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We will understand, in this article, the flow of project deliverables. The entire flow of deliverables are explained step-by-step, outlining how the deliverables are produced, verified and accepted.

PMBOK® Guide Fifth Edition defines deliverable as

any unique and verifiable product, result or capability to perform a service that is required to be produced to complete a process, phase or project.

Direct and Manage Project Work

We create Project Deliverables in Direct and Manage Project Work process to meet the project work as planned and scheduled in the project management plan.

Control Quality

The deliverables, created in the Direct and Manage Project Work process, are verified in the Control Quality process to determine the correctness of deliverables. In this process, we are concerned with the correctness of the deliverables and meeting the quality requirements specified for the deliverables. Such verified deliverables from the Control Quality process becomes an input to Validate Scope process for formalized acceptance.

Validate Scope

In the Validate Scope process, we are interested in the acceptance of the verified deliverables. Deliverables that meet the acceptance criteria are formally approved and signed by customer or sponsor. Formal documentation acknowledging the acceptance of the project deliverables is forwarded to the Close Project or Phase.

The completed deliverables that have not been formally accepted are documented along with the reasons for non-acceptance. These deliverables may require a change request (defect repair) that will be reviewed in the Perform Integrated Change Control process. Once the change requests are approved, the approved change requests become an input to the Direct and Manage Project Work process and the above cycle continues.

Please note that Control Quality is generally performed ahead of the Validate Scope, but you may also perform the two processes in parallel.

Enterprise Environmental Factors and Organizational Process Assets are the terms that you would come across quite commonly in the PMBOK Guide. They are inputs to most of the project management processes. Enterprise Environmental Factors are those factors that could potentially affect or impact a project’s success.


These factors determine how a project manager manages a project. So, it is important for a project manager to have a good understanding of the enterprise environmental factors that could potentially affect his/ her project.

For example, stakeholders risk tolerance is an enterprise environmental factor. If the stakeholders are aggressive, then a project manager would be allowed to take risks that could potentially have a high impact on the project. On the other hand, if the stakeholders are not tolerant to high level of risks, then the project manager has to handle the project in a different way.

Enterprise Environmental Factors: Internal or External?
The enterprise environmental factors could be internal factors to the organization like organizational culture, existing human resources, work authorization systems, project management information systems (PMIS), organization’s established communication channels and so on.

They could also be factors external to the organization like Government standards, industry requirements, market place conditions, political environment and so on.

So, if you are a project manager, it is important to ask yourself or to throw the question to your project team. What are the enterprise environmental factors that could impact/ affect the success of our project? The earlier you find the answer, the better the chances of a successful project.

What is a Project Charter?

Identify Risks is the second project management process in the Project Risk Management knowledge area. It follows the process Plan Risk Management .

In my opinion, Identify Risks is the most important process in the risk management knowledge area. All the processes that follow will be effective only if the risks are identified properly. So, a project manager or his/ her project team should devote their maximum effort to identify as many risks as possible at the initial stages of the project.

Generally, the participants in this process will include the project manager, project team members, risk management team, customers, end users, stakeholders, domain experts and risk management experts. It is a good practice to encourage all project personnel to identify risks. A good project manager will involve the entire project team in identifying the risks as it instills a sense of ownership and responsibility for the risks. This also will help in implementing associated risk response actions at a later stage.

Please take note that Identify risks is an iterative process throughout the entire life cycle of the project as new risks may appear or become known as the project progresses.


The following are the Inputs, Tools & Techniques and Outputs (ITTO) of the process "Identify Risks",

Inputs

1. Risk Management Plan
2. Activity cost estimates
3. Activity duration estimates
4. Scope baseline
5. Stakeholder register
6. Cost management plan
7. Schedule management plan
8. Quality management plan
9. Project documents
10. Enterprise environmental factors
11. Organizational process assets

Tools & Techniques

1. Documentation reviews
2. Information gathering techniques
3. Checklist analysis
4. Assumptions analysis
5. Diagramming techniques
6. SWOT analysis
7. Expert judgement

Outputs

1. Risk Register

The following are the Inputs, Tools & Techniques and Outputs (ITTO) of the process "Plan Risk Management", which is the first project management process in the Project Risk Management knowledge area.


INPUTS:

1. Project scope statement
2. Cost management plan
3. Schedule management plan
4. Communications management plan
5. Enterprise environmental factors: Risk attitudes and tolerances that describe the degree of risk that an organization will withstand.
6. Organizational process assets: Risk categories, common definitions of terms and concepts, standard templates, authority levels for decision-making, lessons learned, stakeholder registers.

TOOLS & TECHNIQUES

1. Planning Meetings and Analysis:
   Project team hold planning meetings to develop risk management plan. Attendees may include project manager, selected team members and stakeholders, anyone with the responsibility to manage risk planning and execution activities. High level plans for conducting the risk management activities are  defined in these meetings. Risk management responsibilities will be assigned. Probability and impact matrix will be tailored to the specific project. If templates do not exist, they may be generated in these meetings.

OUTPUTS

1. Risk Management Plan:
   The only output of this process is risk management plan, which becomes a subset of the project management plan.. The risk management plan describes how risk management will be structured and performed on the project. It tells you how you are going to handle risk in the project. It defines how risk will be assessed, who will be responsible for doing it and how often you will do risk planning. Risk Management Plan includes the Methodology, Roles and responsibilities, Budgeting, Timing, Risk categories, Definitions of risk probability and impact, Probability and impact matrix, Revised stakeholders’ tolerances and Reporting formats.