Question on one of the Action performed in 'Executing Process group'

Submitted by Vijay_PMP on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 09:41
Vijay_PMP's picture

Hi,

I have an argument that the following actions performed should be in Planning process group rather than Executing process group.

Actions performed:
1) Review Bids and quotes
2) negotiate contract terms with prospective sellers
3) Select Sellers

The reason i have for these actions to be in Planning rather than executing is that,

1) If you perform the process of selecting the sellers in the planning stage itself, it has following advantages--

a) Execution will be seamless, because you have already selected the seller and the contract might have been finalized during the planning stage itself.
b) Because, we might end up in NOT selecting any of the the Sellers which were selected during the planning because of unforeseen reasons and we might have to work on the project management plan once again due to this change.
c) This will make this things to move simply back and forth which will lead to multiple iterations on the project documents.This has a potential to reduce the project execution efficiency also.

Please let me know that, what should be criteria in order to have all these actions to be in Executing stage rather than planning stage....

Thanks for your help

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slashinv

Thu, 08/21/2014 - 09:17

Hi Vijay

Pls look at these processes from procurement management perspective

You 'plan'(what to procure, when and hown how much etc) the procuremnt and then you actually 'carry out'(execute) the procurement (ie. choose supplier from bids, negotiate rate, sign the contract etc)

I hope this helps to answer your query

Vijay_PMP's picture

Vijay_PMP

Thu, 08/21/2014 - 10:08

Hi,

Thanks very much for the reply.

I agree with the fact that, if there is a physical execution of any task then it comes to Execution phase.
I am still not convinced 100% as i think selection of bidders should have been done in the planning phase.
I will try best to explain the scenario with an example.

Say for example, your are going to handle a large project with multiple level of complexity and and various sellers. Your sellers can be categorized into Category A, B, C. From each category, you have listed 10 companies in your planning phase. So during execution phase, you will go for bidder conference to finalize the possible seller for each category. During bidding with Category A sellers, you have finalized Seller 1. During bidding with Category B sellers, for some reason you would be unable to select final one and you might end up in shortlisting 3 out of ten due to lack of clarity and would want to revisit after some time. In the case of Category C sellers, unfortunately you will be unable to select none of the sellers available due to various reasons.
In this case, you will have to plan again for the selection of any new sellers. This might have an impact on execution start date. These are some of the points i am highlighting. There might be few others since the project is large.
Please do not think i am counter arguing. Since the topic is debatable, i am trying to dig deep down in to the subject and trying to understand completely.

slashinv

Fri, 08/22/2014 - 11:55

Hi Vijay

Even when you say you were not able to select any seller or less number of sellers , you actually performed 'executing' part ie. selcting a seller process.

let's go to later part of the question

There are multiple perspectives to look at the scenario. but in terms of pmbok, when you say 'lack of clarity' , 'revisit' or sellers were not available during selction process; it indeed means that there was lack of planning or some shortcomings in planning. isn't it ? as you know the processes needs to be interative(i.e. need to be revisited) at some point in time for every project. I would say this is just an example of the same. in your scenario, you will have to revisit planning processes for procurement.

Thanks