PMP: 2. Environment in Which Projects Operate

Projects exist and operate in environments that may have an influence on them. These influences can have a favorable or unfavorable impact on the project. Two major categories of influences are enterprise environmental factors (EEFs) and organizational process assets (OPAs).
EEFs originate from the environment outside of the project and often outside of the enterprise. EEFs may have an impact at the organizational, portfolio, program, or project level. EEFs refers to conditions not under the control of the project team and it could Internal and External.

Examples of internal EEF’s
-  Organizational culture, structure, and governance
-  Information technology software
-  Geographic distribution of facilities and resources
-  Resource availability.
-  Infrastructure
-  Employee capability

Examples of External EEF’s
-  Marketplace conditions
-  Academic research
-  Social and cultural influences and issues
-  Government or industry standards
-  Legal restrictions
-  Financial considerations
-  Commercial databases
-  Physical environmental elements

OPAs are internal to the organization. These may arise from the organization itself, a portfolio, a program, another project, or a combination of these. Organizational process assets (OPAs) are the plans, processes, policies, procedures, and knowledge bases.

Processes, policies, and procedures are not updated as part of the project work and usually established by the project management office (PMO). However, these can be updated only by following the appropriate organizational policies associated with updating processes.

Organizational knowledge bases are updated throughout the project with project information.

Examples of OPA’s (Processes, Policies and Procedures)
-  Guidelines and criteria for tailoring
-  Change control procedures
-  Specific organizational standards such as policies
-  Traceability matrices
-  Product and project life cycles, and methods and procedures
-  Financial controls procedures
-  Issue and defect management procedures
-  Templates
-  Preapproved supplier lists and other contractual agreements.
-  Resource availability

Examples of OPA’s (Organizational Knowledge Repositories)
-  Configuration management
-  Financial data repositories
-  Historical information and lessons learned
-  Issue and defect management data
-  repositories for metrics
-  Project files from previous projects

A system is a collection of various components that together can produce results not obtainable by the individual components alone. A component is an identifiable element within the project or organization that provides a particular function or group of related functions.

Systems are Dynamic, can be optimized, but can’t be optimized with components at same time, Systems are nonlinear in responsiveness. Systems are typically the responsibility of an organization’s management.

Governance refers to organizational or structural arrangements at all levels of an organization designed to determine and influence the behavior of the organization’s members.

Project governance refers to the framework, functions, and processes that guide project management activities in order to create a unique product.

A project management office (PMO) is an organizational structure that standardizes the project-related governance processes and facilitates the sharing of resources, methodologies, tools, and techniques.

Supportive PMOs provide a consultative role to projects by supplying templates, best practices, training, access to information, and lessons learned from other projects. This type of PMO serves as a project repository. The degree of control provided by the PMO is low.

Controlling PMOs provide support and require compliance through various means. The degree of control provided by the PMO is moderate. Compliance may include (Adoption of project management frameworks or methodologies, use of specific templates, forms, and tools, conformance to governance frameworks).

Directive PMOs take control of the projects by directly managing the projects. Project managers are assigned by and report to the PMO. The degree of control provided by the PMO is high.

PMO is the natural liaison between the organization’s portfolios, programs, projects, and the organizational measurement systems.

A primary function of a PMO is to support project managers.