PMI Standards - How Would You Do It?

 

Situation: You know how to please most of the PMs some of the time.

If you think about it, PMI has a pretty tough job on their hands.  Every time they create a new standard, they have to build something that:

-  works with the PMBOK (really alignment across all of their standards)

- adheres to a rather complicated set of rules set out by ANSI

- is general enough to be applied across every functional area of an organization.

- is validated by a volunteer consensus-based process.  (a pretty tough screen)

- gets them closer to achieving the mission outlined on their web site

"It is the mission of the PMI Global Standards Program to improve the understanding and competency of project management practitioners and customers worldwide by identifying, defining, documenting and championing generally accepted project management practices and a common project management lexicon. Through the program, PMI works to develop standards for the profession that are valued by our members, the marketplace and other stakeholders. By doing this, PMI hopes to achieve worldwide excellence in the practice of project management through standards that are widely recognized and consistently applied."

Some standards, like the Standard for Portfolio Management  have been accused of being uneven and of failing to address the needs of specific functional areas, like IT.  However, the focus is really to "champion generally accepted project management practices", rather than best or perfect practices.  They've been described to me as "practices that have stood the test of time" rather than what is cutting edge today.  It's also just the ones they can validate through volunteer consensus.  For some of these same reasons, some describe a friction between Agile approaches and the PMBOK and there's been a great deal of talk about whether PMBOK V4 goes far enough in integrating Agile methods.

I think we all "get" that PMI is well intentioned in the approach they are taking.  I also know that that it's much easier to be an armchair quarterback and poke holes in something that already exists.  However, there are a lot of smart people out there and sometimes the best ideas come from unexpected sources.  So with that in mind, I have two questions for you.

1.  Is the mission above the right one for PMI's standards organization?

2.  If it is, is there a way to improve the approach they take to developing standards?

We'll pass on any suggestions posted here or sent to us.  Or if you like, you can contact the Standards Department directly by email.