Subtitles of the Movie

In this movie, we'll move on to our third input of the define activities process; the organizational process assets. But this process is not the only one to make use of the organizational process assets as an input. All six of the time management knowledge area processes will utilize it as an input, making it even more important to understand what it includes and why PMBOK Guide puts so much emphasis on this item. So with that said, let's take a look at organizational process assets in general, what they include and why they're so important. According to the PMBOK Guide, organizational process assets are assets that belong to the organizations that are involved in the project, which influence the project's success. Some high-level examples of these assets include policies and procedures from within the organization, formal and informal plans, lessons learned and historical information. One of the big recurring themes of the PMBOK Guide is that we don't reinvent the wheel each time. Instead we continue to build on it and make it more efficient by learning from our past experience. This is why you see lessons learned, which is something documented throughout each project with special emphasis on collecting these lessons learned at the closing of the project and also why we have historical information that's such an important item as well, such as past schedules, what went well within the schedule and why, what risks did past projects face and what were the outcomes, including responses to those risks. You probably get the picture but let's look at a few more thorough examples separated within two categories: work processes and procedures and corporate knowledge base. Under work processes and procedures we have the following and remember that these are examples of organizational process asset items. We have standards of the processes and policies of the organization, how to tailor the above to the project, guidelines for performance measurement and work instructions, templates that we can use including, by the way, templates of activity lists, communication requirements, guidelines and requirements for closing a project and you can also take this as including closing the schedule, financial controls procedures, change control procedures, risk control procedures and work authorization procedures. And under our corporate knowledge base we have the following items: project files that have been archived, historical information, the lessons learned knowledge base that I had referenced earlier, issue and defect management database containing status for instance, configuration management knowledge base, the baselines of all official company standards, policies, procedures and project documents, financial databases such as labor hours, budgets, project cost overruns, et cetera and process measurement database containing measurement data on processes and products. You will notice that I mentioned databases. Now we're talking about the content from within the databases, unlike the database structure itself or a system which are part of Enterprise environmental factors. If we circle back to organizational process assets as an input of the define activities process, our primary focus within them include what you see on your screen: policies, procedures and guidelines that relate to activity planning. Imagine how valuable this is when first entering into an organization and working on a project for the first time. This includes, by the way, organizations' scheduling methodology. We'll also be interested in the lessons learned knowledge base, the final item on that list and that contains historical information regarding activity lists from previous, similar projects. Think of how much time you'll save by making use of this information and how you'll be steps ahead of the challenges and issues that the projects may face. That covers all you need to know about organizational process assets for now. To make sure that you don't confuse these with Enterprise environmental factors, you'll find a document within your Work Files titled OPA Versus EEF that highlights the two side by side for easy reference. And that then brings this movie to a close.