The Advanced Support process areas provide the projects and organization with an improved support capability. Each of these process areas relies on specific inputs or practices from other process areas.

Figure 4.7 provides a bird’s-eye view of the interactions among the Advanced Support process areas and with all other process areas.

Figure 4.7: Advanced Support Process Areas

Using the Causal Analysis and Resolution process area, project members identify causes of selected defects and other problems and take action to prevent them from occurring in the future. While the project’s defined processes are the principal targets for identifying the cause of the defect, the process improvement proposals they create target the organization’s set of standard processes, which will prevent recurrence of the defect across the organization.

The Decision Analysis and Resolution process area supports all the process areas by determining which issues should be subjected to a formal evaluation process and then applying a formal evaluation process to them.