

This process comprises the planning of risk management activities for the project which includes tailoring of risk management considerations to the individual situation.

This process focuses on identifying and documenting individual risks as well as sources of overall project risks.

In the process of qualitative risk analysis, the probability and the potential impact of individual project risks are assessed, which is the basis for their prioritization.

This process consists of statistical analyses (e.g. Monte Carlo simulation) of identified individual project risks and other sources of ambiguity or uncertainty. This is typically not applied to small or less critical projects.

In this process, the ways to address overall and individual project risks are identified and assessed, incl. definition of activities as potential risk responses.

This process is conducted when risks require a response, i.e. the previously selected risk responses (activities) are implemented.

In this process, risk responses and identified risks are monitored and tracked. In addition, new risks are identified and assessed.

9) Project Procurement Management

Planning procurement management includes documenting the way project procurement decisions are made, specifying the approach and identifying potential sellers.

This process comprises selecting a seller and implementing the agreements and contracts for delivery.

In this process, procurement relationships are managed and contract performance is monitored. This may also extend to changes and corrections as well as closing out contracts.

10) Project Stakeholder Management

This process implies identifying stakeholders and their respective interests, involvement, power, and potential impact on the project.

This planning process is about developing how to involve stakeholders and how to interact effectively with them during the project.

The management of stakeholder engagement includes communicating and working with stakeholders to meet their needs and expectations. The goal of this process is to ensure their support and reduce resistance from stakeholders.

This process describes the monitoring of relationships and the adjustment of strategies in order to engage stakeholders in an optimal way.

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1.5 Introduction to the Project Management Knowledge Areas

Learning objectives.

• Identify the tasks performed in a project start-up.
• Describe the areas of project management knowledge as defined by the Project Management Institute.

Projects are divided into components, and a project manager must be knowledgeable in each area. Each of these areas of knowledge will be explored in more depth in subsequent chapters.

Project Start-Up and Integration

The start-up of a project is similar to the start-up of a new organization. The project leader develops the project infrastructure used to design and execute the project. The project management team must develop alignment among the major stakeholders—those who have a share or interest—on the project during the early phases or definition phases of the project. The project manager will conduct one or more kickoff meetings or alignment sessions to bring the various parties of the project together and begin the project team building required to operate efficiently during the project.

During project start-up, the project management team refines the scope of work and develops a preliminary schedule and conceptual budget. The project team builds a plan for executing the project based on the project profile. The plan for developing and tracking the detailed schedule, the procurement plan, and the plan for building the budget and estimating and tracking costs are developed during the start-up. The plans for information technology, communication, and tracking client satisfaction are all developed during the start-up phase of the project.

Flowcharts, diagrams, and responsibility matrices are tools to capture the work processes associated with executing the project plan. The first draft of the project procedures manual captures the historic and intuitional knowledge that team members bring to the project. The development and review of these procedures and work processes contribute to the development of the organizational structure of the project.

This is typically an exciting time on a project where all things are possible. The project management team is working many hours developing the initial plan, staffing the project, and building relationships with the client. The project manager sets the tone of the project and sets expectations for each of the project team members. The project start-up phase on complex projects can be chaotic, and until plans are developed, the project manager becomes the source of information and direction. The project manager creates an environment that encourages team members to fully engage in the project and encourages innovative approaches to developing the project plan.

Project Scope

The project scope is a document that defines the parameters —factors that define a system and determine its behavior—of the project, what work is done within the boundaries of the project, and the work that is outside the project boundaries. The scope of work (SOW) is typically a written document that defines what work will be accomplished by the end of the project—the deliverables of the project. The project scope defines what will be done, and the project execution plan defines how the work will be accomplished.

No template works for all projects. Some projects have a very detailed scope of work, and some have a short summary document. The quality of the scope is measured by the ability of the project manager and project stakeholders to develop and maintain a common understanding of what products or services the project will deliver. The size and detail of the project scope is related to the complexity profile of the project. A more complex project often requires a more detailed and comprehensive scope document.

According to the Project Management Institute (Project Management Institute, Inc., 2008), the scope statement should include the following:

• Description of the scope
• Product acceptance criteria
• Project deliverables
• Project exclusions
• Project constraints
• Project assumptions

The scope document is the basis for agreement by all parties. A clear project scope document is also critical to managing change on a project. Since the project scope reflects what work will be accomplished on the project, any change in expectations that is not captured and documented creates the opportunity for confusion. One of the most common trends on projects is the incremental expansion in the project scope. This trend is labeled scope creep . Scope creep threatens the success of a project because the small increases in scope require additional resources that were not in the plan. Increasing the scope of the project is a common occurrence, and adjustments are made to the project budget and schedule to account for these changes. Scope creep occurs when these changes are not recognized or not managed. The ability of a project manager to identify potential changes is often related to the quality of the scope documents.

Events do occur that require the scope of the project to change. Changes in the marketplace may require change in a product design or the timing of the product delivery. Changes in the client’s management team or the financial health of the client may also result in changes in the project scope. Changes in the project schedule, budget, or product quality will have an effect on the project plan. Generally, the later in the project the change occurs, the greater the increase to the project costs. Establishing a change management system for the project that captures changes to the project scope and assures that these changes are authorized by the appropriate level of management in the client’s organization is the responsibility of the project manager. The project manager also analyzes the cost and schedule impact of these changes and adjusts the project plan to reflect the changes authorized by the client. Changes to the scope can cause costs to increase or decrease.

Project Schedule and Time Management

The definition of project success often includes completing the project on time. The development and management of a project schedule that will complete the project on time is a primary responsibility of the project manager, and completing the project on time requires the development of a realistic plan and the effective management of the plan. On smaller projects, project managers may lead the development of the project plan and build a schedule to meet that plan. On larger and more complex projects, a project controls team that focuses on both costs and schedule planning and controlling functions will assist the project management team in developing the plan and tracking progress against the plan.

To develop the project schedule, the project team does an analysis of the project scope, contract, and other information that helps the team define the project deliverables. Based on this information, the project team develops a milestone schedule . The milestone schedule establishes key dates throughout the life of a project that must be met for the project to finish on time. The key dates are often established to meet contractual obligations or established intervals that will reflect appropriate progress for the project. For less complex projects, a milestone schedule may be sufficient for tracking the progress of the project. For more complex projects, a more detailed schedule is required.

To develop a more detailed schedule, the project team first develops a work breakdown structure (WBS) —a description of tasks arranged in layers of detail. Although the project scope is the primary document for developing the WBS, the WBS incorporates all project deliverables and reflects any documents or information that clarifies the project deliverables. From the WBS, a project plan is developed. The project plan lists the activities that are needed to accomplish the work identified in the WBS. The more detailed the WBS, the more activities that are identified to accomplish the work.

After the project team identifies the activities, the team then sequences the activities according to the order in which the activities are to be accomplished. An outcome from the work process is the project logic diagram . The logic diagram represents the logical sequence of the activities needed to complete the project. The next step in the planning process is to develop an estimation of the time it will take to accomplish each activity or the activity duration. Some activities must be done sequentially, and some activities can be done concurrently. The planning process creates a project schedule by scheduling activities in a way that effectively and efficiently uses project resources and completes the project in the shortest time.

On larger projects, several paths are created that represent a sequence of activities from the beginning to the end of the project. The longest path to the completion of the project is the critical path . If the critical path takes less time than is allowed by the client to complete the project, the project has a positive total float or project slack . If the client’s project completion date precedes the calculated critical path end date, the project has a negative float. Understanding and managing activities on the critical path is an important project management skill.

To successfully manage a project, the project manager must also know how to accelerate a schedule to compensate for unanticipated events that delay critical activities. Compressing— crashing —the schedule is a term used to describe the techniques used to shorten the project schedule. During the life of the project, scheduling conflicts often occur, and the project manager is responsible for reducing these conflicts while maintaining project quality and meeting cost goals.

Project Costs

The definition of project success often includes completing the project within budget. Developing and controlling a project budget that will accomplish the project objectives is a critical project management skill. Although clients expect the project to be executed efficiently, cost pressures vary on projects. On some projects, the project completion or end date is the largest contributor to the project complexity. The development of a new drug to address a critical health issue, the production of a new product that will generate critical cash flow for a company, and the competitive advantage for a company to be first in the marketplace with a new technology are examples of projects with schedule pressures that override project costs.

The accuracy of the project budget is related to the amount of information known by the project team. In the early stages of the project, the amount of information needed to develop a detailed budget is often missing. To address the lack of information, the project team develops different levels of project budget estimates. The conceptual estimate (or “ballpark estimate”) is developed with the least amount of knowledge. The major input into the conceptual estimate is expert knowledge or past experience. A project manager who has executed a similar project in the past can use those costs to estimate the costs of the current project.

When more information is known, the project team can develop a rough order of magnitude (ROM) estimate. Additional information such as the approximate square feet of a building, the production capacity of a plant, and the approximate number of hours needed to develop a software program can provide a basis for providing a ROM estimate. After a project design is more complete, a project detailed estimate can be developed. When the project team knows the number of rooms, the type of materials, and the building location of a home, the project team can provide a detailed estimate. A detailed estimate is not a bid.

The cost of the project is tracked relative to the progress of the work and the estimate for accomplishing that work. Based on the cost estimate, the cost of the work performed is compared against the cost budgeted for that work. If the cost is significantly higher or lower, the project team explores reasons for the difference between expected costs and actual costs.

Project costs may deviate from the budget because the prices in the marketplace were different from what was expected. For example, the estimated costs for lumber on a housing project may be higher than budgeted or the hourly cost for labor may be lower than budgeted. Project costs may also deviate based on project performance. For example, the project team estimated that the steel design for a bridge over the Hudson River would take 800 labor hours, but 846 hours were actually expended. The project team captures the deviation between costs budgeted for work and the actual cost for work, revises the estimate as needed, and takes corrective action if the deviation appears to reflect a trend.

The project manager is responsible for assuring that the project team develops cost estimates based on the best information available and revises those estimates as new or better information becomes available. The project manager is also responsible for tracking costs against the budget and conducting an analysis when project costs deviate significantly from the project estimate. The project manager then takes appropriate corrective action to assure that project performance matches the revised project plan.

Project Quality

Project quality focuses on the end product or service deliverables that reflect the purpose of the project. The project manager is responsible for developing a project execution approach that provides for a clear understanding of the expected project deliverables and the quality specifications. The project manager of a housing construction project not only needs to understand which rooms in the house will be carpeted but also what grade of carpet is needed. A room with a high volume of traffic will need a high-grade carpet.

The project manager is responsible for developing a project quality plan that defines the quality expectations and assures that the specifications and expectations are met. Developing a good understanding of the project deliverables through documenting specifications and expectations is critical to a good quality plan. The processes for assuring that the specifications and expectations are met are integrated into the project execution plan. Just as the project budget and completion dates may change over the life of a project, the project specifications may also change. Changes in quality specifications are typically managed in the same process as cost or schedule changes. The impact of the changes is analyzed for impact on cost and schedule, and with appropriate approvals, changes are made to the project execution plan.

The Project Management Institute’s A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) has an extensive chapter on project quality management. The material found in this chapter would be similar to material found in a good operational management text. Although any of the quality management techniques designed to make incremental improvement to work processes can be applied to a project work process, the character of a project (unique and relatively short in duration) makes small improvements less attractive on projects.

Rework on projects, as with manufacturing operations, increases the cost of the product or service and often increases the time needed to complete the reworked activities. Because of the duration constraints of a project, the development of the appropriate skills, materials, and work process early in the project is critical to project success. On more complex projects, time is allocated to developing a plan to understand and develop the appropriate levels of skills and work processes.

Project management organizations that execute several similar types of projects may find the process improvement tools useful in identifying and improving the baseline processes used on their projects. Process improvement tools may also be helpful in identifying cost and schedule improvement opportunities. Opportunities for improvement must be found quickly to influence project performance. The investment in time and resources to find improvements is greatest during the early stages of the project, when the project is in the planning stages. During later project stages, as pressures to meet project schedule goals increase, the culture of the project is less conducive to making changes in work processes.

Another opportunity for applying process improvement tools is on projects that have repetitive processes. A housing contractor that is building several identical houses may benefit from evaluating work processes in the first few houses to explore the opportunities available to improve the work processes. The investment of $1,000 in a work process that saves $200 per house is a good investment as long as the contractor is building more than five houses.

Project Team: Human Resources and Communications

Staffing the project with the right skills, at the right place, and at the right time is an important responsibility of the project management team. The project usually has two types of team members: functional managers and process managers. The functional managers and team focus on the technology of the project. On a construction project, the functional managers would include the engineering manager and construction superintendents. On a training project, the functional manager would include the professional trainers; on an information technology project, the software development managers would be functional managers. The project management team also includes project process managers. The project controls team would include process managers who have expertise in estimating, cost tracking, planning, and scheduling. The project manager needs functional and process expertise to plan and execute a successful project.

Because projects are temporary, the staffing plan for a project typically reflects both the long-term goals of skilled team members needed for the project and short-term commitment that reflects the nature of the project. Exact start and end dates for team members are often negotiated to best meet the needs of individuals and the project. The staffing plan is also determined by the different phases of the project. Team members needed in the early or conceptual phases of the project are often not needed during the later phases or project closeout phases. Team members needed during the execution phase are often not needed during the conceptual or closeout phases. Each phase has staffing requirements, and the staffing of a complex project requires detailed planning to have the right skills, at the right place, at the right time.

Typically a core project management team is dedicated to the project from start-up to closeout. This core team would include members of the project management team: project manager, project controls, project procurement, and key members of the function management or experts in the technology of the project. Although longer projects may experience more team turnover than shorter projects, it is important on all projects to have team members who can provide continuity through the project phases.

For example, on a large commercial building project, the civil engineering team that designs the site work where the building will be constructed would make their largest contribution during the early phases of the design. The civil engineering lead would bring on different civil engineering specialties as they were needed. As the civil engineering work is completed and the structural engineering is well under way, a large portion of the civil engineers would be released from the project. The functional managers, the engineering manager, and civil engineering lead would provide expertise during the entire length of the project, addressing technical questions that may arise and addressing change requests.

Project team members can be assigned to the project from a number of different sources. The organization that charters the project can assign talented managers and staff from functional units within the organization, contract with individuals or agencies to staff positions on the project, temporarily hire staff for the project, or use any combination of these staffing options. This staffing approach allows the project manager to create the project organizational culture. Some project cultures are more structured and detail oriented, and some are less structured with less formal roles and communication requirements. The type of culture the project manager creates depends greatly on the type of project.

• Communications

Completing a complex project successfully requires teamwork, and teamwork requires good communication among team members. If those team members work in the same building, they can arrange regular meetings, simply stop by each other’s office space to get a quick answer, or even discuss a project informally at other office functions. Many complex projects in today’s global economy involve team members from widely separated locations, and the types of meetings that work within the same building are not possible. Teams that use electronic methods of communicating without face-to-face meetings are called virtual teams .

Communicating can be divided into two categories: synchronous and asynchronous . If all the parties to the communication are taking part in the exchange at the same time, the communication is synchronous. A telephone conference call is an example of synchronous communication. When the participants are not interacting at the same time, the communication is asynchronous. The letter a at the beginning of the word means not . Communications technologies require a variety of compatible devices, software, and service providers, and communication with a global virtual team can involve many different time zones. Establishing effective communications requires a communications plan.

Project Risk

Risk exists on all projects. The role of the project management team is to understand the kinds and levels of risks on the project and then to develop and implement plans to mitigate these risks. Risk represents the likelihood that an event will happen during the life of the project that will negatively affect the achievement of project goals. The type and amount of risk varies by industry type, complexity, and phase of the project. The project risk plan will also reflect the risk profile of the project manager and key stakeholders. People have different comfort levels with risk, and some members of the project team will be more risk adverse than others.

The first step in developing a risk management plan involves identifying potential project risks. Some risks are easy to identify, such as the potential for a damaging storm in the Caribbean, and some are less obvious. Many industries or companies have risk checklists developed from past experience. The Construction Industry Institute published a one-hundred-item risk checklist (Construction Industry Institute Cost/Schedule Task Force, 1989) that provides examples and areas of project risks. No risk checklist will include all potential risks. The value of a checklist is the stimulation of discussion and thought about the potential risks on a project.

The project team then analyzes the identified risks and estimates the likelihood of the risks occurring. The team then estimates the potential impact of project goals if the event does occur. The outcome from this process is a prioritized list of estimated project risks with a value that represents the likelihood of occurrence and the potential impact on the project.

The project team then develops a risk mitigation plan that reduces the likelihood of an event occurring or reduces the impact on the project if the event does occur. The risk management plan is integrated into the project execution plan, and mitigation activities are assigned to the appropriate project team member. The likelihood that all the potential events identified in the risk analysis would occur is extremely rare. The likelihood that one or more events will happen is high.

The project risk plan reflects the risk profile of the project and balances the investment of the mitigation against the benefit for the project. One of the more common risk mitigation approaches is the use of contingency. Contingency is funds set aside by the project team to address unforeseen events. Projects with a high-risk profile will typically have a large contingency budget. If the team knows which activities have the highest risk, contingency can be allocated to activities with the highest risk. When risks are less identifiable to specific activities, contingency is identified in a separate line item. The plan includes periodic risk plan reviews during the life of the project. The risk review evaluates the effectiveness of the current plan and explores for possible risks not identified in earlier sessions.

Project Procurement

The procurement effort on projects varies widely and depends on the type of project. Often the client organization will provide procurement services on less complex projects. In this case, the project team identifies the materials, equipment, and supplies needed by the project and provides product specifications and a detailed delivery schedule. When the procurement department of the parent organization provides procurement services, a liaison from the project can help the procurement team better understand the unique requirements of the project and the time-sensitive or critical items of the project schedule.

On larger, more complex projects, personnel are dedicated to procuring and managing the equipment, supplies, and materials needed by the project. Because of the temporary nature of projects, equipment, supplies, and materials are procured as part of the product of the project or for the execution of the project. For example, the bricks procured for a construction project would be procured for the product of the project, and the mortar mixer would be equipment procured for the execution of the project work. At the end of the project, equipment bought or rented for the execution of the work of the project are sold, returned to rental organizations, or disposed of some other way.

More complex projects will typically procure through different procurement and management methods. Commodities are common products that are purchased based on the lowest bid. Commodities include items like concrete for building projects, office supplies, or even lab equipment for a research project. The second type of procurement includes products that are specified for the project. Vendors who can produce these products bid for a contract. The awarding of a contract can include price, ability to meet the project schedule, the fit for purpose of the product, and other considerations important to the project. Manufacturing a furnace for a new steel mill would be provided by a project vendor. Equipment especially designed and built for a research project is another example. These vendors’ performances become important parts of the project, and the project manager assigns resources to coordinate the work and schedule of the vendor. The third procurement approach is the development of one or more partners. A design firm that is awarded the design contract for a major part of the steel mill and a research firm that is conducting critical subparts of the research are examples of potential project partners. A partner contributes to and is integrated into the execution plan. Partners perform best when they share the project vision of success and are emotionally invested in the project. The project management team builds and implements a project procurement plan that recognizes the most efficient and effective procurement approach to support the project schedule and goals.

Key Takeaways

• During the start-up phase, the project leader develops the project infrastructure used to design and execute the project. A team is formed to create agreement among project stakeholders on the goals, cost, and completion date. Plans for executing the project, managing the schedule and quality, and controlling the budget are created.
• The scope statement establishes project parameters that define what will be done.
• The project schedule begins with a milestone schedule followed by a WBS and a project diagram. The longest path through the project diagram is the critical path, and the difference between the completion of the critical path and the project finish date is the float. Shortening the critical path is called crashing the project.
• Cost estimating begins with a conceptual or ballpark estimate that is followed by a ROM estimate. A project budget is determined from the cost of the tasks in the WBS. Costs are monitored during the project and estimates updated if the costs vary from expectations.
• Project quality begins with the specifications of materials and labor. A quality plan creates a process for assuring the requirements and specifications of the project are met. Quality improvement tools can be applied to projects if the company has several similar projects.
• Team members are selected to manage functions and processes. The staffing plan assigns people as needed. Sources of team members are company employees, contractors, new hires, and partners.
• The risk on a project reflects the number of things that can possibly happen that will have a negative effect on the project and the probability of those events happening.
• The provider of procurement management depends on the size of the project and the organization. Commodities are purchased from the lowest bidder, while specialty items are purchased from bids or from partners.
• During the start-up phase, the first estimate of the cost of the project is called the __________ or ballpark estimate.
• Shortening the schedule to meet the project completion date is called ___________the schedule.
• Why would it be important to get the stakeholders in a project to actually sign the scope statement?
• What is the difference between a milestone schedule and a work breakdown schedule?

Areas of Knowledge

Write one or two sentences in which you describe each area of project management knowledge—as defined by the Project Management Institute.

• Team selection (human resources)
• Procurement

Construction Industry Institute Cost/Schedule Task Force, Management of Project Risks and Uncertainties (Austin, TX: Construction Industry Institute, 1989).

Project Management Institute, Inc., A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) , 4th ed. (Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute, Inc., 2008), 115–16.

Project Management from Simple to Complex Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Top 20 Project Management Case Studies [With Examples]

Project management case study analyses showcase and compare real-life project management processes and systems scenarios. These studies shed light on the common challenges that project managers encounter on a daily basis. This helps project managers develop effective strategies, overcome obstacles, and achieve successful results. 

By leveraging project management case studies , organisations can optimise their operations by providing insights into the most effective approaches. With effective implementation of these case studies, strategies, and methodologies, ensuring successful project completion is achievable.

Criteria for Selection of Top 20 Case Studies

The top 20 case studies are selected based on significance, impact, challenges, project management strategies, and overall success. They provide diverse insights and lessons for project managers and organisations.

1. The Sydney Opera House Project

The Sydney Opera House Project is an iconic example of project management case studies as it faced multiple challenges during its construction phase. Despite facing leadership changes, budget overruns, and design failures, the project persevered and was completed in 1973, a decade later than planned. The Opera House stands as a symbol of perseverance and successful project management in the face of humankind.

2. The Airbus A380 Project

The Airbus A380 Project is a project management case study showcasing the challenges encountered during developing and producing the world’s largest commercial aircraft. The project experienced massive delays and impacted costs of more than $6 billion, with several issues arising from the manufacturing and delivery process, outsourcing, and project coordination. 

However, the Airbus A380 was successfully launched through carefully planned project management strategies, delivering a world-class aircraft that met customer expectations.

3. The Panama Canal Expansion Project 

The Panama Canal Expansion Project serves as a compelling case study, illustrating the management’s encounters in expanding the capacity of the Panama Canal. The project included multiple stakeholders, technological innovations, environmental concerns, and safety challenges. 

4. The Boston Central Artery/Tunnel Project

The Boston Central Artery/Tunnel Project serves as a project management case study of a large-scale underground tunnel construction project. It successfully addressed traffic congestion and was completed in 2007. The project was completed in 2007, with numerous hurdles delaying progress like complexity, technology failure, ballooning budgets, media scrutiny, etc.

5. The London 2012 Olympics Project

The London 2012 Olympics Project stands as a successful project management case study, showcasing the management of a large-scale international sporting event. This project involved the construction of a new sports infrastructure, event logistics and security concerns. The project was successfully accomplished, delivering a world-class event that captivated the audience.

6. The Hoover Dam Bypass Project

The Hoover Dam Bypass Project was a construction project in the United States of America that intended to alleviate traffic from the Hoover Dam by building a new bridge. Completed in 2010, the bridge spans across the Colorado River, connecting Arizona and Nevada and offers a safer and more efficient route for motorists.

7. The Golden Gate Bridge Seismic Retrofit Project

The Golden Gate Bridge Seismic Retrofit Project is a case study example constructed in San Francisco, California. Its objective was to enhance the bridge’s resilience against earthquakes and aftershocks. Completed in 2012, the project included the installation of shock absorbers and other seismic upgrades to ensure the bridge’s safety and functionality in the event of a major earthquake.

8. The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge Project

The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge Project is a massive case study that intends to connect Hong Kong, Zhuhai and Macau with a bridge-tunnel system of 55 kilometres. Completed in 2018, the project required massive funds, investments and innovative engineering solutions, providing a new transport link and boosting regional connectivity.

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9. The Panama Papers Investigation Project

The Panama Papers Investigation Project is a global case study of journalistic investigations into offshore tax havens. It involved leaked documents from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm. Coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the project resulted in major political and financial repercussions worldwide, garnering widespread media attention.

10. The Apple iPhone Development Project

The Apple iPhone Development Project started in 2004, aiming to create a groundbreaking mobile device. In 2007, the iPhone transformed the industry with its innovative touchscreen interface, sleek design, and advanced features. This project involved significant research, development, marketing, and supply chain management investments.

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11. The Ford Pinto Design and Launch Project

The Ford Pinto Design and Launch Project was a developmental project intended to create an affordable, fuel-efficient subcompact car. Launched in 1971, because of its fuel tank design, it became infamous for safety issues. The project was rigged for ethical and safety concerns, lawsuits, and recalls.

12. The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Response Project

The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Response Project was a response to the largest oil spill in US history, caused by an offshore drilling rig explosion in 2010. This crisis response project utilised a waterfall project management approach, where the project team followed a pattern of planning, executing, monitoring, and closing phases. 

13. The NASA Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster Project

  The NASA Challenger Disaster Project was a tragic space exploration mission in 1986, resulting in the loss of all seven crew members. Extensive investigations revealed design and safety flaws as the cause. This disaster prompted NASA to address decision-making processes and improve safety cultures.

14. The Three Gorges Dam Project

  The Three Gorges Dam Project was a large-scale infrastructure project developed in China that aimed to build the world’s largest hydroelectric dam on the Yangtze River. Completed in 2012, it encountered environmental, social, and engineering challenges. The dam currently offers power generation, flood control, and improved navigation, but it has also resulted in ecological and cultural consequences.

15. The Big Dig Project in Boston

The Big Dig Project was a transportation infrastructure project in Boston, Massachusetts, intended to replace an old elevated highway with a newer tunnel system. Completed in 2007, it serves as one of the most complex and costly construction endeavours in US history. Despite facing many delays, cost overruns and engineering challenges, the project successfully improved traffic flow and urban aesthetics but also resulted in accidents, lawsuits, and financial burdens.

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16. The Uber Disruptive Business Model Project

  The Uber Disruptive Business Model Project was a startup that introduced a new ride business model that disrupted the taxi-cab industry by connecting riders with drivers via a mobile app. Launched in 2010, this project required innovative technology, marketing and regulatory strategies and faced legal actions and ethical challenges related to labour, safety, and competition. Uber has since then dominated the market with its ride-sharing business plan.

17. The Netflix Original Content Development Project

The Netflix Original Content Development Project was an initiative created to launch its original content for its platform. This launch by the online streaming giant in 2012 was a huge success for the company. The project required huge investments in content creation, distribution and marketing and resulted in award-winning shows and films that redefined the entire entertainment industry’s business model.

18. The Tesla Electric Car Project

The Tesla Electric Car Project was a revolutionary project that aimed to compete for its electric vehicles with gasoline-powered vehicles. The project required a strong project management plan that incorporated innovation, sustainability, and stakeholder engagement, resulting in the successful launch of the Tesla Roadster in 2008 and subsequent models. Tesla has one-handedly revolutionised the entire automobile industry on its own. 

19. The Johnson & Johnson Tylenol Crisis Management Project:

The Johnson & Johnson Tylenol Crisis Management Project was a case study in crisis management in 1982. The project required quick and effective decision-making skills, stakeholder communication, and ethical leadership in response to the tampering of Tylenol capsules that led to deaths. 

20. The Airbnb Online Marketplace Platform Project  

The Airbnb Online Marketplace Platform Project was a startup that created an online platform which connected travellers with hosts offering short-term rental accommodations in flights. The project required innovative technology, user experience design and stakeholder management. Airbnb’s success has led to the disruption of the hospitality industry and inspired many other project case study examples of sharing economy platforms.

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Future developments in project management.

Future developments in project management include all the insights on the increased use of artificial intelligence, agile methodologies, hybrid project management approaches, and emphasis on sustainability and social responsibility, along with many more developing ideas that will address the evolving market innovations. 

Key Takeaways from the Case Studies

The project management case study examples illustrate real-life examples and the importance of project management in achieving project success. The cases show the use of innovative technologies, tools, techniques, stakeholder engagement, crisis management, and agile methodologies. 

Project Management also highlights the role of ethical leadership and social responsibility in project management. To learn more and more about case studies, upGrad, India’s leading education platform, has offered an Advanced General Management Program from IMT Ghaziabad that will equip you with in-demand management skills to keep up with the changing trends!

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Project Management is extensive planning, executing, monitoring and closing of a project before its deadline. Project management ensures accuracy and efficiency across all organs of a project, right from its inception to its completion.

Project Management case studies are real-life examples of projects to put an insight into all the tools, techniques and methodologies it provides.

The role of a project manager is to ensure that all day-to-day responsibilities are being met by the resources deployed in a certain project. They have the authority to manage as well as lead the functioning members as well.

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Project Management Knowledge Areas

In addition to the Project Process Groups, the PMI has defined 10 Project Knowledge Areas. Each one is defined by a set of processes, inputs, outputs, tools and techniques.

The 10 knowledge areas will be used most of the time across any project.

Smaller projects may not go into as much detail as larger scale projects but the foundations of success will remain the same and it all begins with these Project Knowledge Areas applied in practise across the Process Groups.

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1. Integration Management

The Project Management Institute define Project Integration Management as:

“the processes and activities to identify, define, combine, unify, and coordinate the various processes and project management activities within the project management process groups”

In simpler terms, integration management is about managing resources, balancing stakeholder demands, considering alternative approaches, selecting the working processes that meet the project objectives and managing dependencies among the different knowledge areas.

In project delivery, each of the processes followed will overlap and integration management is simply how to manage each of those overlapping processes in a way that meets stakeholder requirements and successful delivery of the finished project.

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Develop Project Management Plan:

Once a project is given the go ahead and the Project Charter produced, the planning processes will begin. The result of which will be the creation of the Project Management Plan.

Direct and Manage Project Work:

Once planning is complete, the project manager and team begin working on the tasks identified in the plan which will result in the completion of the project. This will also include implementing any approved change requests.

Manage Project Knowledge:

A project depends on people in the team being knowledgeable on the work required to meet the objectives. Managing project knowledge means knowing what knowledge exists within the team and what gaps need to be filled through training to deliver the project.

Monitor and Control Project Work:

No project can stay on track without appropriate monitoring of activities to identify issues or bottlenecks or that equipment or materials aren’t available when they are needed. The processes of monitoring and control ensure performance is in line with the project plan.

Perform Integrated Change Control:

As a project progresses, change requests are likely to come in. Integrated change control is the process of managing these requests through review, approval and implementation as well as communicating the decisions throughout.

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Close Project or Phase:

A project is complete when the deliverables are handed over and approved. Managing this process involves making sure any close out meetings are scheduled and final project documentation is brought up to date and complete.

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2. Project Scope Management

Project Scope Management refers to the actual work involved in the project and the process of managing scope will result in two key project documents, the Project Scope Statement and the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).

Without a clear definition of the project scope and agreement on that scope, issues will undoubtedly arise which will have a negative impact on the project.

Project scope sets out what is included in the project and, equally important, what is not included. Clearly communicating the scope to all stakeholders ensures there is no debate over this at a later stage if questions arise as to why something wasn’t delivered – you can easily refer back to the original scope agreement to confirm what is right.

The processes involved in Project Scope Management are:

Plan Scope Management:

The first step is creating the scope management plan which will document how the project scope will be defined and will include detail on how this will be defined, validated and controlled throughout the lifetime of the project. The scope management plan includes the processes for how the project scope statement and WBS will be prepared and how the project baseline will be agreed and approved. 

Collect Requirements:

The process of gathering all of the requirements of the project forms a key element of project scope management and should be an in-depth discovery exercise which involves collating the thoughts of all stakeholders on what their expectations are of the project outcome. The result of this exercise is a full list of all requirements for the project.

There are various means by which the requirements gathering can be carried out and these include:

• Focus Groups
• Facilitated Workshops / Meetings
• Questionnaires / Surveys
• Brainstorming Sessions

Once the requirements are gathered, they need to be collated, analysed and should be fully understood as to what each point means. The requirements list will feed into the creation of the project scope statement and the work breakdown structure. Not all requirements identified at this stage will be included in the project.

Define Scope:

The results of the requirements gathering process will feed into defining the project scope.  This includes a full and detailed description of the project and the agreed deliverables. The definition of the project scope will outline stakeholder requirements and expectations and the work that will be required to meet that output. 

The benefit of this detailed description of the project scope is that there is clear agreement on what the project includes and doesn’t include and also the acceptance criteria set out by the stakeholders.

The output of the define scope process is the Project Scope Statement which is the detailed description of the project, the deliverables, any assumptions made and any constraints surrounding the project. Importantly, as well as detailing what is involved in the project, the scope statement will detail what is not included. This agreement sets expectations for all stakeholders on what will not be delivered to avoid any confusion on completion of a project phase or the project itself.

The project acceptance criteria will be detailed in the project scope statement. Again, this avoids any confusion for the project team on what will be accepted by the stakeholders as deliverables of the project. Everyone knows clearly from the outset what is expected of them.

Create Work Breakdown Structure (WBS):

The work breakdown structure or WBS is an important part of project scope management. It enables the project manager to breakdown the high level scope statement into manageable work packages which will deliver the agreed deliverables of the project. The overall project can be broken down from the title to groups of work and then further into individual pieces of work within each of those groups.

A good example is the construction of a garden shed. You would start with the project title of Build Garden Shed and then work down to the deliverables or work packages of foundations, build, internals and electrics. Under each of those there would be level 2 and 3 work packages. The image below shows this all broken down to each level. Within the WBS you can also assign costs to each work unit and roll them up to each level and ultimately to the overall project cost.

The work breakdown structure effectively takes the project scope statement, breaks it down into work packages and creates a framework for how the project will be delivered. Once the scope statement and WBS are prepared and agreed, they form the project scope baseline which is set for the project.

Validate Scope:

The validation of a project scope is the point at which the customer, requester of the project, product or service accepts what is laid out in the scope definition or project scope statement. This will result in formal acceptance of each deliverable.

This formal acceptance will occur at the end of each phase of a project. Agreement at this stage means there is a higher likelihood of the final deliverables being accepted at each phase completion and the end of the project.

Control Scope:

Once scope is agreed and the project kicks off, the scope needs to be controlled throughout the delivery process. This involves monitoring the work during the project to ensure it is meeting the agreed scope.  This will also involve managing project change requests and the impact they will have on the scope baseline.

Controlling scope is essential to avoid scope creep. Without a formal change control process in place, timescales and costs can get out of hand quickly. 

3. Schedule Management

Project schedule management is the process of taking the work breakdown packages and applying timescales to these to determine the time it will take to complete the project. Each piece of work or task required to complete the project requires a start date, an end date and a duration. At this point, task dependencies will need to be taken into account to determine the critical path of the project.

Schedule management also includes detail on the processes that will be put in place to monitor and control the schedule throughout the life of the project.

The project schedule produced as a result of the schedule management process is essentially the detail on how the project will meet the expected deliverables of the project.

Plan Schedule Management:

Plan schedule management is the process that sets out how the project schedule will be planned, managed and controlled throughout the project. This offers clarity on how the schedule will be managed. The result of this process is the Project Schedule Management Plan. The plan can be very detailed or at a high level – this depends on the size and scale of the project and the needs of the stakeholders.

Define Activities:

The process of defining project activities provides the project manager and team with a list of everything that will be required to meet the agreed deliverables. The result will be a task list of everything that needs to be done to complete the project. This is done by taking each of the high level work packages and breaking them down into individual tasks.

Sequence Activities:

Once the full list of activities has been defined, they need to be organised into a sequence of order – what needs to be done first and what tasks are dependent on others finishing before they can even be started.

Estimate Activity Durations:

With activity sequencing complete, estimations of timescales need to be applied to all activities to be able to build the project plan. Each task / activity needs to be considered in turn and timescales applied to them. This will provide an estimation of the total project duration.

There are a number of techniques which can be used to do this. The Project Management Institute recommend the following as possible techniques but this can be done in any way which suits the project, it’s size and the individual organisation:

• Analogous estimating
• Parametric estimating
• Three point estimating
• Bottom up estimating
• Data analysis
• Decision making

Develop Schedule:

Developing a project schedule is the process of building the actual project plan which will be followed to deliver the project and will be the baseline used for monitoring and control purposes. To build the schedule, the project manager will consider the activities, the sequencing of activities, the estimated durations and the resources that will be required and what resources are actually available.

With all of that information the schedule can be developed and the project schedule and baseline can be produced. This will also highlight the critical path of the project – this highlights the tasks and activities which show the longest path through the project.

Control Schedule:

The control schedule phase kicks in once the project has started. This is where the project manager monitors progress of work compared against the original project baseline. Throughout the project, there will be updates on performance of work as well as any revisions to the schedule forecasts.

Any change requests will also be managed and the schedule baseline updated accordingly for all approved change requests.

4. Cost Management

The project cost management process involves applying estimates on all costs involved in the project. This will also include plans for how costs will be managed and controlled throughout the project.

The project scope definition is crucial in feeding into cost management, the more accurate the scope is, the more accurate the cost estimates and budgeting will be.

Plan Cost Management:

In planning cost management the project manager will outline how costs will be estimated, budgeted, managed, monitored and controlled. Cost planning will consider all potential costs involved in a project, including resources, materials, tools and equipment.

The plan cost management process will detail how much money will be required at each phase of the project.

The result of this process will be the Cost Management Plan.

Estimate Costs:

Project cost estimates provide the project manager and stakeholders with a view on what the expected costs of the project will be. This enables them to agree a budget for the overall project. To prepare the cost estimate, all resources will be assigned and expected cost. This includes labour, materials, equipment, services and facilities. Consideration will also be given to inflation and any costs associated with the financing of the project.

There are a number of estimation techniques that can be used for this exercise and how the cost estimates are determined will be guided by the scale of the project and the organisation involved. Some cost estimation techniques are:

• Expert judgement
• Project management information system
• Accurate cost estimating is a crucial part of project planning to feed into budget approvals. Further reading on cost estimation can be found in the blog – The Ultimate Guide to Project Estimation.

Determine Budget:

The results of the cost estimating exercises will determine the overall budget for the project. The project scope baseline and the project schedule will also feed into this process. The agreed budget for the project will become the basis for project cost control throughout the project. The approved budget is the funding for the project and shows what the stakeholders have agreed to and if the funding will be released in phases as the project progresses or reaches key milestones.

Control Costs:

Project cost control is just as important to a successful project as completing on time and to the agreed scope. The process of cost control involves keeping track of all actual costs in comparison to the agreed budget and the initial project cost baseline.

In addition to simply tracking actual spend against the cost baseline, the project manager needs to take into account potential risks which will impact on the overall costs of the project. Any expected increases in budget to what was originally agreed should be managed to try and bring them back into line with the agreed budget and at least to within acceptable limits. Any significant changes to the agreed budget need to be managed via change control requests and approval re-confirmed.

Managing project costs should be done for each phase, for the components broken down in the WBS and for the overall project.

5. Quality Management

The success of a project will depend greatly on the quality of the goods or services produced and handed over on completion. These need to meet the quality expected by the stakeholders at the outset. It won’t matter if the project is completed on time and within budget if the quality does not stand up to what was expected and agreed when the project was kicked off.

Quality assurance and control must be continued throughout the project to ensure quality standards are being met.

Plan Quality Management:

Plan quality management is the process by which the team will measure and manage quality throughout the project.

Quality planning isn’t done in isolation but is carried out alongside the other planning activities. To determine quality standards and how they will be managed, the project manager will need to consider the project scope, the resources available and the agreed project budget. These elements all work together when creating the project plan. For example, any changes to cost or scope will impact on the deliverables of the project and ultimately the quality as a result.

During planning, the project manager and team will consider how they will test and measure the quality of the goods or services throughout the project lifecycle to meet expectations. How this testing will be done will be documented as part of the quality planning process.

The output of planning quality management will be the Quality Management Plan which is a component of the overall Project Management Plan.

Manage Quality:

Managing quality throughout a project is the process of carrying out the processes, tests and measurements as set out in the Quality Management Plan. In effect this turns the plan into activities which will be carried out at various stages of delivery.

Ensuring quality standards are met is the responsibility of everyone involved in the project.

Control Quality:

The extension of managing quality is controlling quality. This is the process of carrying out the activities for managing quality and recording the results. Where expectations are not being met, there will be a process for raising non-conformance and change requests for re-work and improvements. This may then impact on the project timescales and budget.

6. Resource Management

Project resource management is the process of ensuring there is a team in place to carry out the activities required to carry out the project activities.

When building the project plan, the project manager would outline what roles would be required within the team at any given time throughout the project. Based on these the project team would be built. This includes determining whether the skill sets required are readily available and whether new hires will be needed either for the term of the project or permanently and also if any existing staff will need training on any area.

Team management will be ongoing throughout the project and is the project manager’s responsibility. They need to monitor team members individually to ensure their work is being carried out as requested and if they need help or training. They also need to ensure there are no issues among the team and that everyone is working well together to meet the deliverables of the project.

Sometimes, the full project team will not be based in the same location, resource management needs to take this into account and manage how remote teams will work.

Resource management is not limited to the members of the project team. The resource management process covers all resources that will be required – people, materials, services and equipment.

Plan Resource Management:

Plan resource management will happen in conjunction with the other project planning activities. This process involves establishing who the team will be, when each team member will be required and also how they will be managed throughout the project.

The resource plan will include plans for material and equipment hire if required and at what point in the project these will be needed. If the project involves building something, the resource plan will include plans for ensuring the necessary materials are in place when needed. There is no point having the team member ready to carry out the work if the materials aren’t in place to let them carry out the work.

The plan resource management process will produce the Resource Management Plan which forms part of the overall project management plan.

Estimate Activity Resources:

Estimating activity resources is the process of quantifying the resources required to complete the individual activities that will deliver the project. The project scope baseline will be used to determine how many people will be needed to deliver the project, what their roles will be, what materials will be needed and when they will need to be available, any equipment that will need to be purchased or hired and when it will need to be available.

A resource breakdown structure can be completed to detail labour, materials, equipment etc. and will show quantities and then timings they will be needed throughout the project.

Acquire Resources:

Once all resources required has been calculated and the resource plan complete, the project manager can move onto actually acquiring the resources that have been identified as being needed.

For people, this will be either internally assigning people to a project or hiring for new employees to carry out the work required.

There will also be a process of acquiring the material and equipment resources needed. This will involve identifying where these will be sourced from. In large organisations there will likely be procurement agreements in place with preferred suppliers for these and in smaller organisations it could be down to the project manager or a member of the team to source where these will come from.

In acquiring resources, there are a number of project planning elements that will need to be considered. The resource management plan to determine when things are needed and the cost baseline to make sure costs are controlled when sourcing external resources.

With all resources in place and a plan for when resources will be brought in throughout the project, the work can begin.

Develop Team:

A project won’t be a success if the project team doesn’t work well together. The task of developing the team falls to the project manager who needs to ensure that everyone knows what is expected of them in terms of work including quality and timescales.

This process also needs to ensure that the team members are fully trained in the tasks they are being asked to do and making sure they get training and help where needed.

Unfortunately, with the best will in the world, not all teams will get along and team development involves making sure any issues are addressed to ensure they do not impact on moral and on the overall success of the project.

Developing the team will involve establishing how they will all work together during the project, this is especially important if the team are working remotely from each other.

Manage Team:

Once the team is established, ground rules have been established for how they will work together and the project has kicked off, it falls to the project manager to make sure the team is managed effectively.

This involves monitoring performance against the plan and providing feedback to ensure the project stays on plan.

Team management means being able to facilitate team work, communication and resolving issues when they arise. Ground rules can be set out for meetings, communication and decision making.

The project change request process will feed into team management as and when the team needs to change. Team members could change throughout a project for any number of reasons – the individual being needed elsewhere in the business or that someone leaves the organisation. Or this could arise if the scope of the project changes and as a result, different team members are required.

Control Resources:

All areas of the project management process require controls to be put in place and resource management is no different. Controlling resources in a project involves making sure the resources allocated – be it people, materials or equipment are available as and when needed and monitoring the reality against the plan. In monitoring and controlling resources, the project manager makes sure that resources are available and used when needed and released when they are no longer required. For example, there is no point in having a piece of equipment sitting idle and adding to costs when it is no longer needed.

7. Communications Management

All projects have a group of stakeholders who need to be kept up to date on the progress of the project. Project Communications Management is the process of making sure that happens either verbally, written or formal or informal.

This involves setting out and agreeing how the project manager and project team will communicate with the stakeholders and then the actual activities of communicating and reporting throughout the project.

Plan Communication Management:

A simple communications plan will outline:

• Who will you communicate to during the project – for example, stakeholders or a management team
• The subject of the communications – for example, status reports
• Frequency and timings of communications – for example, weekly or monthly or at specific phases of the project and will these reports be at a specific time?
• What format will the communications be in? – for example, meetings, presentations or written reports or a combination of these

A more detailed communication plan will include all of the above information and additionally will set out the names of all stakeholders, their area of responsibility on the project and their contact information. This will be further developed to detail each of their individual requirements from communications – i.e. what do they need to know, in what format and when.

The project communications plan will set the guidelines for communicating and reporting activities throughout the life cycle of the project.

Manage Communications:

Managing communications during a project is the process of taking the requirements of the communication plan and carrying out the tasks required to meet those requirements. This involves gathering all of the information required and ensuring that information is delivered to the right people at the right time. A good way to set the scene for this is with the Project Kick Off Meeting where the ground rules for project communication can be set out and agreed.

In addition to the planned communications, this will also involve the reporting of any change requests or problems arising in the delivery of the project, ensuring any problems are escalated in a timely manner and not ignored until they become a bigger problem.

Monitor Communications:

The communications process also needs controls in place and this is simply to ensure the needs of each stakeholder are being met. This involves monitoring that all communications are going to the right people, at the right time and with the required and relevant information that they need.

This monitoring process also ensures that the information being shared means the stakeholders maintain an interest in the project and still support it’s existence. Effective project communications mean ensuring that the right information is in front of the right people at the right time.

There are various methods of monitoring this, including:

• Lessons learned exercises
• Observations of team members on stakeholder engagement
• Retrospective Meetings

8. Risk Management

Managing risk in a project is essential to ensure potential scenarios of issues have been identified, thought through, mitigated and planned for to make sure if they do occur there is minimal impact on the project.

There are five key areas that need to be addressed in risk management:

• Identify the risk
• Analyse the risk
• Evaluate or rank the risk
• Treat the risk
• Monitor and review the risk

The process of risk management is designed to decrease the risk of uncertainty. This needs to be carried out to increase the chances of a project’s success.

Plan Risk Management:

Plan risk management outlines the approach the project team will take to risk management. This is proportionate to the size and scale of the project and will outline the techniques that will be used to identify, mitigate and manage risk to the project. The approach and attitude to risk will be determined by the size of the project, the organisation’s approach to risk and the importance of the project the organisation. For example, a crucial project will have a more detailed approach to the risk.

The outcome of planning will be the risk management plan which will outline the risk strategy, the roles and responsibilities of the risk management team and any costs associated with risk management.

The plan will also include the risk register, how risk management will be reported and how it will be monitored and tracked throughout the project.

A good tool to utilise during this process is our Red Flag Management Mind Map:

Identify Risks:

Before risk management can begin, potential risks need to be identified. This involves input from anyone who may have knowledge of potential risks to elements of project work or phases as well as the overall project deliverables.

There are a number of tools and techniques which can be used to identify and analyse a list of potential risks.

For data gathering, these include:

• Brainstorming

The results can then be analysed using:

• Root cause analysis
• Assumption and
• constraint analysis
• SWOT analysis
• Document analysis

Identifying risks should be performed early in the project to ensure risk management activities can take place.

Perform Qualitative Risk Analysis:

A qualitative risk analysis will take a specific risk and drill into this for a more detailed analysis, assessing the probability of occurrence against the overall impact on the project if the risk did occur. The impact of a risk occurring will usually effect some or all of the project elements – schedule, budget, resources, deliverables, costs, quality, scope, and performance.

During the qualitative risk analysis, a risk owner will be identified and assigned to each risk – this person is responsible for preparing the risk response.

Perform Quantitative Risk Analysis:

Quantitative risk analysis is a deeper analysis of the highest priority risks and assigns a numerical or quantitative rating to the risk in order to develop a probability of the risk occurring and the impact it will have on the project. Not all projects will involve quantitative risk analysis as this type of analysis is reliant on quality data being available on individual risks.

Plan Risk Responses:

Planning risk responses is the process of detailing what the response would be to each individual risk if the event did occur. Risk responses are designed to minimise the threat or impact to the project if the risk occurred.

Risk responses can be categorised as:

• Escalate – where the risk can’t be managed by the project team, it will be escalated to a higher level or another department
• Avoid – the response details how to eliminate the cause
• Transfer – some risks can be deemed to be the responsibility of a third party and as such cannot be managed by the project team
• Mitigate – the team put steps in place to minimise the impact of the risk
• Accept – acceptance means the team have decided they can’t put mitigation plans in place in advance but if the risk should occur they will have contingency plans in place to manage the impact. If a risk is being accepted, it should be communicated to all stakeholders.

Implement Risk Responses:

Once the risk response plans are agreed, they are then implemented. It is important to make sure this stage happens with tasks and activities in place to manage this process. Too often, project teams take the time to do all of the work of planning for risk, identifying and analysing the risk and detailing the risk responses in the risk register only to not actually carry out any of the activities required to ensure the risks don’t impact on the project.

Monitor Risks:

The process of monitoring risks is ensuring the risk responses that were identified are then implemented throughout the project.

This also includes making sure that any new risks identified during the project are also managed in the same way and that the risk management that has been carried out and put in place is effective and does not need to be revisited and improved as the project progresses.

Risk monitoring is the process of ensuring that any controls that have been put in place are effective and taking the corrective action if they are not working.

9. Procurement Management

Project procurement management is the process of how purchased for external resources will be managed throughout the project. This will include documenting any purchasing processes that are already in place and will be followed or any supplier or contract agreements that are in place and will be followed throughout the project. This will also detail who is authorised to make and approve purchased and how these will be managed and controlled during the project.

Plan Procurement Management:

Planning procurement management is the detailing of what has been agreed / approved to purchase and the process for how this will happen, including what to purchase and when it will be needed. This will include list of potential suppliers and details on any supplier agreements. The project schedule will feed into the procurement process to guide what is required and when.

Roles and responsibilities in terms of procurement will be outlined as part of this plan. The level of procurement experience required will depend on the scale of the project. In smaller teams it is likely that procurement will be handled by one of the team members and larger scale projects and organisations will usually have a purchasing department and will assign someone to the project team from that department to manage the project procurement process.

Whoever is responsible for the procurement process will manage suppliers, agreement and contract negotiations.

The result of the plan procurement process is the Procurement Management Plan.

Conduct Procurements:

Conducting procurements is the actual act of securing a supplier and placing the order. This could be as simple as selecting a supplier from a preferred list and placing an order or a full process of requesting buds from a number of suppliers, evaluating the response and selecting who to place the order with.

Control Procurements:

In line with cost control, the procurement process needs to be controlled and monitored throughout the project.

This process involves monitoring that supplier agreements are fulfilled in line with contracts, goods and services are delivered when agreed and that the quality of what is received meets the terms of the agreement. Performance reviews of all these elements should be an ongoing process during project delivery.

10. Stakeholder Management

Stakeholder management is an important part of any project. This process involves identifying people, groups and organisations who will be impacted by the delivery of the project. This goes further to ensure, that once identified, stakeholders remain engaged in the project throughout it’s life cycle – this means ensuring they are kept up to date on progress and key milestones / phases of the project and are included in decision making throughout. Managing stakeholder expectations is a critical role for the project manager.

Identify Stakeholders:

The first step in stakeholder management is to identify who the stakeholders are. In doing so, the project manager compiles a list of people, their role, their interest in the project, the impact project deliverables will have on them and outline their approach to communicating with them and maintaining their interest and engagement throughout the project.

Stakeholders will have varying degrees of influence over the outcome of the project and will also have different levels of interest or are more interested in certain phases of the project, this should be taken into account when identifying stakeholders.

A stakeholder register will be produced from this.

Plan Stakeholder Engagement:

Manage Stakeholder Engagement:

Once identified, stakeholders need to be managed throughout the project. This process ensures the stakeholder engagement plan is being implemented as outlined.

At this point, the project manager is responsible for ensuring communications are ongoing as planned and that expectations are being managed. Key skills at this point include being able to communicate clearly, manage any conflict that arises and negotiate any changes in expectations as the project progresses.

This process is about making sure the stakeholders are still engaged in the project and that their expectations on deliverables have not changed from the original scope, cost and schedule agreements.

Monitor Stakeholder Engagement:

Monitoring stakeholder engagement is the process of making sure the stakeholder engagement plan is effective in terms of communication and keeping stakeholders engaged. If this is not the case, modification to the plan will take place to adapt to what is required.

The PMI PMBOK Guide, 6th edition provides a framework for managing any project, regardless of size. At MindGenius, we have taken the PMBOK Guide and prepared some templates to help you with each element of the guide. These are downloadable throughout our guide.

In addition to this framework for managing projects, there are a number of project management methodologies which can be followed. Each one has it’s own merits and which one to choose depends on the organisation, the project itself and what will suit the way the project team works.

The next section of our guide will look into these in more detail.

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10 Knowledge Areas of Project Management: What They Are and How They’re Used

by Matthew Duncan | Last updated: Oct 3, 2022

The 10 knowledge areas of project management are important to know before taking the PMP exam from the Project Management Institute (PMI).

They are also important to understand once you begin the day-to-day tasks involved with managing projects.

• NOTE: PMI has transitioned away from the 10 Knowledge Areas as of the PMBOK Guide’s Seventh Edition, which was released in August of 2021. Instead, PMI is focusing on 8 Project Performance Domains, which we’ve covered in a separate article . The Knowledge Areas remain useful in day-to-day project management, however.

  The knowledge areas are used in day-to-day project management tasks and play a big role in ensuring projects are completed successfully. In this article, we will list each knowledge area and explain what it is and how it is used in project management.

What are the 10 Knowledge Areas of Project Management?

PMI has identified 10 knowledge areas that all project managers must know in order to successfully manage projects.

Based on our experience, you very likely won’t be executing tasks from each knowledge area on every project you manage.

For example, I can’t remember the last time I did anything at all within the Project Human Resources knowledge area, but that’s because I work with the same project team consistently and rarely encounter issues that require human resources management.

Nonetheless, as a project manager, you will encounter each of these knowledge areas at some point on your projects, and you’ll need to be familiar with the concepts and requirements of them when the need arises.

And if nothing else, you simply won’t be able to pass the PMP exam without a healthy understanding of the 10 knowledge areas. So let’s take a look at them.

The 10 knowledge areas in project management are:

1. Project Integration Management 2. Project Scope Management 3. Project Time Management 4. Project Cost Management 5. Project Quality Management 6. Project Human Resource Management 7. Project Communications Management 8. Project Risk Management 9. Project Procurement Management 10. Project Stakeholder Management

The 10 Knowledge Areas of Project Management, Explained

Each knowledge area is important and has its own set of processes that need to be managed during the project lifecycle.

Let’s take a closer look at each one.

1. Project Integration Management

Integration management is the process of ensuring that all of the project’s different elements are properly coordinated. This includes defining the project’s objectives, developing the project plan, executing the project, and monitoring and controlling the project.

The goal of project integration management is to ensure that all of the project’s goals, objectives, and deliverables are met. This can only be accomplished by effectively managing the interactions between all of the project’s stakeholders.

2. Project Scope Management

Scope management is the process of ensuring that all aspects of the project are properly accounted for and included in the project plan. This includes identifying the work to be done, defining the deliverables, and creating a schedule.

Perhaps the biggest goal of the project scope management knowledge area is to ensure the project includes all the work required — and only the work required — to complete the project successfully.

• RELATED: What Exactly is Project Scope Management?

3. Project Time Management

Time management is the process of ensuring that all aspects of the project are completed within the allotted timeframe. This includes creating a project schedule, tracking progress, and making adjustments as needed.

In project time management, a PM will spend time estimating, scheduling, monitoring, and controlling the amount of time that is spent on the project. Among the tools and techniques most frequently using within this knowledge area are Gantt charts, the Critical Path Method (CPM), and PERT diagrams.

4. Project Cost Management

Cost management is the process of ensuring that all aspects of the project are completed within the approved budget. This includes estimating costs, monitoring spending, and taking corrective action as needed.

The goal of project cost management is to minimize the total cost of ownership while meeting all other objectives of the project. In order to achieve this goal, cost management must be integrated with other aspects of project management such as scope, quality, risk, and schedule.

5. Project Quality Management

Quality management is the process of ensuring that the project meets its quality objectives. This includes developing quality plans, setting quality standards, and monitoring progress.

Quality objectives are set by the project sponsor and may be influenced by factors such as regulatory requirements, customer expectations, and industry standards.

6. Project Human Resource Management

Human resource management is the process of organizing, acquiring, and managing a project’s human resources. This includes determining the project’s staffing needs, recruiting candidates, selecting the appropriate individuals for the project team, onboarding and training them, and managing employee performance throughout the project.

Project human resources management is an important but often overlooked part of any project manager’s toolkit. Effectively managing a project’s human resources can be key to having a well-functioning project team, and it includes tasks such as handling conflicts when they arise.

7. Project Communications Management

Communications management is the process of ensuring that all aspects of the project are properly communicated. This includes developing communication plans, setting communication standards, and monitoring progress.

Project communications management involves communicating with stakeholders and project team members, as well as distributing and storing important project communications, such as updates and documents.

• RELATED: A Look at the Project Communications Management Knowledge Area

8. Project Risk Management

Risk management is the process of identifying risks, assessing risks, and taking corrective action to mitigate risks. This is important in order to avoid potential problems that could impact the successful completion of the project.

During project risk management, a PM will use risk analysis tools to help determine the severity of known risks, and then develop contingency plans for dealing with them, should they arise during the project.

• RELATED: 9 Risk Management Tips for Project Managers

9. Project Procurement Management

Procurement management is the process of acquiring goods and services from external suppliers. It includes the coordination and management of all aspects of procurement, including identifying potential suppliers, negotiating contracts, and monitoring supplier performance.

Procurement management is a critical part of any project as it can have a significant impact on the cost, quality, and schedule of the project. Therefore, it is important for project managers to have a good understanding of procurement management principles and practices, including developing procurement plans, issuing RFPs (Requests for Proposal), and evaluating bids.

10. Project Stakeholder Management

Stakeholder management is the process of identifying stakeholders, assessing their needs and interests, and taking action to ensure their buy-in and support. This is important in order to avoid potential problems that could impact the successful completion of the project.

Engaging with stakeholders is crucial for a project manager, whether those stakeholders are individuals or groups with a vested interest in your project. Project stakeholder management includes keeping these stakeholders informed and updated on progress, as well as understanding and addressing their concerns.

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The Ultimate FREE Guide to Master ALL Project Management Knowledge Areas on the CAPM & PMP Exam

Master the ten knowledge areas on capm exam & pmp exam.

By : Alvin the PM | Last Updated : June 12, 2021 Topic : Project Management Knowledge Areas

Each of the Project Management Process Groups ( Initiation, Planning, Executing, Monitor & Controlling, and Closing) are split among Ten Key Knowledge Areas you must master in order to successfully PASS your CAPM & PMP Exam.

If you find any of my website notes and Youtube Videos helpful to pass your CAPM Exam or PMP Exam, considering supporting me by buying me a cup of “virtual” coffee by clicking the below link. ❤️ SUPPORT Alvin the PM by buying me “virtual” coffee ❤️

I’ve listed each Knowledge Area below, with an explanation of the following: 1) Overview of the Knowledge Area 2) Process Groups : Which Process Groups are involved with the Knowledge Area? Acronyms used throughout this guide: IN for Initiating, PL for Planning, EX for Executing, M&C for Monitor and Controlling, and CL for Closing. 3) Reference Section & Page in PMBOK 6th Edition 4) Purpose: Why is each Process Group important?

Video Tutorial – Master ALL TEN Knowledge Areas

• Mastering ALL Ten Knowledge Areas, and ALL 49 PMBOK Processes is a very daunting and challenging process. Take it from me … I spent countless hours and weeks reading & re-reading Rita’s CAPM Exam Prep Book to understand each Process Group. It’s tough, but you can do it! And, that’s why I created this Video Tutorial to help you MASTER all TEN Knowledge Areas. Repeat this video as many times as you need until you’re able to identify and understand the purpose for each Process and Knowledge Area. >> MASTER 49 PMBOK Processes for CAPM Exam & PMP Exam – WATCH HERE

Knowledge Area #1 – Integration Management

• Overview: Integration is all about balancing and combining the different Project Management Processes together. Remember, project management does NOT occur in silos, and you’re always taking into consideration how each process impacts each other. For example, how do changes to your project’s scope impact your project’s schedule and resources?
• Seven ( 7) Process Groups: Develop Project Charter (IN), Develop Project Management Plan (PL), Direct & Manage Work (EX), Manage Knowledge (EX), Monitor & Control Work (M&C), Perform Change Control (M&C), Closing (Close)

1.1 Integration Mgmt: Develop Project Charter (IN) -Pg 75, PMBOK 6th Ed. Purpose : You’re creating the Project Charter, which is a document that formally authorizes the project’s existence. Think of the Charter as giving the Project Manager the authority to start beginning the project and allocating resources to proceed with the next steps.

1.2 Integration Mgmt: Develop Project Management Plan ( PL ) -Pg 82, PMBOK 6th Ed Purpose : You’re creating a comprehensive document (aka. the Project Management Plan) which contains components from all other Knowledge Areas. This “Plan” describes how you’ll execute all areas of the project throughout the entire Project Life Cycle.

1.3 Integration Mgmt: Direct & Manage Project Work (EX) -Pg 90, PMBOK 6th Ed Purpose : You’re finally executing your project and in this step, you’re leading your Team to execute all of the work that’s defined in your Project Management Plan. 1.4 Integration Mgmt: Manage Project Knowledge ( EX ) -Pg 98, PMBOK 6th Ed Purpose : How do you take advantage of your Team’s knowledge and past experiences to lead your project towards success? Well, that’s what this step is all about. In other words, what knowledge (tacit or explicit) does your Team already have, what processes are already in place in the organization, and how can you make this knowledge transfer available to others to increase the likelihood of your project’s success.

» Alvin’s Tip: This one was tricky for me to understand how this integrates with Direct & Manage Project Work. Just remember… this step is all about using your team’s already existing knowledge (whether it’s knowledge gained from past experience or from on-the-job) and creating new knowledge, with the goal of working towards achieving the project’s goals. Alvin the PM

1.5 Integration Mgmt: Monitor & Control Project Work (M&C) -Pg 105, PMBOK 6th Ed Purpose : You’ll be monitoring your project’s status and understanding whether the Team is still on track to accomplish the goals that were identified in your Project Management Plan.

This step helps answer the following questions: – What is the project’s progress and health condition?  – Is the project on track, ahead of schedule, or behind schedule? – Is the project over or under budget? – If our project is in the ‘red’ health condition (i.e. behind schedule and over budget), what Corrective/Preventive Actions do we need to take to steer our project back on track?

1.6 Integration Management: Perform Integrated Change Control (M&C) – Pg 113, PMBOK 6th Ed – Purpose: While your team is executing the project work that was originally planned, there may be changes that have been requested by your team members and/or even the customer. Remember… This step is focused on managing the review & approval of Change Requests.

EXAMPLE The customer may want to add a new feature to the Hardware that your company is developing. However, this Change Request would require significantly additional cost and time to develop, verify, and validate these features. Hence, a Change Request would need to be created, reviewed, and approved by a Change Control Board, before proceeding with the project.

1.7 Integration Management: Close Project / Phase (CL) – Pg 121, PMBOK 6th Ed – Purpose : Your project’s work is finally completed, and you can now release all resources from the project. This step helps answer the following: 1) Did all final project work meet the customer requirements? 2) Did the project meet the goals defined in the project management plan? 3) Can we now close all Contracts/Agreements with 3rd Party Vendors? 4) What were the Lessons Learned from the project?

Knowledge Area #2 – Scope Management

• Overview : You’re controlling the Project’s Scope throughout the entire duration of the project and ensuring that ‘ scope creep ‘ and ‘ gold plating ‘ doesn’t become an issue. In other words, you’re making sure that ONLY THE REQUIRED WORK to execute your project is performed, and nothing beyond this.
• Six ( 6) Process Groups: Plan Scope Management (PL), Collect Requirements (PL), Define Scope (PL), Create WBS (PL), Validate Scope (M&C), Control Scope (M&C)

2.1 Scope Mgmt: Plan Scope Management (PL) – Pg 134, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : You’re creating the Scope Management Plan which will outline your strategy for developing and controlling your project’s scope 2.2 Scope Mgmt : Collect Requirements (PL) – Pg 138, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : This step defines the requirements of your project and needs of your stakeholders. 2.3 Scope Mgmt : Define Scope (PL) – Pg 150, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : With the requirements you’ve collected, you’re developing a more detailed description of the ‘Scope’ of your project & product

» Alvin’s Tip: This is different than Collect Requirements !! At this point, your requirements have already been collected, and the focus is on developing a Scope Statement – what is inside and outside the scope of your project. Alvin the PM

2.4 Scope Mgmt : Create WBS (PL) – Pg 156, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : Creating a WBS, or a hierarchical diagram breaking down your project deliverables into elements which are easier to manage. 2.5 Scope Mgmt : Validate Scope (M&C) – Pg 163, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : Obtaining formal acceptance of your project deliverables by your customer or sponsor 2.6 Scope Mgmt: Control Scope (M&C) – Pg 167, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : You’re now monitoring the Status & Scope of your project. This step is all about making sure that you’re controlling the Scope of your project, and no additional work gets introduced, without obtaining formal approval through a Change Request & Change Request Board.

Knowledge Area #3 – Schedule Management

• Overview : Developing, managing, and monitoring your project’s schedule
• Six ( 6) Process Groups : Plan Schedule Management (PL), Define Activities (PL), Sequence Activities (PL), Estimate Activity Durations (PL), Develop Schedule (PL), Control Schedule (M&C) 3.1 Schedule Mgmt: Plan Schedule Management (PL) – Pg 179, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : To manage your schedule, you first need to develop the procedures and high-level ‘ plan ‘ for how you will create, maintain, and manage your project’s schedule. 3.2 Schedule Mgmt: Define Activities (PL) – Pg 183, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : In order to create your project’s deliverables, what work and ‘activities’ need to be performed by your Team? 3.3 Schedule Mgmt: Sequence Activities (PL) – Pg 187, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : Now that you’ve identified the activities to execute your project, you need to sequence the work in the correct order. In other words, what comes first, second, third, etc… In what sequence do we perform each activity? 3.4 Schedule Mgmt : Estimate Activity Durations (PL) – Pg 195, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : Establish estimates of how long each activity takes to fully complete the work, using your provided resources. 3.5 Schedule Mgmt: Develop Schedule (PL) – Pg 205, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : You’re creating your Project Schedule using information you’ve been given thus far (assumptions/constraints, correct sequencing of activities, durations, and required resources). 3.6 Schedule Mgmt: Control Schedule (M&C) – Pg 222, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : You’re evaluating & tracking the status of your project’s schedule and if any changes need to be made to your originally planned Schedule Baseline

Knowledge Area #4 – Cost Management

• Overview : This Knowledge Area is concerned with the financial aspect of a project – the development of your strategy for how you will estimate and budget your costs, and of course, obtaining the funds & monitoring & controlling the expenses throughout the project’s life cycle. Overall goal of this step is to ensure you complete your project within the approved project’s budget.
• Four (4) Process Groups: Plan Cost Management (PL), Estimate Costs (PL), Determine Budget (PL), Control Costs (M&C) 4.1 Cost Mgmt: Plan Cost Management (PL) – Pg 235, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : Establishes your process and strategy for how you will estimate, budget, and track/control your project’s costs 4.2 Cost Mgmt: Estimate Costs (PL) – Pg 240, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : You’re estimating the costs of all resource costs needed to execute your project. Examples of these costs include, but are not limited to: material, supplies, and equipment. 4.3 Cost Mgmt: Determine Budget (PL) – Pg 248, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : In this step, you’re calculating the Total Project Budget (aka. the Cost Baseline ) by summing up your estimated costs from the detailed work packages / activities. 4.4 Cost Mgmt: Control Costs (M&C) – Pg 257, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : In this step of the Monitor & Control phase, you’re monitoring and tracking the expenses of the project, the project’s cost performance , and comparing it to the originally planned Project Cost Baseline . Are there any significant cost overruns which would significantly derail the project?

Knowledge Area #5 – Quality Management

• Overview : This Knowledge Area is concerned with implementing the processes to ensure compliance with Quality Standards & Requirements as well as your organization’s quality mission / policy.
• Alvin’s Tip : Remember… when you think of Quality Management, ask yourself, “ How are we meeting our quality requirements ?”
• Three (3) Process Groups : Plan Quality Management (PL), Manage Quality (EX), Control Quality (M&C) 5.1 Quality Mgmt: Plan Quality Management (PL) – Pg 277, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : The focus for this phase is determining the strategy for meeting all of the project’s Quality Requirements. This addresses the following questions: What does ‘ quality ’ mean specifically for our project, what are our Quality Requirements ,  and how will we meet them? 5.2 Quality Mgmt: Manage Quality (EX) – Pg 288, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : This is conducted during the Execution stage of the project, and, therefore, focuses on work being performed . The focus is on making sure that the organization’s procedures and policies are being followed in order to develop the project deliverables. – Alvin’s Tip: The two processes of Manage Quality vs Control Quality was challenging for me to remember the difference between the two. Just remember… Manage Quality is about answering the following questions – Are procedures & processes being followed correctly? Are there any areas for continuous improvement? Will we meet our quality criteria? 5.3 Quality Mgmt: Control Quality (M&C) – Pg 298, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : During this process, you’re evaluating the ‘quality’ of your in-progress project deliverables. To do this, you’re performing inspections and testing to verify that your created Project Deliverables are correct and meet the required level of Quality, as well as the requirements established by the customer. You’ll also be focused on helping resolve any issues by performing Root Cause Analysis.

Knowledge Area #6 – Resource Management

• Overview : This Knowledge Area is all about making sure that the right resources are available at the right time in order to complete the project’s work. As the Project Manager, you’ll be focused on determining, obtaining, and tracking the usage of all resources (both physical resources and employee/staff resources) throughout the lifecycle of your project.
• Six (6) Process Groups : Plan Resource Management (PL), Estimate Activity Resources (PL), Acquire Resources (EX), Develop Team (EX), Manage Team (EX), Control Resources (M&C) 6.1 Resource Mgmt: Plan Resource Management (PL) – Pg 312, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : This establishes your process for how you’ll estimate, procure, and manage your physical & staff employee resources on the project. 6.2 Resource Mgmt: Estimate Activity Resources (PL) – Pg 320, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : This process involves identifying & estimating all resources you need to successfully complete your project: 1) Employees, Staff, Personnel; and, 2) Physical Resources (materials & equipment). 6.3 Resource Mgmt: Acquire Resources (EX) – Pg 328, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : Now that you’ve identified what resources you need, you’ll need to procure & obtain these resources from within the organization or outside the organization through Vendors and Subcontractors.

Alvin’s Tip : Make sure you understand the difference between Estimate Activity Resources and Acquire Resources . Remember… Acquire Resources is DIFFERENT than Estimate Activity Resources because you’re now focused on obtaining what you need and assigning them to the appropriate task / project activity. Alvin the PM

6.4 Resource Mgmt: Develop Team (EX) – Pg 336, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : In this step, you’re improving your team’s interaction with each other, each team member’s skillset, and the team environment to enhance the overall team’s performance. Essentially, how can you make your team more productive and a top performer? 6.5 Resource Mgmt : Manage Team (EX) – Pg 345, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : Tracking your team’s performance, giving feedback, resolving any issues, and managing the team’s changes to optimize the project’s performance 6.6 Resource Mgmt : Control Resources (M&C) – Pg 352, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : Monitoring your planned versus actual usage of your resources. Are the physical resources we planned available to allocate to the project? – Alvin’s Tip: Control Resources focuses on physical resources , such as equipment, material, facilities, Infrastructure. The employee/staff resources are involved in Develop Team and Manage Team .

Knowledge Area #7 – Communication Management

• Overview : Are your project stakeholders receiving the information they need to execute the required work? This Knowledge Area focuses on developing & implementing the communication strategy for distributing project artifacts and optimizing the communication between stakeholders.
• Three (3) Process Groups : Plan Communications Management (PL), Manage Communications (EX), Monitor Communications (M&C) 7.1 Communication Mgmt: Plan Communications Management (PL) – Pg 366, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : This establishes the approach & strategy you’ll use to engage your project stakeholders by presenting the information they need in an optimal manner 7.2 Communication Mgmt: Manage Communications (EX) – Pg 379, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : Actively distributing information and communication artifacts to the stakeholders. This step makes sure that there’s an efficient flow of information & communication between your stakeholders. In other words, as a project manager, your focus is on SHARING INFORMATION . 7.3 Communication Mgmt: Monitor Communications (M&C) – Pg 388, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : This step Monitors & Controls communication throughout the entire project and ensures that all stakeholders have the information they need. Are the information needs of your stakeholders being met?

Knowledge Area #8 – Risk Management

• Overview : As a Project Manager, you’re constantly thinking outside the box and being proactive with your team to identify what potential risks may occur which may positively or negatively impact your project. That’s what this Knowledge Area is about – Planning your Risk Management Strategy, brainstorming risks, analyzing the risks, determining & implementing risk responses, and monitoring the risks throughout the life of the project.
• Seven (7) Process Groups : Plan Risk Management (PL), Identify Risks (PL), Perform Qualitative Risks (PL), Perform Quantitative Risks (PL), Plan Risk Responses (PL), Implement Risk Responses (EX), Monitor Risks (M&C) 8.1 Risk Mgmt: Plan Risk Management (PL) – Pg 401, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : What strategy and process will we follow to perform our Risk Management Work? This step establishes this Risk Management Plan and sets the foundation for conducting Risk Management with your Team throughout the project. 8.2 Risk Mgmt: Identify Risks (PL) – Pg 409, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : You’re brainstorming & determining what risks may arise in your project: individual and overall project risks. 8.3 RiskMgmt: Perform Qualitative Risk Analysis (PL) – Pg 419, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : Now that you’ve identified the risks from the previous step (Identify Risks), this step focuses on evaluating and prioritizing the risks based upon their likelihood/probability of occurrence and impact. – Alvin’s Tip: Think of this step as helping filter the high-priority risks from the low-priority ones. 8.4 Risk Mgmt: Perform Quantitative Risk Analysis (PL) – Pg 428, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : After filtering your list of risks and identifying your high-priority risks, this step is focused on quantitatively analyzing these high-impact risks. Remember… this step is NOT required for every project. 8.5 Risk Mgmt : Plan Risk Responses (PL) – Pg 437, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : How can we address the risks which we’ve identified? In this step, you’ll be working with your Team to determine the Risk Responses you’ll implement to minimize the threats of negative risks or enhance the opportunities of positive threats. 8.6 Risk Mgmt: Implement Risk Responses (EX) – Pg 449, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : Let’s put the “pedal to the metal” and start implementing the Responses for the Risks we’ve identified. 8.7 Risk Mgmt : Monitor Risks (M&C) – Pg 453, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : How effective were we at eliminating or mitigating our negative risks? Throughout the project, you’ll continue to be on the look-out for any risks which may arise. This step tracks & monitors your identified risks, and evaluates the effectiveness of your implemented risk responses.

Knowledge Area #9 – Procurement Management

• Overview : This Knowledge Area is all about the process for procuring EXTERNAL resources outside of your organization, such as raw material, equipment, supplies, services, and products.
• Three (3) Process Groups : Plan Procurement Management (PL), Conduct Procurement (EX), Control Procurements (M&C) 9.1 Procurement Mgmt: Plan Procurement Management ( PL ) – Pg 466, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : This is the step where you perform a Make vs Buy Analysis and determine what resources will be purchased from a Vendor or manufactured in-house, how you will acquire these external resources, and which potential Sellers/Vendors/Contractors you can reach out to. 9.2 Procurement Mgmt: Conduct Procurement (EX) – Pg 482, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : You work with your Team to choose the Seller(s)/Vendor(s) to use for your project’s external resources, and you then sign a formal contract/agreement with them. 9.3 Procurement Mgmt: Control Procurement (M&C) – Pg 492, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : The focus for this step is on managing your relationships with your Vendors, monitoring the performance of your Contracts, and closing out any Contracts where work has already been completed. Now that you’ve identified the risks from the previous step (Identify Risks), this step focuses on evaluating and prioritizing the risks based upon their likelihood/probability of occurrence and impact. – Alvin’s Tip: How are your Vendors doing and are they on track to hit their expected delivery dates for raw material, purchased manufactured products, or services? Focus on working with the selected Vendor during this process and check their performance & health status on your project.

Knowledge Area #10 – Stakeholder Management

• Overview : This Knowledge Area is all about identifying people who can impact or be impacted by the project, analyzing their expectations, and developing strategies to engage all stakeholders in making decisions to ensure a successful execution & completion of the project.
• Four (4) Process Groups : Identify Stakeholders (IN), Plan Stakeholder Engagement (PL), Manage Stakeholder Engagement (EX), Monitor Stakeholder Engagement (M&C) 13.1 Stakeholder Mgmt: Identify Stakeholders (IN) – Pg 507, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : Identify stakeholders and analyze & document their information: what are their interests, influence levels, and impact on the project? 13.2 Stakeholder Mgmt: Plan Stakeholder Engagement (PL) – Pg 516, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : Developing the strategy to involve stakeholders based on their needs, expectations, interest, and impact 13.3 Stakeholder Mgmt: Manage Stakeholder Engagement (EX) – Pg 523, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : The focus for this step is on managing the stakeholders’ expectations, addressing any issues & concerns they have, and encouraging their participation in the project. – Alvin’s Tip: Make sure you understand the difference between the two process groups of Manage Stakeholder Engagement vs Manage Communications ! Manage Stakeholder Engagement is focused on answering the following question: Are they getting  certain items that they’re interested in, so they’re fully engaged? 13.4 Stakeholder Mgmt: Monitor Stakeholder Engagement (M&C) – Pg 530, PMBOK 6th Edition – Purpose : Monitoring the commitment of the stakeholders, and adjusting your strategies to manage & engage them

To successfully pass your CAPM Exam, make sure you know the purpose and importance for each Knowledge Area & Process Group inside and out . I cannot stress this enough – If you have a high-level understanding of why each process group is important and how they fit together as a whole, it will really set you up for success on the day of your CAPM Exam and/or PMP Exam.

For me, on the day of my CAPM Exam, because I understood the importance of each Knowledge Area, and how each Process Group leads into the next, I was able to deduce the correct answer to many questions, simply through Process of Elimination . That’s one technique that’s proven invaluable to me towards passing my own CAPM Exam with Above Target in all areas . and also with mastering all 10 Knowledge Areas and 49 Processe s.

I hope you found the above information helpful with your Project Management Exam Prep Journey! If you found this useful, please feel free to SHARE and RECOMMEND this website with a friend. My goal is to help other Project Managers pass their own CAPM and PMP Exam, and become Certified in Project Management.

Cheers, Alvin

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Prediction of failures in the project management knowledge areas using a machine learning approach for software companies

• Research Article
• Open access
• Published: 10 May 2022
• Volume 4 , article number  165 , ( 2022 )

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• Gizatie Desalegn Taye   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3274-7937 1 &
• Yibelital Alemu Feleke 2  

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In this paper we propose a novel machine-learning model to predict project management knowledge areas failure for software companies using ten knowledge areas in project management based solely on the criteria of unambiguity, measurability, consistency, and practicability. The majority of software projects fail in software companies due to a lack of software project managers who are unfamiliar with the Project Management Knowledge Areas (PMKAs) that are used without considering the company's conditions or project contexts. By distributing questionnaires, we use an experimental methodology and the snowball sampling method to collect data from software businesses. We employ machine learning techniques including Support Vector Machines (92.13%), Decision Trees (90%), K-Nearest Neighbors (87.64%), Logistic Regression (76.4%), and Naive Bayes (66%) to adapt data from failed software projects. When we look at the results, Support Vector Machine outperforms the other four machine learning methods. High dimensional data is more efficient and contains nonlinear changes since Support Vector Machines deal with categorical data. The study's purpose is to improve project quality and decrease software project failure. Finally, we recommend collecting more failed project datasets from software businesses and comparing them to our findings to predict knowledge domain failure.

Article highlights

Design a machine learning model to predict knowledge area failure in project management.

Compare and contrast the machine learning model's performance.

Evaluate the suggested machine learning model.

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Applying Machine Learning to Risk Assessment in Software Projects

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Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

1 Introduction

An established software company's goal is to sell software products and profit from them. A project is a short-term undertaking that results in a unique deliverable [ 1 ]. The objectives of project management including initiating, planning, executing, regulating, and closing projects, as well as controlling the operations of the project team within the defined time, scope, budget, and quality standards to achieve all agreed goals and software project management refers to the scheduling, planning, resource allocation, and execution [ 2 ]. There are ten software Project Management Knowledge Areas (PMKAs). These are Project Integration Management (PIM), Project Scope Management (PSM), Project Time Management (PTM), Project Cost Management (PCM), Project Quality Management (PQM), Project Human Resource Management (PHRM), Project Risk Management (PRM), Project Procurements Management (PPM), Project Communications Management (PCCM), and Project Stakeholders Management (PSTM) [ 1 ]. The problems that cause software project failures are poor planning, lack of leadership, problems with people, vague or changing requirements, life cycle problems, inefficient communication process, inadequate funding, little attention to approval of stakeholders, lack of schedule, missed deadlines, due to the hiring of unqualified project manager. As a result, the research's goal is to forecast knowledge areas of project management failures for software firms. We develop a model based on machine learning that helps software project managers predict the failed knowledge areas that best fit the current situation (problem domain (failed motives), company characteristics, project size, indispensable nature of the project, the nature of the opportunities, and the methodology that follows). Improving the efficiency and maintaining the sustainability of a software project are obstacles that project managers face. The probability of project failure is generally due to a lack of knowledge, skills, resources, and technology during project implementation [ 3 , 4 ]. The study answers the following research questions.

How do we design a machine learning model that predicts project management knowledge area failure?

Which machine learning techniques are the most effective for predicting project management knowledge areas failure?

How well does our model predict project management failure in terms of knowledge areas?

The study would reduce the amount of time, and effort was given would spend money (for the project managers, and software companies) to predict the failure of the knowledge areas. However, every software project is different and unique [ 5 ]. According to [ 6 ] described that a software company faces different challenges between funding, team building, and ideation to attract talent at a very early stage. Starting from this idea, the study focuses on identifying the reasons behind wariness and uncertainty in organizations. The authors [ 7 ] carried out identifies and categorizes the software engineering Project Management Knowledge Areas (PMKAs) used in software companies to map the state of the art using a systematic study method of literature mapping with the application of snowball sampling to evaluate the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) characterizes the content of the software engineering discipline and promotes a consistent view of software engineering. Our work makes predictions not only statistics. The study presented by the Project Management Institute (PMI) identifies new domains of knowledge that contain a process to be followed for effective project management and project managers must have knowledge and skills in each of these areas or have specialists who can assist in these areas like some large projects have dedicated schedule coordinators, risk managers, communication specialists, or procurement contract officers. The authors [ 1 ] described a competent and knowledgeable project manager is vital to project success. The researchers evaluate the ten project management knowledge areas in service industries and manufacturing using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Absolute Degree Grey Incidence Analysis (ADGIA) model. Both models have the result that project quality management is the most important knowledge area and also most strongly related to project communication management and least strongly related to project integration management but the literature has a gap.

The authors [ 8 ] focus on behavioral advertisement analysis, such as an individual's preferences, buying habits, or hobbies, and will employ machine-learning approaches to identify and successfully execute targeted advertising using data that reflects the user's retail activity. By building a unique framework that uses a classification model through streaming technologies, and produces a multi-class classier to provide sector-based classification. To improve the accuracy of the model prediction task, the method uses a structured approach and multiple ensemble techniques. To forecast failure, we employed a multiclass classifier in our research. The authors [ 9 ] provided a framework for value realization. Universities must assess learning analytics (LA's) strategic role and spend carefully on the following criteria like high-quality data, analytical tools, knowledgeable people that are up to date on technology, and data-driven prospects for learning improvement. In our research, we used the four criteria to select attributes for prediction. The authors [ 10 ] investigated an efficient algorithm for predicting software reliability using a hybrid approach known as Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System, which was also applied to test data for software reliability prediction using complexity, changeability, and portability parameters in software development as input for the Fuzzy Inference System. After testing and training real-time data, forecast reliability in terms of mean relative error and mean absolute relative error. The study's findings are verified by comparing them to other state-of-the-art soft computing techniques.

From the above-mentioned related work, they have the following gaps in general. To begin with, the majority of research does not focus on making predictions. Second, the above-mentioned related works are carried out in the automotive supply sector, manufacturing, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Third, they employed a different method than we did in our research. As a result, we focused our investigation on software companies. In Ethiopia, most software firms have inexperienced, unsuccessful, and less skilled project managers as compared to other experienced corporate projects. Third, when to add or reduce the criteria influence on the project management knowledge areas is self-evident. As a result, we added more factors to the mix. Finally, the datasets that are associated with them are quite modest. As a result, the output is hurried. So, we prepared the dataset as much as feasible.

The introduction section comes to a close with this paragraph. In Sect. 2, we look at the methodologies, which include everything from using datasets to predicting failed project management, as well as the design of the suggested model, data preparation, and the confusion matrices for calculating performance measures. The results, validation of the model, and discussion highlights of the performance metrics of the findings are presented in Sect. 3, and the paper is concluded with the possibility of future extension of this work.

2 Methodology

The research is based on experiments. Experimental research is a collection of research designs that employ manipulation and controlled testing to gain a better understanding of entire processes that predict outcomes depending on certain criteria. As a result, the following methods and techniques are employed to complete this study.

2.1 The designed proposed prediction model

The general description of the prediction failure model for project management knowledge areas in software companies is given in Fig.  1 . The model has five major phases;

The proposed model

The first phase is the failure of project data collected from software development companies, the second phase is data pre-processing, which serves to refine our data cleansing, feature selection, data transformation, and data reduction tasks, the third phase consists of implementing the selected algorithms like Support Vector Machine (SVM), Decision Trees (DT), Naïve Bayes (NB), Logistic Regression (LR), and K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), the fourth step is to perform data analysis and evaluation to calculate using the chosen data and the efficiency of the proposed models made by the accuracy, precision, F1-score, and recall of each algorithm, the fifth and final step is the end of our work, which consists of analyzing and drawing conclusions based on the graphical and aggregated experimental result. In addition, we can see in Fig.  1 that each component in the model is interconnected and sequential.

2.2 Data collection and dataset preparation

We used a questionnaire to gather data from target software companies for this study, and we produced data found by project managers working for software companies in Ethiopia. The dataset included eighteen attributes classified into three groups (project manager, project context, and business situations) that influence the prediction failure of the knowledge areas in project management, and are collected, and prepared based on the criteria of unambiguity, consistency, practicability, and measurability [ 11 ].

There are ten knowledge areas or output classes, as indicated in Table 1 , namely, PCCM, PCM, PHRM, PIM, PPM, PQM, PRM, PSTM, PSM, PTM and its failure values for each class is 48, 76, 45, 82, 40, 21,27,36,42,26 out of 443 total datasets. For prediction, we employed multiclass methods.

Row failed project data: are produced based on the questionnaires from software companies. Processing failed project row data: The gathered row failed project data should be processed for three reasons: missing values should be fixed, data should be standardized, and variable sets should be optimized.

2.2.1 Analyzing attributes

2.2.1.1 unambiguity.

Each attribute should have its meaning. Each attribute is subject to one and only one interpretation. The possible values are yes (Y) and no (N). Ambiguous attributes not selected.

2.2.1.2 Consistency

Each attribute should be independent of the others. There are three possible values: high (H), medium (M), and low (L). The attributes with the highest consistency value were chosen.

2.2.1.3 Measurability

Each attribute should be assigned a value based on the metric. There are three possible values: high (H), medium (M), and low (L). Attributes with higher ease of measurability were chosen.

2.2.1.4 Practicability

Each attribute should be feasible in the sense of a particular (sudden) project. There are three possible values: high (H), medium (M), and low (L). Attributes with higher feasibility or practicability were chosen.

There are three possible values in Table 2 : High (H), Medium (M), and Low (L). The final list of criteria included an attribute with a higher level of practicability. A characteristic may be added or removed from the final list of influential attributes based on the aforementioned criteria [ 11 ]. As a result, nine attributes were chosen as the input for machine learning from 18 preliminary lists of attributes. The project manager has four attributes, three of which are related to the project's context and the remaining two to the nature of the company's situation. Table 2 shows the list of attributes and their results ("P" denotes selected attributes that made it into the final list of attributes, while "F" denotes unselected attributes that did not make it into the final list of attributes).

2.3 Data preprocessing

The information on failed projects was gathered from software companies. As a result, data preprocessing has been completed, which includes data cleansing, duplicate value removal, null value detection, rectification, and balancing. This is where the preprocessing mapping is finished. Because we collect data from a variety of sources, data integration has become a crucial part of the process. We need to make a condensed version of the dataset that is smaller in size but retains the original's integrity. Data preparation is the process of transforming data into a format suitable for data modeling, such as converting character values to binary values.

The train test split technique is used to measure the performance of machine learning algorithms that make predictions on data that was not used to train the model.

A training data set is a set of data that is used to fit a machine learning model.

Test data set—used to assess the machine learning model's fit.

The purpose of splitting the dataset is to assess the machine learning model's performance on new data that hasn't been used to train the model. This is how we hope to use the model in practice. That is, to fit it to existing data with known inputs and outputs, and then make predictions about future events where we do not have the expected output or target values.

2.3.1 Experimental methods

The experimental methods are mainly aimed at achieving, identifying, and visualizing what factors contribute to project managers and building a prediction model that executes a project whether or not the failed project management knowledge areas were based on the performance of the model.

2.3.2 Model evaluation

This activity is in charge of describing the evaluation parameters of the designed model and its results. The comparison was made between the data categorized by the proposed model system and the manually labeled (categorized) data. Having a common performance appraisal metric for classification and classification accuracy (CA) is used as the final proof of performance.

2.3.2.1 Confusion matrix

The confusion matrix assesses the performance of a classification or classifier model on a test dataset. Our target class was multiclass, which means classification tasks that have more than two class labels. So, our target class has ten labels that are 10X10 arrays.

The performance of a classification model is defined by a confusion matrix.

True positives (TP): cases where the classifier predicted that the true and correct class was true.

True negatives (TN): cases in which the model predicted the false and correct class was false.

False positives (FP) (type I error) - Classes predicted true but the correct class was false.

False negatives (FN) (type II error): The classifier predicted false but the correct class was false.

2.3.3 Accuracy

Accuracy means the number of all misclassified samples divided by the total number of samples in the dataset. Accuracy has the best value of one and the worst value of zero.

2.3.4 Precision

Precision (P)—precision is the fraction or percentage of identified or retrieved instances that the classification algorithm considers important. High precision means that most items labeled, for example, as "positive" actually belong to the class "positive" and is defined as precision characterized as the number of isolated true positives times the total sum of true positives and false positives.

2.3.5 Recall

A recall is considered a measure of completeness, which is the level of positive examples that are marked as positive. Cluster revision is characterized by the number of isolated true positives times the total number of components that have a place with the positive classes.

2.3.6 F1 score

F-Measure (F1 score) is defined as the harmonic means of precision and recall which is a measure that joins recall and precision into a single measure of performance. The F1-score was calculated by averaging precision and recall. The relative contribution of precision and recall to the F1-score are equal.

3 Results and discussion

Experimentation is recognized to necessitate the preparation of a dataset for training and testing purposes, as there is no free, ready-to-use dataset available on the Internet. We used 19 software companies in this study, which took the dataset and split it into three categories based on nine attributes (project manager, project context, and company situations). The collection has 443 records with 9 attributes. The remaining 20% was utilized to test the proposed model, with 80% being used to train the model.

3.1 Experimental results and analysis

After importing the necessary python modules and libraries, the second immediate task is to read the processed data frame (df) in pythons and check the imported rows. The ID, project manager name, education label, educational experience, relevant work, company name, knowledge about project management knowledge areas (PMKAs), model of development followed, the technique of obtaining requirements followed by market situations, the profitability of the company, reasons for failure and class. From those IDs, the project manager name and project name are not required for the study as the value of each attribute removed the remaining unique values displayed.

Feature engineering—the main goal of feature engineering is to add features that are likely to have an impact on the failed project dataset. The fundamental step in feature engineering is to split the training and test datasets. Out of the 443 rows in the dataset, we used 354 rows for training and 89 rows for tests. Because our datasets are small, we have demonstrated that the data split for training data is high, as high training data and low-test data are recommended for small datasets to get good accuracy.

3.1.1 Results of each prediction algorithm

We employed five methods to predict the failure of the project management knowledge areas in our experiment. K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Decision Trees (DT), Logistic Regression (LR), Naive Bayes (NB), and Support Vector Machines (SVM) are all examples of machine learning algorithms.

3.1.1.1 K-nearest neighbors (KNN) prediction algorithm results and analysis

We started building a K-Nearest Neighbors model to predict knowledge area failures in software companies after finalizing the data transformation and splitting the train test. The model result is presented in Table 3 , we have got the weighted average F1-Score with an accuracy of 87.64%. The values listed in the Support column are classified in the test data into 10 classes.

3.1.1.2 Decision trees prediction algorithm results and analysis

As we can see from the confusion matrix report in Table 4 , we have got a 90% weighted average accuracy of F1-Score for the decision tree algorithm.

3.1.1.3 Logistic regression prediction algorithm results and analysis

The performance measures we have obtained during Logistic Regression findings using the testing set are given in Table 5 . Here, we achieve the performance of 76.40% weighted average F1-Score.

3.1.1.4 Results and analysis of the naïve bayes prediction algorithm

The performance measures we have obtained during Naïve Bayes findings using the testing set are given in Table 6 . Here, we achieve the performance of 66% weighted average F1-Score.

3.1.1.5 Support vector machine prediction algorithm results and analysis

The performance of the Support Vector Machine (SVM) model was also evaluated using the testing set and the obtained performance measures are given in Table 7 . From the performance report, we can see that the SVM model achieves a 92.13% weighted average F1-Score.

3.2 Validation of the model

Validation ensures the model does not overfit or underfit during the training process. To prevent the model from learning too much or too little from the training set, a dropout layer or early stopping can be added. When a model learns too much on the training set, it performs well in the training phase but fails miserably in the testing phase. In data it has never seen before, it performs poorly. The accuracy of training is high, but the accuracy of testing is extremely low. Here is the validation for our model.

Visualizing the training vs. validation accuracy over a number of epochs is an excellent approach to see if the model has been properly trained. This is necessary to ensure that the model is not undertrained or overtrained to the point that it begins to memorize the training data, reducing its capacity to predict effectively. We employed early Stopping and epocs = 100 in our model in Fig.  2 , with nine attributes as the input layer, two hidden layers, and ten classes as the output layer. Early Stopping entails keeping track of the loss on both the training and validation datasets (a subset of the training set not used to fit the model). The training process can be interrupted as soon as the validation set's loss begins to exhibit evidence of overfitting. We've increased the number of epochs and are certain that training will finish as soon as the model begins too overfit. From the plot of accuracy, as given in Fig.  2 , we can see that the model could probably be trained a little more as the trend for accuracy on both datasets is still rising for the last few epochs. We can also see that the model has not yet over-learned the training dataset, showing comparable skills on both datasets.

Validation of model accuracy

From the plot of loss, we can see that the model has comparable performance on both train and validation datasets (labeled test). If these parallel plots start to depart consistently, it might be a sign to stop training at an earlier epoch. The validation loss is constantly reduced throughout the training procedures, as given in Fig.  3 , indicating that there is no overfitting.

Validation of model loss

3.3 Discussion of the results

Table 8 shows, that the Support Vector Machine has stood out due to its prediction accuracy.

First experiment: In the findings of the confusion matrix of the test data for the K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) prediction model, which is presented in Table 8 , 78 of them were correctly identified and the remaining 11 were mistakenly classified. Finally, K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) was shown to be 87.64% accurate.

Second experiment: In the findings of the confusion matrix of the test data for the Decision Tree (DT) prediction model, which is presented in Table 8 , 80 of them were correctly identified and the remaining 9 were mistakenly classified. Finally, Decision Trees (DT) were able to reach an accuracy of 90%.

Third experiment: In the findings of the confusion matrix of the test data for the Logistic Regression (LR) prediction model, which is illustrated in Table 8 , 68 of them were correctly identified and the remaining 21 were mistakenly classified. Finally, the accuracy of the Logistic Regression (LR) was 76.4%.

Fourth experiment: In the confusion matrix findings for the Naïve Bayes (NB) prediction model, which is illustrated in Table 8 , 58 of the test data were correctly identified, while the remaining 31 were mistakenly classified. Finally, the accuracy of Naive Bayes (NB) was 66%.

Fifth experiment: In the confusion matrix of the test data, 82 of them were correctly identified, while the remaining 7 were mistakenly classified, according to the Support Vector Machine (SVM) prediction model which is included in Table 8 . Finally, the Support Vector Machine (SVM) attained a 92.13% accuracy.

The following are some of the reasons why the Naive Bayes (NB) prediction performed poorly in our experiment: first, if the test dataset contains a categorical variable of a category that was not present in the training dataset, the Naive Bayes (NB) model assigns zero probability, which is known as 'frequency zero' [ 16 ]. In addition, to tackle this problem, we applied a smoothing technique. Second, the Naive Bayes (NB) algorithm is well-known for being an ineffective estimator [ 16 ]. Therefore, you should not take the probability outputs or predict probability too seriously. Third, the Naïve Bayes (NB) algorithm assumes that all the features are independent classes [ 17 ].

In our experiment, Logistic Regression (LR) predicted achieving lower performance next to Naïve Bayes (NB) because of the following reasons. First, the assumption of linearity between the dependent and independent variables is a key constraint of Logistic Regression (LR) [ 17 ]. Second, Logistic Regression requires average or non-multicollinearity between independent variables [ 16 ]. Third, non-linear problems cannot be solved with logistic regression since it has a linear decision surface [ 18 ] . Linearly separable data is unusual in real-world situations. As a result, non-linear characteristics must be converted, which can be accomplished by increasing the number of features to segregate data linearly in higher dimensions. Fourth, when creating a model, only the most critical and relevant features should be employed. Otherwise, the probabilistic predictions made by the model lead to incorrect, and the model's predictive value may degrade [ 18 ]. Fifth, each training instance must be self-contained from the rest of the dataset instances [ 17 ] . If they are related in some way, the model tries to give those specific training instances. As a result, matching data or repeated measurements such as training data should not be used. Some scientific study procedures, for example, rely on several observations of the same individual. In such conditions, this method is ineffective.

In our experiment, the prediction of the K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) achieved less performance together with the Logistics Regression (LR) and Naive Bayes (NB) due to the following reasons. First, K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) can suffer from biased class distributions, if a certain class is very frequent in the training set, it tends to master the majority vote of the new instance (large number = more common) [ 17 ]. In our data, if the management of the integration class projects is more frequent, the K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), the prediction assumes that the new data is the management of project integration. Second, the accuracy of the K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) can be severely degraded with high-dimensional data [ 19 ]. Because there is little difference between the nearest and farthest neighbor. That is why K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) is not good for high-dimensional data. Third, the algorithm gets significantly slower as the number of features increases [ 17 ]. Fourth, needs a large number of samples for acquiring better accuracy [ 20 ]. Therefore, our data do not have a large number of samples. Fifth, the algorithm is hard to work with categorical features [ 16 ]. Therefore, our data has categorical features.

In our experiment, the predictions of the Decision Tree (DT) achieved less performance together with the K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), the Logistic Regression (LR), and the Naïve Bayes (NB), respectively, due to the following reasons: First, Decision Trees (DT) suffer in overfitting [ 17 ]. This is the main problem of the Decision Trees (DT). It usually results in data overfitting, which leads to incorrect predictions. It keeps creating new nodes to fit the inputs (even noisy data), and the tree eventually gets too complex to interpret. It loses its ability to generalize in this way. It performs very well on the trained data but starts making many mistakes on the unseen data. Second, High variance [ 16 ] as mentioned in the first concept, the decision tree generally leads to the overfitting of data. Overfitting causes a lot of variances in the output, which leads to many inaccuracies in the final estimates and shows a lot of inaccuracy in the findings. Obtained zero bias (overfitting), resulting in significant variance. Third, Unstable [ 21 ], adding new data, the point can lead to regeneration of the overall tree and all nodes need to be recalculated and recreated. Fourth, affected by noise [ 17 ], a little bit of noise can make it unstable which leads to wrong predictions.

The prediction of the Support Vector Machine (SVM) achieved better performance among others due to the following reasons. First, it works more effectively in categorical data[ 21 ]. For this reason, our dataset is categorical. Second, it works relatively well even in smaller datasets because the algorithm does not rely upon the complete data [ 20 ].

Third, it works more effectively for high-dimensional datasets because the complexity of the training data set does not depend on the dimensionality of the dataset [ 18 ]. Fourth, a Support Vector Machine (SVM) is extremely useful when we have no prior knowledge of the data [ 17 ].

Using traditional machine learning methods rather than deep learning techniques has several advantages. The Support Vector Machine outperforms the other techniques, and it's better for small datasets with outliers and non-parametric models, as we showed in our results. Deep learning, on the other hand, is used when the complexity grows as the number of training samples grows when large datasets are required to function well when a complicated structure necessitates learning multi-layered features, and when high experience is required. It is used in a variety of industries, from automatic leadership to medical devices. Finally, while our dataset is limited, we apply typical machine learning algorithms to achieve the best results.

4 Conclusions

Due to its profitability, the development of software-based systems and the founding of software companies have increased in recent years. However, in any business, especially a software company, some projects can fail. One way to avoid software project failure is to fill the skill gaps of software project managers to increase their knowledge areas of project management. Because knowledge areas are the key issues associated with software project management. In our country, Ethiopia, software projects are not led by professionals. The functionality, schedule, budget management, risk of software projects is not managed properly due to a lack of knowledge about Project Management Knowledge Areas (PMKAs).

The machine learning model used in this work is intended to assist project managers in predicting the failure of project management knowledge areas (PMKA) for a specific project. As a result, a literature review was conducted to identify the features, which were then evaluated using unambiguity, consistency, measurability, and practicability criteria to discover the most important attributes in predicting failed knowledge areas. Finally, a machine learning model has been developed to predict failed Project Management Knowledge Areas (PMKAs). The model included three factors: project manager context, project context, and company context. This research work had a total of 443 records and 9 attributes to predict the failure of the Project Management Knowledge Areas (PMKAs). Noise removal and management of missing values ​​were performed to prepare the dataset for the experiments. To build the model, we have used machine learning algorithms such as Decision Trees (DT), Logistic Regression (LR), Naïve Bayes (NB), K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), and Support Vector Machine (SVM). Accuracy, precision, and recall were used to evaluate the performance of the developed model. The model is evaluated by comparing its performance or results with the actual data (the data we have at hand) that have the values of the nine attributes and ten domains of knowledge of project management. The results demonstrated that the Support Vector Machine (SVM) technique is more efficient than other candidate algorithms at predicting failed Project Management Knowledge Areas (PMKAs). In terms of accuracy, the significance of the produced model will change the progress of anticipating failed areas of project management expertise.

5 Future works

In terms of future research, we recommend the following:

Conduct various types of empirical research on predicting and reporting the effectiveness of project management knowledge areas to assist project managers, and predict project management knowledge areas failure by compiling multiple failed project datasets using deep learning approaches and comparing them with our results.

Test the effect of attribute reduction on the performance of selected algorithms or other machine learning algorithms by adding more features and criteria.

Data availability

The datasets and source code analyzed during the current study are publicly available at this link: https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1k84ZYMIXW4gjpKn1BQDjiJEfgPUzT4C3#scrollTo=34hjffZL2Oj9 .

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Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Technology, Debre Tabor University, Debre Tabor, Ethiopia

Gizatie Desalegn Taye

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Taye, G.D., Feleke, Y.A. Prediction of failures in the project management knowledge areas using a machine learning approach for software companies. SN Appl. Sci. 4 , 165 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42452-022-05051-7

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Received : 15 December 2021

Accepted : 25 April 2022

Published : 10 May 2022

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s42452-022-05051-7

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