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(Critical Path Method)
The critical path method is used to estimate the minimum project duration and determine the amount of scheduling flexibility on the logical network paths within the schedule model. This schedule network analysis technique calculates the early start, early finish, late start, and late finish dates for all activities without regard for any resource limitations by performing a forward and backward pass analysis through the schedule network, as shown in Figure 6-18. In this example, the longest path includes activities A, C, and D, and therefore, the sequence of A-C-D is the critical path. The critical path is the sequence of activities that represents the longest path through a project, which determines the shortest possible project duration. The resulting early and late start and finish dates are not necessarily the project schedule; rather, they indicate the time periods within which the activity could be executed, using the parameters entered in the schedule model for activity durations, logical relationships, leads, lags, and other known constraints. The critical path method is used to calculate the amount of scheduling flexibility on the logical network paths within the schedule model.

On any network path, the schedule flexibility is measured by the amount of time that a schedule activity can be delayed or extended from its early start date without delaying the project finish date or violating a schedule constraint, and is termed total float. A CPM critical path is normally characterized by zero total float on the critical path. As implemented with PDM sequencing, critical paths may have positive, zero, or negative total float depending on constraints applied.

(Manage Stakeholder Engagement)
Manage Stakeholder Engagement is the process of communicating and working with stakeholders to meet their needs and expectations, address issues, and foster appropriate stakeholder involvement. The key benefit of this process is that it allows the project manager to increase support and minimize resistance from stakeholders. This process is performed throughout the project.

The Project Integration Management processes are as follows:
4.1 Develop Project Charter—The process of developing a document that formally authorizes the existence of a project and provides the project manager with the authority to apply organizational resources to project activities.
4.2 Develop Project Management Plan—The process of defining, preparing, and coordinating all plan components and consolidating them into an integrated project management plan.
4.3 Direct and Manage Project Work—The process of leading and performing the work defined in the project management plan and implementing approved changes to achieve the project's objectives.
4.4 Manage Project Knowledge—The process of using existing knowledge and creating new knowledge to achieve the project's objectives and contribute to organizational learning.
4.5 Monitor and Control Project Work—The process of tracking, reviewing, and reporting overall progress to meet the performance objectives defined in the project management plan.
4.6 Perform Integrated Change Control—The process of reviewing all change requests; approving changes and managing changes to deliverables, organizational process assets, project documents, and the project management plan; and communicating the decisions.
4.7 Close Project or Phase—The process of finalizing all activities for the project, phase, or contract.

Resource requirements. The types and quantities of resources required for each activity in a work package.

Basis of estimates. Supporting documentation outlining the details used in establishing project estimates such as assumptions, constraints, level of detail, ranges, and confidence levels.

(Project Risk Management Processes)
Project Risk Management includes the processes of conducting risk management planning, identification, analysis, response planning, and controlling risk on a project. The objectives of project risk management are to increase the likelihood and impact of positive events, and decrease the likelihood and impact of negative events in the project.

Overview of the Project Risk Management processes, which are as follows:
11.1 Plan Risk Management—The process of defining how to conduct risk management activities for a project.
11.2 Identify Risks—The process of determining which risks may affect the project and documenting their characteristics.
11.3 Perform Qualitative Risk Analysis—The process of prioritizing risks for further analysis or action by assessing and combining their probability of occurrence and impact.
11.4 Perform Quantitative Risk Analysis—The process of numerically analyzing the effect of identified risks on overall project objectives.
11.5 Plan Risk Responses—The process of developing options and actions to enhance opportunities and to reduce threats to project objectives.
11.6 Implement Risk Responses—The process of implementing predefined risk responses as risks occur on the project.
11.7 Monitor Risks—The process of implementing risk response plans, tracking identified risks, monitoring residual risks, identifying new risks, and evaluating risk process effectiveness throughout the project.

Leadership skills involve the ability to guide, motivate, and direct a team. These skills may include demonstrating essential capabilities such as negotiation, resilience, communication, problem solving, critical thinking, and interpersonal skills. Projects are becoming increasingly more complicated with more and more businesses executing their strategy through projects. Project management is more than just working with numbers, templates, charts, graphs, and computing systems. A common denominator in all projects is people. People can be counted, but they are not numbers.

(Strategies for Threats)
Transfer involves shifting ownership of a threat to a third party to manage the risk and bear the impact if the threat occurs. Risk transfer often involves payment of a risk premium to the party taking on the threat. Transfer can be achieved by a range of actions, which include, but are not limited to, the use of insurance, performance bonds, warranties, guarantees, etc. Agreements may be used to transfer ownership and liability for specified risks to another party.

Risk transference is a risk response strategy whereby the project team shifts the impact of a threat to a third party, together with ownership of the response. Transferring the risk simply gives another party responsibility for its management—it does not eliminate it. Transferring does not mean disowning the risk by transferring it to a later project or another person without his or her knowledge or agreement.

Risk transference nearly always involves payment of a risk premium to the party taking on the risk. Transferring liability for risk is most effective in dealing with financial risk exposure. Transference tools can be quite diverse and include, but are not limited to, the use of insurance, performance bonds, warranties, guarantees, etc.

Contracts or agreements may be used to transfer liability for specified risks to another party. For example, when a buyer has capabilities that the seller does not possess, it may be prudent to transfer some work and its concurrent risk contractually back to the buyer. In many cases, use of a cost-plus contract may transfer the cost risk to the buyer, while a fixed-price contract may transfer risk to the seller.

(Requirements Traceability Matrix)
The requirements traceability matrix is a grid that links product requirements from their origin to the deliverables that satisfy them. The implementation of a requirements traceability matrix helps ensure that each requirement adds business value by linking it to the business and project objectives. It provides a means to track requirements throughout the project life cycle, helping to ensure that requirements approved in the requirements documentation are delivered at the end of the project. Finally, it provides a structure for managing changes to the product scope.

Tracing requirements includes, but is not limited to:
• Business needs, opportunities, goals, and objectives;
• Project objectives;
• Project scope and WBS deliverables;
• Product design;
• Product development;
• Test strategy and test scenarios; and
• High-level requirements to more detailed requirements.

Attributes associated with each requirement can be recorded in the requirements traceability matrix. These attributes help define key information about the requirement. Typical attributes used in the requirements traceability matrix may include a unique identifier, a textual description of the requirement, the rationale for inclusion, owner, source, priority, version, current status (such as active, canceled, deferred, added, approved, assigned, completed), and status date. Additional attributes to ensure that the requirement has met stakeholders’ satisfaction may include stability, complexity, and acceptance criteria.

(Estimate Costs)
Costs are estimated for all resources that will be charged to the project. This includes, but is not limited to, labor, materials, equipment, services, and facilities, as well as special categories such as an inflation allowance, cost of financing, or contingency costs. A cost estimate is a quantitative assessment of the likely costs for resources required to complete the activity. Cost estimates may be presented at the activity level or in summary form.

The project manager plays a critical role in the leadership of a project team in order to achieve the project's objectives. This role is clearly visible throughout the project. Many project managers become involved in a project from its initiation through closing. However, in some organizations, a project manager may be involved in evaluation and analysis activities prior to project initiation.

These activities may include consulting with executive and business unit leaders on ideas for advancing strategic objectives, improving organizational performance, or meeting customer needs. In some organizational settings, the project manager may also be called upon to manage or assist in business analysis, business case development, and aspects of portfolio management for a project. A project manager may also be involved in follow-on activities related to realizing business benefits from the project. The role of a project manager may vary from organization to organization.

Ultimately, the project management role is tailored to fit the organization in the same way that the project management processes are tailored to fit the project.
Because project managers are generally responsible for “temporary” endeavors, they are least likely to be involved in ensuring efficient operations, at least in their role as a project manager.

(Data Gathering)
Checklists. A checklist is a list of items, actions, or points to be considered. It is often used as a reminder. Risk checklists are developed based on historical information and knowledge that has been accumulated from similar projects and from other sources of information. They are an effective way to capture lessons learned from similar completed projects, listing specific individual project risks that have occurred previously and that may be relevant to this project. The organization may maintain a risk checklist based on its own completed projects or may use generic risk checklists from the industry. While a checklist may be quick and simple to use, it is impossible to build an exhaustive one, and care should be taken to ensure that the checklist is not used to avoid the effort of proper risk identification. The project team should also explore items that do not appear on the checklist. Additionally, the checklist should be reviewed from time to time to update new information as well as remove or archive obsolete information.

(Procurement Documentation)
Procurement documentation provides a written record used in reaching the legal agreement, and may include older documents predating the current project. Procurement documentation can include the following:
• Bid documents: procurement documents include the RFI, RFP, RFQ, or other documents sent to sellers so they can develop a bid response.
• Procurement statement of work: the procurement statement of work (SOW) provides sellers with a clearly stated set of goals, requirements, and outcomes from which they can provide a quantifiable response.
• Independent cost estimates: independent cost estimates are developed either internally or by using external resources and provide a reasonableness check against the proposals submitted by bidders.
• Source selection criteria: these criteria describe how bidder proposals will be evaluated, including evaluation criteria and weights. For risk mitigation, the buyer may decide to sign agreements with more than one seller to mitigate damage caused by a single seller having problems that impact the overall project.

(Plan Stakeholder Engagement)
Plan Stakeholder Engagement is the process of developing approaches to involve project stakeholders based on their needs, expectations, interests, and potential impacts on the project. The key benefit is that it provides an actionable plan to interact effectively with stakeholders. This process is performed periodically throughout the project as needed. (The PMBOK® Guide – Fifth Edition called this process Plan Stakeholder Management.)

A primary function of a PMO is to support project managers in a variety of ways, which may include, but are not limited to:
• Managing shared resources across all projects administered by the PMO;
• Identifying and developing project management methodologies, best practices, and standards;
• Coaching, mentoring, training, and oversight;
• Monitoring compliance with project management standards, policies, procedures, and templates by means of project audits;
• Developing and managing project policies, procedures, templates, and other shared documentation (organizational process assets); and
• Coordinating communication across projects.
PMOs do not generally intervene in a project's direction, especially without communicating with the project manager.

Throughout the life cycle of a project, a significant amount of data is collected, analyzed, and transformed. Project data are collected as a result of various processes and are shared within the project team. The collected data are analyzed in context, aggregated, and transformed to become project information during various processes. Information is communicated verbally or stored and distributed in various formats as reports.
Project data are regularly collected and analyzed throughout the project life cycle. The following definitions identify key terminology regarding project data and information:
• Work performance data. The raw observations and measurements identified during activities performed to carry out the project work. Examples include reported percent of work physically completed, quality and technical performance measures, start and finish dates of schedule activities, number of change requests, number of defects, actual costs, actual durations, etc. Project data are usually recorded in a Project Management Information System (PMIS) and in project documents.
• Work performance information. The performance data collected from various controlling processes, analyzed in context, and integrated based on relationships across areas. Examples of performance information are status of deliverables, implementation status for change requests, and forecast estimates to complete.
• Work performance reports. The physical or electronic representation of work performance information compiled in project documents, which is intended to generate decisions or raise issues, actions, or awareness. Examples include status reports, memos, justifications, information notes, electronic dashboards, recommendations, and updates.
Work performance analysis is a required activity, but not a source of project data.

What is a project? A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.

Key concepts for Project Integration Management include: Project Integration Management is the specific responsibility of the project manager and it cannot be delegated or transferred. The project manager combines the results from all the other Knowledge Areas to provide an overall view of the project. It is the project manager who is ultimately responsible for the project.

Projects and project management are integrative by nature, with most tasks involving more than one Knowledge Area. The relationships of processes within the Project Management Process Groups and between the Project Management Process Groups are iterative.

Project Integration Management is about:
• Ensuring that the due dates of project deliverables, the project life cycle, and the benefits realization plan are aligned;
• Providing a project management plan to achieve the project objectives;
• Ensuring the creation and use of appropriate knowledge to and from the project;
• Managing project performance and changes to the project activities;
• Measuring and monitoring progress and taking appropriate action;
• Collecting, analyzing, and communicating project information to relevant stakeholders; •Managing phase transitions when necessary; and
• Completing all the work of the project and formally closing each phase, contract, and the project as a whole.

(Control Quality)
The process of monitoring and recording the results of executing the quality management activities to assess performance and ensure the project outputs are complete, correct, and meet customer expectations.

Predictive life cycle. A form of project life cycle in which the project scope, time, and cost are determined in the early phases of the life cycle.