Today we're going to talk about the sexiest areas in project management: Process Groups (mmm), and Knowledge Areas (ahh!). These are two overlapping ways of grouping and categorizing processes within a project.
What's a process? Glad you asked! A process is a project management activity that takes one or more inputs and, using appropriate project management tools and techniques, produces one or more outputs. An input can be pretty much anything: an idea, a JPEG, a pile of unedited copy. An output, on the other hand, should either be a deliverable or an outcome, which is helpfully defined as the end result of a process.
Think of it this way: you need to make a cover. Your input will be a cover image, a font, a title, and your pen name. (If you're making a physical book add a couple of blurbs and a description of what the book is about.) Your desired output will be a cover for your book. And the process will vary, but it will probably include opening a book on color theory, firing up GIMP (or Photoshop if you're feeling nasty), scaling, typing, adjusting, swearing, etc. Easy peasy!
So now that you know what a process is, let's talk about Process Groups. A Process Group is "a logical grouping of project management processes to achieve specific project objectives".1 It's basically a way to organize a bunch of similar processes in a way that makes sense across different projects. The PMBOK (remember the PMBOK?), defines five Process Groups:
Initiating Process Group: Processes "performed to define a new project or a new phase of an existing project by obtaining authorization to start the project or phase".2 For a new or self-publishing author, this can be as simple as having an idea and deciding to write it! For more established authors, this might involve a phone call from an editor who wants to commission a work-for-hire book or an article.
Planning Process Group: Processes which establish a project's scope, refine its objectives, and/or determine what needs to be done to attain a project's objectives. This is going to include outlining, character sketches, and world building, but it will also involve stuff like researching a genre and its conventions, pitching (if you're not self-publishing and you don't need a completed manuscript first), scoping out the book's costs (if you are self-publishing), and similar activities. You can certainly write a book without doing any of this stuff, but if you want to sell it then guess what? You get to do it all afterwards!
Executing Process Group: Processes related to doing the damn work, or per the PMBOK Guide, "processes performed to complete the work defined in the project management plan to satisfy the project requirements".3 This includes your first draft, your final draft, and all your edits, including the stuff you get from your editor. For self-publishers this also means writing your blurb, picking keywords and genres, assembling a cover, book formatting, and the other fun details.
Monitoring and Controlling Process Group: Processes "required to track, review, and regulate the progress and performance of the project".4 This includes identifying any places where the project plan needs to be changed, and initiating those changes. This is all the behind-the-scenes work your reader is never going to see: tracking your daily word count (if that's your thing), meeting deadlines, delivering chapter samples if you're working with a publisher or editor who requires it. Edits sorta-kinda fit here, in part: finding a point where a major revision to your plot is needed, and determining what needs to change, fits here, especially if it changes an agreed-upon word count, but actually making the edits goes right back into Executing.
And, lastly:
Closing Process Group: Processes "performed to formally complete or close the project, phase, or contract".5 The End, but not the end of your manuscript. This is delivering your final draft to your editor/publishing and having them accept it, making sure you get paid your full advance, and actually seeing your book on the bookshelf. It can also mean kicking off the grand follow-on project called Marketing, but that's really Initiating for a separate project, odd as that might seem.
So that's the official Process Groups. Can you stick with me for Knowledge Areas? It'll be a while before I get back to this, and I wouldn't want to leave you hanging.
A Knowledge Area is "an identified area of project management defined by its knowledge requirements and described in terms of its component processes, practices, inputs, outputs, tools, and techniques".6 In other words, it's another way of categorizing project processes, this time by the skill set that's needed to complete them.
There are ten - ten! - Knowledge Areas, so I'll keep this brief:
Project Integration Management: identifying and coordinating processes and project management activities. Basically, managing the project.
Project Scope Management: making sure a project includes all the work required to complete the project successfully, and doesn't include any additional work that's not needed. If you've ever had a short story threaten to turn into an epic fantasy trilogy, you know why this is needed.
Project Schedule Management: everything you need to do to hit your deadlines.
Project Cost Management: keeping your project under budget, and also getting the money to fund your project. You'll be amazed what costs can crop up when you're writing a book, and this Knowledge Area is all about keeping them under control.
Project Quality Management: includes "the processes for incorporating the organization's quality policy regarding planning, managing, and controlling project and product quality requirements, in order to meet stakeholders' expectations".7 You're thinking editing, right? I know you're thinking editing! It's not just that, though, it's also about making sure you can read that scribbled note from 11:30pm you wrote before bed, and checking to make sure your eBook looks good on a phone and a Kindle and a PC.
Project Resource Management: determining what resources you'll need to complete a project, and then getting them and managing them. By the way, when you see "resources" think "stuff and people". As a writer, unless you're well down the career track, it'll mostly mean "stuff".
Project Communications Management: includes "the processes required to ensure timely and appropriate planning, collection, creation, distribution, storage, retrieval, management, control, monitoring, and ultimate disposition of project information".8 Which is a lot, even if you're not working with anybody!
Project Risk Management: planning for any risks (backup your work), planning your response (download your backup), and monitoring risk (how likely is Dropbox to go out of business?).
Project Procurement Management: determining what needs to be done to purchase or acquire products, services, or results from outside the project team. Hiring a cover artist, an editor, or a website designer are three pretty big examples.
Project Stakeholder Management: this is identifying who has an interest in a project, for example you, your editor, your agent, and your publisher; figuring out what their expectations and impact on the project are; and developing strategies to engage with them effectively. If you're in a position where you have to do this, then it's probably one of the most important things you have to do. (And by the way, your readers? Not stakeholders. Not unless they commissioned the work directly.)
Phew! That's a lot for one post, but I wanted to get it all out of the way.
Hopefully that will tide you little project managing authors over for a bit, because next month will be all monster smut, all the time. To tide you over until then, feel free to check out my author page. Just about everything is free to read with Kindle Unlimited, and reviews are always appreciated!
What's Elvira's line again? "Pleasant screams..."
-Lea
1. A Guide To The Project Management Body Of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), Sixth Edition. (Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute, 2017), 23.
2. PMBOK Guide, 23.
3. PMBOK Guide, 23.
4. PMBOK Guide, 23.
5. PMBOK Guide, 23.
6. PMBOK Guide, 23.
7. PMBOK Guide, 24.
8. PMBOK Guide, 24.
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