PMBOK Guide 7th Disaster Waiting to Happen?

Dear Kiron
Thank you for your opinion

I took a look at "ExposureDraft - The Standard for Project Management - 7th Edition" and what is published on the internet

Hi Kiron,

This is where the problem is: only "the standard" - a collection of generalities dressed up as "principles" is exposed for public comments, but "the guide" is the one that impacts people the most...

In the past "the guide" was the contribution of hundreds of content providers and reviewers before even reaching exposure draft stage... plus thousands of people commenting on it once exposed. This ensured that it was indeed consensus-based, as hundreds of different perspectives had to be taken in account - and the text continued to improve as such.

7th Edition was written by a small group of people, reviewed by a number of people, and it will be published as such. What makes it then different from any other project management book? It's still the opinions of one or few people, not representing what the majority of practitioners think or do.

As such, wait and have faith approach does not work for me - the process is broken, and very rarely a broken process creates a good result!

George -

Given the decision to fully rewrite the Guide and the radical shift from a process-centric to a principles-centric model, I doubt a fully democratic, consensus-based approach would have yielded something good in a reasonable timeframe. Previous editions were incremental evolutions - this is a revolution.

The sections which I reviewed as part of Review Team 1 were encouraging so I'm inclined to be optimistic.

Kiron

A "standard" is not a revolutionary work - thought leaders spearhead revolutions through articles, books and speeches, convincing people to adopt innovative ideas and practices. Eventually more and more people adopt them until they become "standard".

There is no standard out there because someone wants it to be a standard - it only becomes so if accepted and followed by the vast majority.

The "standard" as exposed - because is not anchored in widely accepted practices - is simply a book in project management the same as hundreds other out there.

And last thought: I really don't think that we, as project management practitioners, should cut corners for expediency. If we do that in real life with our projects we know how they'll turn out to be - and if we know it's wrong, why would we do this with the standard that guides our activity?

I'd agree that we should value quality over expediency, but given that there ARE so many good PM textbooks out there, perhaps this is PMI acknowledging that they should not be trying to produce a de facto global Holy Grail.

I have no insights into why the accelerated (1 year) timeline was set for the 7th edition, but given that constraint, the approach taken does make sense.

I do also fully support the shift to a principles-based approach since there simply is no way that a single document could effectively capture the wide range of practices used in the profession without further irritating those folks who complained about the non-linear increase in the total number of pages.

Kiron

Just posted another topic encouraging people to voice their opinion where it matters, on PMI exposure draft platform https://www.pmi.org/pmbok-guide-standards/...exposure-draft.

The change is indeed dramatic, moving to some universally true principles which will wipe out any difference between PMI or non-PMI practitioners - and if everyone is "compliant" then what's the difference between PMI members (and PMP certified) and everyone else?

Personally I think that guiding principles are good and necessary, but as an introduction to the standard not replacing it!

Once again, this change is claimed to be "consensus-based" - so go to the exposure draft, read it for yourselves, and say what you have to say so whomever is promoting this change can see what real PMs think.

I don't understand why everyone is "putting head in the sand". Are we bound by silence and secrecy once we join PMI?

Phil has a valid point on the research - secretive work behind the scenes is not good research because the best research is peer reviewed. Somehow it is preached in PMI Journal of Management, why it is not professed by the writers of the webpage that Phil comments on.

I want to revisit this post after August 1st and see how many Phil's predictions will come true.

I think that Daire comment and Phil's video are about the same change from methodology to strategy. As you probably know, the PMI "waterfall" methodology fails on many project management fronts, thus it is good that PMI leaders came out of their shell and started process of moving to some "strategic change management". There are many dialectic methodologies that fit the purpose of the delivering value to end customer(s), i.e. waterfall for constructions, Scrum for software.
Change will destroy the old and should bring the new. But I am with Phil on his prognosis that there is a lot of change but no forethought that it destroys a good methodology AND it does not build anything better, just muddles the waters.

I agree with you Kiron and this is why I refrained from commenting as it is too early !