provide a complete picture of the project ' s scope.Erica had also included $10,000 for pro- curement in the financial analysis she prepared for the business case, and she showed Jessie how to enter that amount as a fixed cost split equally between the " Ask the Expert " and User Requests features, where she thought they would have to purchase some external software and services. Erica then helped Jessie assign resources to tasks, entering the pro- jected number of hours everyone planned to work each week on each task. They then ran several cost reports and made a few minor adjustments to resource assignments to make their planned total cost meet their budget constraints. Their cost baseline was very close to their planned budget of $140,000. The last deliverable her team needed to create within the planning process group was a list of prioritized risks. This information will be updated and expanded as the project progresses in a risk register, which also includes information on root causes of the risks, warning signs that potential risks might occur, and response strategies for the risks. (See Chapter 11, Project Risk Management, for more information on risk registers.) Erica reviewed the risks she had mentioned in the business case as well as the comments team members made on the project charter and in their team meetings. She held a special meeting for everyone to brainstorm and discuss potential risks. They posted all of the risks they identified on a probability/impact matrix, and then they grouped some of the ideas. Only one risk was in the high probability and high impact category, and several had medium impact in one or both categories. They chose not to list the low-probability and low-impact risks. After some discussion, the team developed the list of prioritized risks shown in Table 3-10. Project Execution Executing the project involves taking the actions necessary to ensure that activities in the project plan are completed. It also includes work required to introduce any new hardware, software, and procedures into normal operations. The products of the project are created during project execution, and it usually takes the most resources to accomplish this pro- cess. Table 3-11 lists the knowledge areas, executing processes, and outputs of project execution listed in the PMBOK (R) Guide, Fifth Edition . Many project sponsors and custo- mers focus on deliverables related to providing the products, services, or results desired from the project. It is also important to document change requests and prepare updates to planning documents as part of execution. Templates related to this process group are also listed later in this chapter. 109 The Project Management Process Groups: A Case Study Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. For this relatively small project, Erica would work closely with all the team mem- bers to make sure they were producing the desired work results. She also used her networking skills to get input from other people in the firm and from external sources at no additional cost to the project. She made sure that everyone who would use the resulting intranet application also understood what they were producing as part of the project and how it would help them in the future. She knew that providing strong lead- ership and using good communication skills were crucial to good project execution. The firm did have a formal change request form, but primarily used it for external projects. The firm also had contract specialists and templates for several procurement docu- ments that the project team would use for the portions of the project it planned to outsource. As mentioned earlier, Erica knew that Joe, the CEO and project sponsor, liked to see progress on projects through milestone reports. He also wanted Erica to alert him to any potential issues or probl ems. Table 3-12 shows a sample of a milestone report for the project management intranet site project that Erica reviewed with Joe in mid-June. Erica met with most of her project team members often, and she talked to Joe about once a week to review progress on completing milestones and to discuss any other project issues. Although Erica could have used project management software to create milestone reports, she used word-processing software instead because this project was small and she could more easily manipulate the report format. Human resource issues often occur during project execution, especially conflicts. At several of the team meetings, Erica could see that Michael seemed to be bored and often left the room to make phone calls to clients. She talked to Michael about the situation, and she discovered that Michael was supportive of the project, but he knew he could only spend a minimal amount of time on it. He was much more productive outside of meetings, TABLE 3-10 List of prioritized risks Ranking Potential Risk 1 Lack of inputs from internal consultants 2 Lack of inputs from client representatives 3Securityofnewsystem 4 Outsourcing/purchasing for the article retrieval and " Ask the Expert " features 5Outsourcing/purchasingforprocessingonlinepaymenttransactions 6Organizingthetemplatesandexamplesinausefulfashion 7Providinganefficientsearchfeature 8GettinggoodfeedbackfromMichaelChenandotherseniorconsultants 9Effectivelypromotingthenewsystem 10 Realizing the benefits of the new system within one year (C) Cengage Learning 2014 110 Chapter 3 Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning.TABLE 3-11 Executing processes and outputs Knowledge Area Executing Process Outputs Project Integration Management Direct and manage project work Deliverables Work performance data Change requests Project management plan updates Project documents updates Project Quality Management Perform quality assurance Change requests Project management plan updates Project documents updates Organizational process assets updates Project Human Resource Management Acquire project team Project staff assignments Resource calendars Project management plan updates Develop project team Team performance assessments Enterprise environmental factor updates Manage project team Change requests Project management plan updates Project documents updates Enterprise environmental factors updates Organizational process assets updates Project Communica- tions Management Manage communications Project communications Project documents updates Project management plan updates Organizational process assets updates Project Procurement Management Conduct procurements Selected sellers Agreements Resource calendars Change requests Project management plan updates Project documents updates Project Stakeholder Management Manage stakeholder engagement Issue log Change requests Project management plan updates Project documents updates Organizational process assets updates Source: PMBOK (R) Guide, Fifth Edition , 2012.TABLE 3-12 Milestone report as of June 17 ( continued ) Milestone Date Status Responsible Issues/ Comments Intranet site roll-out completed October 25 Kevin Monitoring and Controlling Progress reports Every Friday All Closing Final project presentation completed October 27 Erica Sponsor sign-off on project completed October 27 Joe Final project report completed October 28 Erica Lessons-learned reports submitted November 1 All (C) Cengage Learning 2014 113 The Project Management Process Groups: A Case Study Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning.All Rights Reserved.