Organizational Process Assets

Organizational process assets are the organization’s policies, guidelines, procedures, plans, approaches, and standards for conducting work, including project work. This includes a wide range of elements that might affect several aspects of the project, such as project management policies, safety policies, performance measurement criteria, templates, financial controls, communication requirements, issue and defect management procedures, change control procedures, risk control procedures, and the procedures used for authorizing work.

Organizational process assets are divided into two categories: processes and procedures
and corporate knowledge base.

Organizational process assets also include the information the organization has learned on previous projects (including how to store and retrieve that information). For example, previous project risks, performance measurements, earned value data, and schedules for past projects are valuable resources of knowledge for the current project. This information is also known as historical information and it falls into the corporate knowledge base category. If you don’t capture and store this information, however, it won’t be available when you’re starting a new project. You’ll want to capture and store
information such as project financial data (budgets, costs, overruns), historical information, lessons learned, project files, issues and defects, process measurements, and configuration management knowledge.

Organizational process assets and historical information should be reviewed and examined when a new project is starting. Historical information can be very useful to project managers and to stakeholders. When you’re evaluating new projects, historical information about previous projects of a similar nature can be handy in determining whether the new project should be accepted and initiated. Historical information gathered and documented during an active project is used to assist in determining whether the project should proceed to the next phase. Historical information will help you with the project charter, project scope statement, development of the project management plan, the process of defining and estimating activities, and more during the project planning processes.

Understanding previous projects of a similar nature - their problems, successes, issues, and outcomes - will help you avoid repeating mistakes while reusing successful techniques to accomplish the goals of this project to the satisfaction of the stakeholders.

Many of the processes in the project management process groups have organizational process assets as an input, implying that you should review the pertinent organizational assets that apply for the process you’re about to start. For example, when performing the Estimating Costs process, you might find it helpful to review the activity estimates and budgets on past projects of similar size and scope before estimating the costs for the activities on the new project.

Enterprise Environmental Factors

The enterprise environmental factors input shows up as an input to many of the other processes. This input refers to the factors outside the project that have (or might have) significant influence on the success of the project. According to the PMBOK® Guide, the environmental factors include the following:

• Organizational culture, structure, and processes.The organizational cultures can influence the way to manage the project.
• Governmental or industry standards. These include elements such as regulatory standards and regulations (for instance, doctors must be licensed to practice medicine on people or pets), quality standards (International Standards Organization standards, for example), product standards, and workmanship standards.
• Infrastructure. This refers to the organization’s facilities and capital equipment. I’ll also include information technology in this category.
• Human resources. This refers to the existing staff’s skills and knowledge.
• Personnel administration. These are guidelines for hiring and firing, training, and employee performance reviews.
• Organization’s work authorization system. This defines how the work of the project is authorized.
• Marketplace conditions. The old supply-and-demand theory applies here along with economic and financial factors.
• Stakeholder risk tolerances. This is the level of risk stakeholders are willing to take on
• Political climate. This concerns both the internal and external political climate or influences on the project or organization.
• Organization’s established communications channels. These are the mechanisms the organization uses to communicate both internally and externally
• Commercial databases. These refer to industry-specific information, risk databases, and so on.

These factors can influence the way you manage the project and, in some cases, the outcomes of the project. For example, perhaps the folks assigned to your project are junior level and don’t have the skills, experience, or knowledge needed to complete the work of the project. It’s up to the project manager to understand the organization’s environmental factors and account for and consider how they can influence the management and outcomes of the project.