TOPIC: Clarifications on EEF and OPA.

When we say "standards" they exist in both EEF and OPA. What type of standards exists in EEF and what type under OPA?

When policies and procedures are part of OPA, Personnel administration policies in Plan Human Resources Management Plan is an input under EEF.

Previous sellers and their performance is an EEF under Plan Procurements. Good and Bad relevant experiences of sellers is an OPA under Conduct Procurements.
Both of these point towards performance / experience with the past sellers.

Additionally under the control procurements, sellers performance evaluation documentation is an OPA.

Any thoughts here please in understanding and segregating EEF and OPA better?

Enterprise Environmental Factors

Enterprise environmental factors are internal and external environmental factors that can influence a project’s success, including(e.g.):

Organizational culture
Organizational structure
Internal and external political climate
Existing human resources
Available capital resources
Regulatory environment
Financial and market conditions
...

Organizational Process Assets

Organizational process assets include any of the organization’s process assets that may be used to ensure project success.

They generally fall into two categories:

• Processes, guidelines, and procedures, such as: organizational standard processes, standardized guidelines, templates
• The corporate knowledge base, such as, lessons learned, historical information, past project files

Summary

Enterprise environmental factors are the internal and external influences on our project, such as the corporate culture or the financial environment.

Organizational process assets are the procedures, guidelines, templates that we can use on our project as well as the corporate knowledge base, such as past project reports and lessons learned.

May be this helps a bit ...

This is perfect answer.

It is still very confusing for me.
How come "Personnel administration policies" is an EEF and "Corporate policies and procedures for social media, ethics, and security";
& "Corporate policies and procedures for the issue, risk, change, and data management" are OPAs if they are all policies.

I feel that those corporate policies are all internal to an organization and do influence our project. I really can't see them as assets.
It is so confusing. Or in an opposite way, if they are assets, meaning that they are documents stating the rules and policies, they should all be OPAs.

Thank you!

PMBOK pg. 38/39. For the exam, there wasn't any hair splitting (as far as I can recall). The way I tried to remember it was that OPAs are things I can virtually checkout from the company library - like my company's policy on social media (it's something my company developed). And that's what the PMBOK says are OPAs "plans, processes, policies, procedures, and knowledge bases specific to and used by the performing organization". So in theory, I could go to SharePoint and download my company's policy.

EFFs are different, they "refer to conditions, not under the control of the project team". For example, stakeholder risk tolerance is an EFF (internal to the project). I can't check it out from the library and the company didn't produce it, it is just there, present, in my project. My company's culture is another great one, it just exists, it wasn't developed (obviously every company tries to groom their culture, but its organic, it's not something we can download).

As for "Personnel administration policies" being an EFF, the PMBOK does not go and define what "Personnel administration policies" actually are, but my guess it is the slew of government regulation(s) regarding working standards and what has to be posted where and when, OSHA type stuff. That being said, the company COULD develop its own HR handbook and this would be an OPA.

Other EFFs that are just there: location of resources (global workforce), government regulations, marketplace conditions, etc.

As best as I can remember from the exam, the EFF v OPA was pretty obvious.