Fundamental principles and concepts of project management
This domain tests ISO 21502's core concepts: project, project management, and the surrounding context of governance, business case, life cycle and roles.
Core concepts
A project is a temporary endeavour with a defined start and end, undertaken to achieve agreed objectives within constraints of time, cost, resources and quality; its outputs should lead to outcomes and benefits. Project management is the coordinated planning, organizing, monitoring, controlling and reporting of all aspects of a project, including leadership of the people involved.
A programme is a group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits not available from managing them separately; a portfolio is projects, programmes and other work selected and managed together to meet strategic objectives, and its components need not be related.
Governance is the framework of direction, decision rights, roles and accountability, with a sponsor or steering body and stage gates. The business case justifies the project by comparing expected benefits with costs, risks and constraints, and is reviewed at gates to decide whether to continue, change or stop. The project mandate authorizes the project and names the sponsor and project manager.
The life cycle runs from concept to closure with phases and decision points, and ISO 21502 does not mandate one delivery approach. The sponsor is accountable for the business case and benefits; the project manager delivers within agreed constraints.
Worked example
A retailer replaces its CRM: implementation, data migration and sales training run as a programme because the productivity benefit appears only when all three are complete, and alongside unrelated projects they form the portfolio. When migration costs rise, the sponsor brings a revised business case to a stage gate and the board cuts scope and continues - related projects with a combined benefit form a programme, unrelated work selected strategically is a portfolio, and a business-case review at a gate is governance in action.
Traps
- Treating programme and portfolio as synonyms.
- Treating the business case as a one-off initiation document.
- Giving the project manager sole accountability for benefits, which sits with the sponsor.
- Assuming ISO 21502 prescribes one life cycle.