2.5.6 WORKING WITH PROCUREMENTS
Many projects involve some form of contracting or procurement. Procurement can cover everything from material, capital equipment, and supplies to solutions, labor, and services. In most organizations, project managers do not have contracting authority. Rather, they work with contracting officers or other people with expertise in contracts, laws, and regulations. Organizations usually have rigorous policies and procedures associated with procurements. The policies identify who has authority to enter into a contract, the limits of authority, and the processes and procedures that should be followed.
Prior to conducting a procurement, the project manager and technically qualified project team members work with contracting professionals to develop the request for proposals (RFP), statement of work (SOW), terms and conditions, and other necessary documents to go out to bid.
2.5.6.1 The Bid Process
The bid process includes developing and publicizing bid documents, bidder conferences, and selecting a bidder. Bid documents can include:
▶ Request for information. A request for information is used to gather more information from the market prior to sending out bid documents to a set of selected vendors.
▶ Request for proposal. This bid document is used for complex or complicated scope where the buyer is looking for the vendor to provide a solution.
▶ Request for quote. This bid document is used when price is the main deciding factor, and the proposed solution is readily available.
These three types cover the majority of bidding needs. There are other bid documents; however, they tend to be industry specific.
Once the bid documents are distributed, the buyer generally has a bidder conference to respond to bidder questions and provide clarifying information. Then the bidders develop their responses and deliver them to the buyer by the date specified in the bid documents.
Choosing the best vendor, sometimes known as source selection, is often based on a number of criteria, such as experience, references, price, and timely delivery. These variables may be weighted to reflect the relative importance of each. The buyer evaluates vendor bids against the criteria to select an appropriate vendor(s). The buyer and vendor negotiate terms and conditions. Most everything can be negotiated, from cost to delivery and payment dates, to location of work, ownership of intellectual property, and so forth.
2.5.6.2 Contracting
Eventually, the parties reach agreement and enter into a contract. The type of contracting vehicle depends on the size of the purchase, the stability of the scope of work, and the risk tolerances of the organizations.
For projects that use an adaptive approach for some deliverables and a predictive approach for others, a master agreement may be used for the overall contract. The adaptive work may be placed in an appendix or supplement. This allows the changes to occur on the adaptive scope without impacting the overall contract.
Once the vendor is selected, the project plans and documents are updated to incorporate vendor dates, resources, costs, quality requirements, risks, etc. From that point, the vendor becomes a project stakeholder. Information in the Stakeholders Performance Domain and Measurement Performance Domain will apply to the vendor(s) throughout the project.
Procurements can take place at any point during the project. All procurement activities are integrated into the project operations.
2.5.7 MONITORING NEW WORK AND CHANGES
In adaptive projects, there is an expectation that work will evolve and adapt. As a result, new work can be added to the product backlog, as needed. However, if more work is added than is being completed, or if the same amount of work is added that is being completed, the project will continue without end. The project manager works with the product owner to manage expectations around adding scope, the implications to the budget, and the availability of project team members. The product owner prioritizes the project backlog on an ongoing basis so that high-priority items are completed. If the schedule or budget is constrained, the product owner may consider the project done when the highest priority items are delivered.
In predictive projects, the project team actively manages changes to the work to ensure only approved changes are included in the scope baseline. Any changes to the scope are then accompanied by appropriate changes to the people, resources, schedule, and budget. Scope changes can add to uncertainty; therefore, any change requests should be accompanied by an evaluation of any new risks that are introduced due to the addition to or change in scope. The project manager works with the change control board and the change requestor to guide change requests through the change control process. Approved changes are integrated into the applicable project planning documents, product backlog, and project scope. The changes are also communicated to the appropriate stakeholders.
2.5.8 LEARNING THROUGHOUT THE PROJECT
Periodically, the project team may meet to determine what they can do better in the future (lessons learned) and how they can improve and challenge the process in upcoming iterations (retrospectives). Ways of working can evolve to produce better outcomes.
2.5.8.1 Knowledge Management
A lot of learning takes place during projects. Some of the learning is project specific, such as a faster way to accomplish specific work. Some learning can be shared with other project teams to improve outcomes, such as a quality assurance approach that results in fewer defects. Still other learning can be shared throughout the organization, such as training users how to work with a new software application.
2.5.8.2 Explicit and Tacit Knowledge
Throughout the project, project teams develop and share explicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge can be readily codified using words, pictures, or numbers. For example, the steps to a new process are explicit knowledge that can be documented. Explicit knowledge can be distributed using information management tools to connect people to information, such as manuals, registers, web searches, and databases.
Another type of knowledge is tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is challenging to express as it cannot be codified. Tacit knowledge is comprised of experience, insights, and practical knowledge or skill. Tacit knowledge is shared by connecting the people who need the knowledge with people who have the knowledge. This can be accomplished via networking, interviews, job shadowing, discussion forums, workshops, or other similar methods.
Because projects are temporary endeavors, much of the knowledge is lost once the project is completed. Being attentive to knowledge transfer serves the organization by not only delivering the value that the project was undertaken to achieve, it also allows the organization to gain knowledge from the experience of running projects.
2.5.9 INTERACTIONS WITH OTHER PERFORMANCE DOMAINS
The Project Work Performance Domain interacts and enables other performance domains on the project. Project work enables and supports efficient and effective planning, delivery, and measurement. It provides the environment for project team meetings, interactions, and stakeholder engagement to be effective. Project work supports navigating uncertainty, ambiguity, and complexity; and it balances their impacts with the other project constraints.
2.5.10 CHECKING RESULTS
Table 2-7 identifies the outcomes on the left and ways of checking them on the right.
Table 2-7. Checking Outcomes—Project Work Performance Domain
Outcome | Check |
Efficient and effective project performance | Status reports show that project work is efficient and effective. |
Project processes that are appropriate for the project and the environment | Evidence shows that the project processes have been tailored to meet the needs of the project and the environment. Process audits and quality assurance activities show that the processes are relevant and being used effectively. |
Appropriate communication and engagement with stakeholders | The project communications management plan and communication artifacts demonstrate that the planned communications are being delivered to stakeholders. There are few ad hoc requests for information or misunderstandings that might indicate engagement and communication activities are not effective |
Efficient management of physical resources | The amount of material used, scrap discarded, and amount of rework indicate that resources are being used efficiently |
Effective management of procurements | A procurement audit demonstrates that appropriate processes utilized were sufficient for the procurement and that the contractor is performing to plan. |
| Effective handling of change | Projects using a predictive approach have a change log that demonstrates changes are being evaluated holistically with consideration for scope, schedule, budget, resource, stakeholder, and risk impacts. Projects using an adaptive approach have a backlog that shows the rate of accomplishing scope and the rate of adding new scope. |
Improved capability due to continuous learning and process improvement | Team status reports show fewer errors and rework with an increase in velocity |
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