What You Need to Know About the PMBOK Guide
Virtually every industry has a guide that helps those who operate within it follow best practices. Whether the Fair Work Ombudsman Best Practices Guide or the Nursing Best Practice Guidelines, these works contain generally recognized best practices in a given field. The PMBOK guide has a terrible acronym, but it is a helpful tool. The Project Management Body of Knowledge documents accepted project management information and practices, designed to help PMs manage most types of projects, regardless of industry.
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Why Does the PMBOK Matter?
The Project Management Body of Knowledge itself is not a guide; in fact, much of it is unwritten but acknowledged as best practices. The Guide itself, though, is not a how-to. Instead, it is a compilation of processes and knowledge areas. It is an internationally recognized standard and deals with project management basics and fundamentals. It focuses on a knowledge-based approach to projects and on aligning employees and managers throughout the project.
The guide divides projects into five categories of project management:
- Initiation
- Planning
- Execution
- Controlling and monitoring
- Closing
The PMBOK also goes into knowledge areas, including management of integration, time, scope, cost, quality, human resources, communications, risk, and procurement. The intent of the guide is to streamline processes and provide guidelines that PMs can apply to specific projects.
Why Is It Important to Stay Updated?
The PMBOK is updated every four years, and the fifth edition is in “exposure draft” currently. Does it really matter if you use the third edition? You can probably pick it up cheaper, save a few bucks. It’s tempting, we know, but it is important to have the latest version because we don’t live in a static world. Changes in industries, in technology, and in trends occur, and clarification is needed.
One example: in the third edition, chapter 10 talks about “managing stakeholders,” implying a controlling or lopsided relationship. The fourth edition addresses this and discusses instead “Managing Stakeholder Expectations,” which was intended to transform a controlling process into one that invites more transparency, participation, and clarity. The fifth edition throws away “Managing Stakeholder Expectations,” and adds the processes: “Plan Stakeholder Engagement,” “Manage Stakeholder Engagement,” and “Control Stakeholder Engagement.”
This is more than a shift in terminology; it indicates a shift in accepted best practices for “handling” “managing” or “engaging” stakeholders in order to bring a project to fruition.
