PECB ISO 21502 Foundation cheat sheet

ISO 21502 defines a project as a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product, service or result; temporary means it has a defined start and end, not necessarily short duration.

A programme is a group of related projects and other work managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits not available from managing them individually; a portfolio is the collection of projects, programmes and other work that meets strategic objectives.

Project management is the application of methods, tools, techniques and competencies to achieve project objectives; it is performed through integrated practices applied iteratively across the project life cycle.

ISO 21502 is guidance, not requirements: it cannot be used for certification of conformity or for contractual compliance claims, unlike ISO 21500:2021 which specifies requirements for project, programme and portfolio management.

The project life cycle is the sequence of phases from start to end; the phase boundaries and the number of phases are governed by the nature of the work, the level of control needed and the product being delivered.

A phase gate (stage gate, go/no-go decision point) is a review at the end of a phase where a decision is made to continue, modify, hold or terminate the project; authorisation to proceed is a management decision, not a technical one.

Key roles in ISO 21502 include the project sponsor (authorises the project, provides resources and strategic alignment) and the project manager (achieves objectives within agreed constraints); other roles include project team members and governance bodies.

The project charter or project mandate authorises the project and establishes the project manager's authority; a business case justifies the investment and is reviewed at gates to confirm benefits remain viable.

Projects operate within constraints commonly represented as scope, schedule, cost and quality, with risk, resources and other factors also managed; changes to one constraint typically affect others, so trade-offs are managed through integrated change control.

ISO 21502 groups practices into two types: integrated practices that apply across the whole project (e.g. project life cycle, stakeholders, risk, change control, benefits, reporting, information and documentation) and individual practices applied within specific aspects of the work.

The project management plan is the single reference document integrating all subsidiary plans; it is baselined and changes to it follow integrated change control, so no subsidiary plan is changed in isolation.

Integrated change control is a decision rule: every change request is logged, assessed for impact on scope, schedule, cost, quality, risk and benefits, then approved, rejected or deferred by the authorised level; approved changes update the baseline.

Scope practices produce a scope statement, a work breakdown structure (WBS) and a WBS dictionary; the WBS decomposes deliverables hierarchically and the lowest level is the work package, the level at which cost and duration are estimated and controlled.

Schedule practices use activities, dependencies, durations and resources to build a schedule; the critical path is the longest path through the network and determines the shortest possible project duration; float (slack) is the amount an activity can slip without delaying the project.

Cost practices estimate costs, build a time-phased budget and control expenditure; earned value metrics are cost variance (CV = EV - AC), schedule variance (SV = EV - PV), cost performance index (CPI = EV / AC) and schedule performance index (SPI = EV / PV).

Risk practices follow a cycle: identify, analyse (probability and impact), evaluate, treat (avoid, reduce, transfer, accept, share) and monitor; a risk owner is assigned to each risk and a contingency reserve covers known risks.

Quality practices plan quality (standards and acceptance criteria), perform quality assurance (process compliance) and perform quality control (inspect deliverables against acceptance criteria); lessons learned are captured throughout and fed into the lessons-learned register.

Stakeholder and communication practices identify stakeholders, analyse their interest and influence, and plan engagement; the communication plan defines who receives what information, in what format, and at what frequency.

Benefits management confirms that the project's outputs lead to outcomes and benefits; benefits are often realised after project closure, so ownership typically transfers to the sponsoring organisation at handover.