Standard Bearer

  Manufacturing   ProjectsAtWork  

Bill Duncan wrote the book — literally — on project management standards.

If you're one of the 50,000 or so project professionals who can put a 'PMP' after your title—even if you're not, but have managed a few projects—then chances are good you've read the exacting prose of Bill Duncan. As the primary author of the 1996 version of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, Duncan might be called the poet laureate of process—the least known, most unknowingly cited writer in the field. The guide is the most widely used project management standard in the world, and although he didn't work on the 2000 update, Duncan's remains an active, vocal advocate of project management standards as a consultant, trainer and participant in PM communities such as NewGrange, ASAPM and, now, Projects@Work, which had the opportunity to ask him a few questions recently.

You had a big hand in the 1996 PMBOK. What do you think of the 2000 version?

I was disappointed there weren't more changes—there were a lot of things that have been misunderstood and needed to be clarified. For example, all of the knowledge areas say that each process occurs once in every project phase. That's key to being able to make effective use of the ideas in PMBOK Guide. But time and again I see people who think the process groups are phases; who think you define scope once in …

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