Official Purpose Statement: "The purpose of the Project Management Process is to identify, establish, coordinate, and monitor the activities, resources, and constraints of a project in order to produce a specified product, that satisfies the project's defined requirements within the specified constraints."
MAN.3 is the backbone of CL2. Every Generic Practice at CL2 (GP 2.1.1–2.1.6) requires project management discipline - process objectives, plans, monitoring, role assignments, and resource management. A project with excellent SWE.1–SWE.6 engineering but no documented project management will plateau at CL1 on all processes regardless of engineering quality.
📋 Learning Objectives
- Produce a project plan that satisfies all MAN.3 Base Practice requirements
- Operate status tracking that generates usable GP 2.1.3 evidence (actuals vs. plan)
- Manage project scope, schedule, resources, and constraints with documented decision trails
- Understand the difference between a decorative project plan and a managed project plan
MAN.3 Base Practices
| BP | Name | What It Requires | Evidence | The Assessor Test |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BP1 | Define the scope of work | Project scope is documented: what is in scope, what is explicitly out of scope, what are the deliverables, what are the acceptance criteria for the project as a whole. Scope changes are controlled through CR process. | Project scope statement / SOW; project initiation document | "What is in scope for this project?" - answer must be in a document, not verbal |
| BP2 | Define project life cycle | The development lifecycle is documented: phases (concept, development, proto delivery, series production), milestones, entry and exit criteria per phase, review gates. For Agile projects: sprint/PI structure, release cadence, definition of done. | Project lifecycle description in project plan; phase/milestone table with dates | "What are your project milestones and what must be true to pass each gate?" - must be in the plan |
| BP3 | Develop a project plan | The project plan is the central MAN.3 artifact. Must contain: WBS (work breakdown structure) or equivalent task list, milestone schedule with dates, resource allocation (who does what, how many hours), effort estimates, dependencies between tasks, tool and infrastructure requirements. Plan is at enough detail to manage against weekly - not just high-level Gantt. | Project plan (MS Project, Jira roadmap, or equivalent) with WBS + schedule + resource assignment | "Show me how you planned the SWE.1 requirements engineering work - activities, schedule, who was assigned, how many hours estimated." If only a milestone is shown without activity-level breakdown, BP3 is partially achieved. |
| BP4 | Monitor the project | Actual progress is tracked against the plan and documented. Status meetings held with documented minutes showing: actuals vs. planned (tasks completed, milestones hit/missed, effort burned vs. estimated), deviations identified, corrective actions decided and assigned. This is the most critical BP for GP 2.1.3 evidence. | Status meeting minutes or project status reports with actuals vs. plan; action log with owner and due date | "Show me a status meeting where you identified a deviation from plan and decided on a corrective action." If minutes exist but only say "reviewed project status - all OK" with no actuals, this is insufficient. |
| BP5 | Take corrective action | When deviations from plan are identified (BP4), corrective actions are documented, assigned to an owner, tracked to completion, and their effectiveness verified. Replanning when necessary - an updated project plan with revised dates is itself evidence of managed project management. | Corrective action log or integrated in the issue tracker; updated project plan with revision history | "Show me a corrective action that was logged, tracked, and closed." If no corrective actions ever existed, the project was either perfectly planned (impossible) or deviations were managed without documentation. |
| BP6 | Manage project closure | Project closure is formal: deliverables accepted by customer, lessons learned documented, process improvement inputs fed into the organizational QMS (CL3 interface), project records archived and accessible. | Project closure report; lessons learned log; customer acceptance record | Less frequently assessed in ongoing projects; key for final assessment at series production release |