Organizational process assets

Organisational process assets (OPAs) are the plans, processes, policies, procedures and knowledge bases specific to and used by the performing organisation. They include any artifact, practice or knowledge from any of the organisations involved in the project that can be used to perform or govern the project. PMBOK lists OPAs as inputs to many processes, such as developing the charter and plans.

They also include the organisation's learning and knowledge from earlier projects, and the team may update them during the project.

Categories

1. Processes and procedures
   • Organisational standard processes: guidelines, templates, quality policies, product life cycles.
   • Procedures for change control, risk control, financial control, issue and defect management.
   • Project closure guidelines.
   • Communication requirements and standard templates (project charter, WBS, risk register).
2. Corporate knowledge base
   • Historical information and lessons learned from past projects.
   • Project files, including actual cost, schedule data, performance measures.
   • Process measurement database.
   • Defect and issue management databases.
   • Configuration management knowledge base (baselines, versions).
   • Financial database (labour hours, costs, budgets).

OPA
 |-- Processes & procedures (how)
 |-- Knowledge base (what we learned)

Importance

• Saves effort by reusing templates and proven methods.
• Improves estimates through historical data.
• Ensures compliance with organisational standards.
• Supports learning and continuous improvement.

OPA versus EEF

OPAs are internal and mostly controllable; enterprise environmental factors (government rules, market conditions, culture) are conditions outside the team's control.

Example: An IT firm uses its template for a risk register and a database of past projects to estimate testing effort for a new project.