What do you think about the seven performance domains outlined in the PMBOK 8th edition?

PMBOK 8th edition focuses more on value and principles. Quality is now part of principles, so it’s considered in every area. Acquisitions and communications are included in other domains like stakeholders and resources. Governance replaces integration to show projects should align with organizational goals and deliver real value.

I'm just starting to go through it. I'm looking at the characteristics of a project (it says page 6, but when I click on the link in the TOC it takes me somewhere else). It's longer than I expected, but does the job. A little over halfway down page 7 it references organizational change. I think they might be overstating the level of change in some projects. All projects could be said to introduce change into an organization, but not all projects are an organizational change.

It looks like they're treating communications as more of a theme that exists across multiple focus areas and in the ITTOs, especially in the Stakeholders performance domain. I'll have to go through it more in depth later.

The shift in PMBOK 8 shows PMI’s move toward outcomes over documents. Quality becoming a principle makes sense—it’s now embedded in all work, not a stand-alone box. Acquisitions and communications sit across every domain, so they flow naturally instead of being isolated. Governance replacing integration also works; it forces stronger alignment with strategy, not just coordination.

The shift in the PMBOK 8th edition is deliberate and, in my view, largely coherent.
The seven performance domains offer a clearer lens on how project success is evaluated in modern organizations, moving the focus from managing silos to achieving outcomes in context.

Moving from knowledge areas to performance domains reinforces an important message: success is no longer about controlling functions, but about enabling coherent decision-making across the system.
In that sense, the domains reflect what organizations actually care about when they assess project performance.

On quality, I see the change as conceptual rather than a downgrade.
Treating quality as a guiding principle instead of a standalone domain signals that quality is not something to be inspected at the end, but something that must be embedded across scope, governance, delivery, risk and stakeholder engagement.
This, however, places a higher maturity burden on practitioners.
Without systemic thinking, quality risks becoming implicit and therefore invisible.

Regarding acquisitions and communications, their absence makes sense if we accept the logic of integration by design.
Procurement decisions sit naturally within governance, finance, risk and resource performance, while communication is inseparable from stakeholder performance.
The risk here is not conceptual, but practical.
Less experienced practitioners may struggle without explicit anchors unless guidance and examples are sufficiently clear.

The removal of integration is probably the most symbolic change.
Integration has not disappeared. It has been elevated.
Governance now plays the role of the integrative mechanism, aligning decisions with organizational objectives, value creation and accountability.
In that sense, stronger alignment with strategy is indeed possible, but only if governance is treated as an active decision system rather than a compliance layer.

Overall, PMBOK 8 reinforces a core idea: projects succeed less because of perfect processes, and more because of coherent decisions across domains.
The framework is sound.
The real challenge is whether organizations are ready to operate at the level of maturity that this model clearly assumes.