what is eef in project management?

The PMBOK® Guide defines ‘Enterprise Environment Factors’ (EEF) and ‘Organisational Process Assets’ (OPA) as the two forms of support (and in some cases constraints) the organisation and the wider community provide to assist project teams manage and deliver their projects.

Enterprise Environment Factors – EEF (the Environment) include all of the conditions and systems that are not under the control of the project team that influence (favourably or detrimentally), constrain (most of all) or direct the work of the project. Enterprise environmental factors can be internal or external.

Internal EEF is imposed by the organization on your project and include the structure, culture, systems, and geographic location(s) of the organization.

Some examples of internal EEF:

External EEF are outside factors affecting the organization and your project. These factors include governmental or other rules and regulations that apply to the performing organization.

Some examples of external EEF:

Organisational Process Assets – OPA (Assets) are the organization’s policies, guidelines, processes, procedures, plans, approaches, and standards for conducting work, including project work. OPA creates the link among past, present and future, paves the flow of experiences and knowledge from past to present and to future and thus knowledge is refined. OPAs become part of the project’s documentation once the ‘blank template’ is copied and completed in full, or in part, with the project’s information.

The following are a few examples of OPA:

Processes, policies, and procedures refer to the elements that might affect several aspects of the project, such as project management policies, safety policies, performance measurement criteria, templates, financial controls, communication requirements, issue and defect management procedures, change control procedures, risk control procedures, and the procedures used for authorizing work. These are usually established by the PMO or the organization itself and are not updated as the project progresses.

Organizational knowledge bases refer to items such as lessons learned, process measurement databases, project files, and the information the organization has learned on previous projects. This information, also known as historical information, falls into the corporate knowledge base category.

Summary

The dividing line between some internal policies and some assets you use in managing the project can be a bit blurry. For example, the reports and documents generated by PMIS are OPA, but the PMIS itself is an EEF. You use OPAs to improve the management of your project. You manage within the constraint and guidelines established by the EEFs.

Enterprise Environment Factors (EEFs) include all policies, practices, procedures, and legislation that exist both inside and outside of the organization that will impact the way you manage a project.