Subtitles of the Movie

In this movie, we'll take a look at the initiating process group, the first process group of the five within the project lifecycle. I took you through a very high-level look at the project lifecycle and briefly mentioned the five process groups: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling and closing. Here they're again shown on your screen. The management of a project consists of 42 processes and these processes can be categorized in two ways; by process group is one of them. We'll cover the second way of categorizing the processes in the final movie of this section. So what we'll do, beginning with this movie and within this section, is take a look at the purpose of each process group and the processes that belong to the group. Before we turn our attention to initiating, which is our primary focus for this movie, I'd like to mention one last item in regards to the overall five process groups. In order to clarify or refresh your memory of the high-level concept, although this can represent a project or phase, I'll just refer to it as a project for a basic explanation. The project begins here in initiating. This is the actual start of the project. Once the project is official, we would then move to planning where the project management plan and its subsidiary plans are created and all project planning efforts occur. Nearly half of the processes take place in planning. We then move to execute the work within the project management plan in the executing process group. Here we complete the work and once started, we must monitor and control the work in progress. But nothing is perfect and we'll need to make changes, institute corrective measure when things don't go according to plan and that's where monitoring and controlling comes in. The processes within this cycle are dynamic. They overlap. They move in various orders. For instance, you may need to perform additional planning as the work is executed and when change issues are approved, you'll need to execute those changes. There's always a formal closing step including for every phase and that's where the final step within the project's lifecycle comes in. I spent a little extra time reinforcing some concepts of the five process groups but I'd like to turn your attention now to the initiating process group which is the main subject of this movie. The purpose of the initiating process group is to authorize, start and define a new project or phase. This is the very first thing to occur within a project, which is logical given that authorization of the project itself must occur before even the project manager can be assigned. Remember that first arrow to the far left of our diagram representing the five process groups. As you'll see in a moment, this is where the project charter is created. Typically where the project manager is assigned and where the approval to commit resources to the project is granted. There are just two processes that occur within this process group: develop project charter and identify stakeholders. The first process, develop project charter, is a requirement for every project. The purpose of this process is to officially authorize a project and according to PMI, this is a must before the project moves forward. There may be things that occur prior to this step such as project selection methods, feasibility studies of the project and so forth but this is where the project is officially born. The second process is as equally important. Just as the name insinuates, this is where the stakeholders are identified but we don't just identify stakeholders here. The project manager goes through and analyzes their level of influence and the impact to the project, documents their wants, needs and expectations, thereby gathering a strong understanding of the stakeholders. What is it that the stakeholder expects and gains out of the project? What do they want to see as the project results? Naturally all of this is documented including the involvement of each stakeholder and a stakeholder management strategy is created. Realize that there is a connection between processes, like the two that you see on your screen, but that not all processes occur in a given order or are required to always occur. In the case of the initiating process group, these two processes must occur at least once at the start of the project but not necessarily within the start of every single phase. And when first beginning a project, the first thing to officially occur will be the develop project charter process, followed by the identify stakeholders process. Unfortunately, not all process groups are as clear and easy to visualize as this one. You'll see what I mean when we cover planning in the next movie, which has a large number of processes. On that note we'll wrap up here and move on to the planning process group in the next movie.