Is the 'GanttHead' JPACE / Headway process still valid?

Work Breakdown Structures (WBS)

David Maynard Fort Wayne, In, United States

One of the items when we set up a profile on ProjectManagement[dot]Com is to select what we're good at based upon the "JPACE process WBS." I'm in the process of completing my profile but didn't know what JPACE was. So, off I went to do some studying.

I was surprised to see that it is aligned with the PMBOK guide 2000 edition (!), titled by GanttHead (not ProjectManagement[dot]com), built in Microsoft Project 2007 and describes risk as only a negative occurrence. All what I call "head-tipping" events. The JPACE / Headway project seems to have completed somewhere around 2006, but I can't be sure of that.

In the few areas I looked at, there seemed to be quite other discrepancies with version 5 of the PMBOK guide. That in itself is not a big deal -- perhaps updates are needed.

I wanted to know if the version in the profile setup was the most recent and if there is a better place to look for what these WBS terms mean. Perhaps a WBS dictionary?

Posted: Aug 27, 2014 8:35 PM

Dave Garrett

PMI Team Member

Senior Advisor to the CEO| PMI Sterling, Va, United States

Hi Dave,

Thanks for commenting here. Project Headway is in the process of being updated to PMBOK 5 compliance. You can expect that update within 45 days. You'll note that the majority of the content on this site is not PMBOK compliant. There are references and approaches from a variety of sources and standards. The focus here is on giving folks practical examples of approaches that have worked in a given circumstance. Often there are even several different examples of the same thing. Some of these end up being PMBOK-compliant. Others do not. We think that's ok, since it gives you more options.

The skills list that you mentioned is derived from JPACE, which is a reference to the overall stage-level structure of a process that has been updated several times over the years. As you mentioned it's also the structure of Project Headway. (Just as an aside, the J is for Justify which is business case oriented and for a long time has sat outside of the scope of the PMBOK altogether) We need to do a better job of marking versions and being more clear here and your note is a good prompt to do just that.

All of that having been said, it's still not a bad set of skills to align with. Any suggestions you have to update them are obviously also more than welcome.

I like the idea of a WBS dictionary. We'll be looking at that part of the interface soon. Thanks again for digging into this! It's much appreciated.

Posted: Sep 2, 2014 10:12 PM

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Is the 'GanttHead' JPACE / Headway process still valid?

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