Changes to the PMBOK® Guide, 4th Edition, and What You Should Know

Abstract

In December 2008, The Project Management Institute (PMI®) released the 4th edition version of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge® (PMBOK® Guide), the Project Management Institute's collection of published "generally recognized good practices" (according to PMI's 4th edition FAQs). This edition updates the current 3rd edition standard. Project managers, those who manage project managers, PMI members, and potential future PMP® and CAPM® candidates should all be interested in the changes to the PMBOK® Guide, since this new edition updates the standard and outlined good practices that directly affect them. What has changed in the new 4th edition Guide? How will it impact those running projects as well as those studying for the PMP or CAPM exams?

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What are the improvements and general changes?

There is always a bit of apprehension before a new standard is published. Will it be an improvement from the old? What has changed and how much will it affect me? How do I use or incorporate the changes? How much has changed?

First, project management as a documented profession with its agreed terminology, defined processes and proven techniques is now mature enough that the core of its information is fairly stable, with minimum refinements and enhancements rather than whole new definitions. While project management is an age-old profession, documented standards are fairly young in comparison, and are just now reaching a point of maturity and stability. Of course, new techniques and improvements will come along, but no major re-definition of the profession was made in the 4th edition Guide. This is more of a refinement than a rewrite. If you followed the outlined good practices before, you should not have major changes in the way you run your projects.

In general, the 4th edition PMBOK® Guide is an improvement from previous versions and is receiving favorable reactions, partly because of its documented evolution of the profession and partly due to clarification of materials and improved graphics. Where the 3rd edition made a much better point of the reiterative and cyclical nature of project management, the 4th edition continues to clarify process names and descriptions. A full list of changes is included in Appendix A of the 4th edition Guide.

What is surprising to some people at first is that the look of the 4th edition cover is quite similar in coloring and style to the 3rd edition, so that the two versions could be mistaken for each other. This makes sense when you look at the big picture of all the standards that PMI produces, providing consistency among standards. A gold and brown book is the standard for project management, green is for program management, etc.

If there is a negative side to the new Guide, it is that PMI will no longer send CDs of the PMBOK® Guide to members. They do have the Guide available for download, but due to enhanced security and copyright protections on their end, it has been difficult for some people to download their copy. PMI is working to solve this problem.

How will the changes affect practitioners?

Practitioners want to know how the changes to the new Guide will affect how they manage projects. One theme that PMI is continuing is to emphasize and outline in the guide good practices, and that these have to be tailored to and for each project.

As stated before, the new Guide has expanded on the types of good practices covered as well as their descriptions, where necessary. Certain terms were clarified, such as:

There is less overlap and confusion between the Enterprise Environmental Factors and Organizational Process Assets.
There is now a better definition of the difference between the PM Plan and project documents, outlined in a summary table in the PMBOK® Guide, Appendix A.
An expansion of the list of constraints, so that the term triple constraint has been removed and a variety of constraints simply listed, such as scope, quality, schedule, budget, resources and risk. A graphic depiction of this would have been nice vs. simply a list.

As with previous editions, the 4th edition has new inputs, outputs, tools and expanded descriptions. Many of the items PMI has added to the Guide are items that were implied or organized in a different way in the prior version. Some of these are listed in more detail further in this paper.

One example of a good expansion of explanation is on page 9 of the 4th edition PMBOK® Guide in the table called Comparative Overview of Project, Program and Portfolio Management. Where there was only a brief mention of portfolio management in Chapter 1 of the 3rd edition Guide, there is now a table comparing projects to programs to portfolios in the areas of scope, change, planning, management, success, and monitoring. These are also referenced more in the 4th edition Guide, such as when portfolio managers and the portfolio review board are listed as possible stakeholders in a project.