According to the PMBOK® Guide, Organizational Process Assets (OPAs) are the plans, processes, policies, procedures, and knowledge bases specific to and used by the performing organization. These assets influence the project ' s management at every stage, including how scope is defined, validated, and controlled.
Categories of OPAs:
Processes and Procedures: These include formal and informal initiated patterns of work, such as standard templates (WBS templates, scope statement templates), specific organizational standards, and change control procedures.
Corporate Knowledge Base: This includes historical information and lessons learned from previous projects, which are essential for determining what scope was successful or problematic in the past.
Impact on Scope Management: OPAs provide the " internal " framework. For example, an organization might have a policy that all software projects must use a specific requirements gathering methodology or a procedure that requires executive sign-off for any scope change exceeding a certain budget threshold.
Source of Assets: These are typically internal to the organization and are updated and added to throughout the life of the project.
Analysis of other choices:
Choice B (Enterprise environmental factors - EEFs): While EEFs also impact scope management, they refer to conditions not under the control of the project team that influence, constrain, or direct the project (e.g., marketplace conditions, government standards, or the organizational culture/infrastructure). They are generally " external " or systemic constraints rather than the organization ' s specific " how-to " policies and procedures.
Choice C (Project management processes): These are the 47+ standard processes (Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closing) used to manage the project. While these processes use policies and procedures, they are not the policies themselves.
Choice D (Project scope management plan): This is a specific output of the Plan Scope Management process. It describes how the scope will be defined, developed, monitored, controlled, and validated. It incorporates organizational policies, but it is the project-specific plan rather than the source of the organization ' s overarching guidelines.
