Project Manager has maximum authority in a Projectized organization and least authority in a Functional organization. In Functional organizations staff is organized based upon their specialty, such as engineering or sales. In these organizations, functional managers are responsible for specialized departments like marketing. In Functional organization, the role of Project Manager is limited. In Projectized organization, PMs have more authority and independence. All the persons in the project team report to the Project Manager.
Real situations are a mixture of functional and projectized organizations. These mixed situations are called matrix organizations. Strong matrix organizations have characteristics of projectized organizations. Weak matrix organizations have characteristics of functional organizations.
Each Knowledge area has further Processes. There are a total of 44 processes. Each process has inputs, outputs and "tools and techniques" (ITTO). The PMBOK primarily covers each of the processes and it's ITTO in detail. You need to understand the concepts related to each of the input, output and "tools and techniques".
Each process is part of one of these five project phases. It is important to know the process group for each of the 44 processes.
Tasks performed by the senior management include