Explain the 4’PS of project Management

The 4 P's of project management (Pressman) are People, Product, Process and Project: the four elements that must be managed for a software project to succeed.

1. People: the most important element. Includes stakeholders (senior managers, project/technical managers, practitioners, customers, end users) and team leaders. Management must recruit the right people, organise them into suitable team structures (e.g. democratic, controlled centralised, controlled decentralised), and handle communication, coordination, motivation and training. The People Capability Maturity Model (P-CMM) addresses this area.
2. Product: the software to be built. Before planning, the manager must establish the scope (context, information objectives, function and performance) and carry out problem decomposition (breaking the product into smaller functions) so that estimates of cost, effort, time and risk can be made.
3. Process: the framework of activities used to build the product: communication, planning, modelling, construction and deployment, plus umbrella activities (quality assurance, configuration management, risk management, reviews). The team selects a suitable process model (waterfall, incremental, spiral, agile) for the product and people.
4. Project: the planned and controlled work of bringing people, product and process together. It involves planning, estimation, scheduling, tracking and risk control. Common causes of failure such as unrealistic deadlines, changing requirements and poor estimates must be watched; Reel's "commonsense approach" (start on the right foot, maintain momentum, track progress, make smart decisions, conduct a post-mortem) helps avoid them.

In short: the right people follow a suitable process to build a well-defined product within a well-managed project. Pressman's W5HH principle (Why, What, When, Who, Where, How, How much) is often used alongside the 4 P's for project planning.