Project Environment Based on ISO 21500

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Project Environment based on ISO 21500.

After two weeks of working on a project, you know whether it will work or not. – Bill Budge.

Project Environment is covered in ISO 21500, the International Standard for Project Management. Today we are going to discuss the concept of ‘Project environment’ that provides us with the ISO 21500 Guide for Project Management. Please share your comments! 🙂

ISO 21500 states about the project environment that it “may impact project performance and success”, and differenciates between “factors outside the organizational boundary”, and “factors within the organizational boundary.”

From this definition, we can highlight the following facts:

1. ISO 21500 Project Management on ‘Project Environment’: “Project Performance and Success”

Projects are unique. It doesn’t matter if we have done it before in regards to the deliveables/products we have been asked to build. Each project has its own environment and that makes it a completely different project each time. We need to manage factors both outside and also within the organizational boundary. The project performance and success will depend on our capacity to identify and understand all these factors and adapt our project to all those special conditions.

2. ISO 21500 Project Management on ‘Project Environment’: “Outside the Organizational Boundary”

Factors such as locational, logistical, temporal/seasonal, legal,  socioeconomical, political, etc. define the outside organizational boundary that we need to take into account and manage.

3. ISO 21500 Project Management on ‘Project Environment’: “Within the Organizational Boundary”

Also factors within the organization’s boundary are different each time. Depending on the business strategy, this will be transformed into specific Programs (groups of related projects) and Project Portfolios (collections of projects) for reaching those strategic goals. The organization’s culture, capabilities,resources, availability, maturity for managing projects, result on the internal organizational boundary to be managed by the Project Manager.

Finally of course, the stakeholders and people involved in the project will be the key to the final success of our project.

After two weeks of working on a project, you know whether it will work or not. – Bill Budge.

 

What are your tips for managing the Project environment factors?