The Project Management Institute (PMI) believes that there are four main pillars to a profession: research, credentialing, professional development and education and standards. PMI utilizes research to understand what the needs of various organizations and practitioners are in order to determine what type of standards and methodologies need to be developed for credentialed individuals to practice their profession. As a result of this research PMI published an update to A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) - Fourth Edition in December of 2008.
The PMBOK® Guide - Fourth Edition defines a Project Life Cycle that encompasses five process groups and nine knowledge areas of the project management profession. The guide emphasizes that project managers are responsible for all project objectives so that the final product can be delivered - within the constraints of the project scope, time and cost.
PMI, accredited by ISO through ANSI, is obligated every five years to update its recognized standards on two points: (1) the overall usability of standards and (2) the clarification of technical changes. With input from users of the guide and subject experts, certain additions and editorial changes have been made to the PMBOK® - Fourth Edition .
"The purpose of the PMI Guide is to combine the most commonly used practices around the globe from experts and put it into a format where people can determine what is a proper and appropriate way for each organization to use it," says Brian Weiss, MBA, the Vice President of Product Management at PMI. "Organizations differ based upon geography, culture, what is being produced, whether the operation is centric or product centric, - as well as whether the company functions in one border or multiple borders."
However, before any project is started, Weiss believes that project managers need to think about the following questions:
- What are you going to do?
- Who is responsible for what tasks?
- How much money do you currently have to complete the project?
- Who has the authority to make decisions about that money?
By using a document in the guide called a Charter, the project manager can get answers to those questions - which will clarify the project before it even begins.
Changes in the PMBOK® - Fourth Edition
Stakeholder Engagement
From a usability standpoint, there was a heightened emphasis on stakeholder engagement. "There has been a realization in the project management profession that you can have the greatest ideas and the greatest artifacts (documents), but if you do not understand the plan and the various stakeholders, you will not accomplish what the project was set out to do," says John J. Zlockie, PMP, Manager of Standards at the Project PMI.
The overall theme of the PMBOK® Guide - Fourth Edition was to update the stakeholder engagement to make sure that project managers understand the environment beyond the members of the project team. The project touches sponsors, users, the media and shareholders at profit organizations that need to be engaged. "There must be a conscious effort for the teams working on the standards to separate the planning portion from the artifacts and not have them combined", Zlockie points out.
According to Zlockie, the artifacts are a schedule that is used by the project manager to execute a project. In the past, the project manager would provide the pieces of the puzzle, but the overall plan was not necessarily put forward as a separate entity. PMBOK® - Fourth Edition focuses on the language of executing business results so that there is more business terminology and business strategy involved in the actual process.
For example, in the previous edition, the stakeholder engagement was under one of the nine knowledge areas of communications management. Managing stakeholders was considered to be a monitoring and controlling function. In the new edition, the management of stakeholders is considered to be an executing function because no one is really managing the stakeholders. Instead, the stakeholders' expectations are being managed. Thus, in the PMBOK® - Fourth Edition this item is described as Managing Expectations, not Managing Stakeholders.
