PMI’s PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) Guide – Sixth Edition

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PMI will be releasing the latest version of PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) Guide – Sixth Edition soon. This version has been better enhanced to further the knowledge of the project management discipline. The scope of changes include the following areas:

Knowledge area renaming for some areas
Knowledge area elaboration for some knowledge areas
Some knowledge areas haven’t been changed
Introduction of new content and concepts in certain knowledge areas based on the real-life practices of project managers

New Changes in the Sixth Edition of PMBOK

Specifically, according to PMI, here are the primary changes in the sixth edition of the PMBOK guide.

New content in the three section of the PMBOK guide
Associating project objectives with the strategic objectives of the organization
Increased clarity on the role of the project manager
Knowledge to help project managers get better insights into viewing their role as a project manager that in turn can help them lead projects more effectively
More content in the knowledge areas
Project integration management – Activities are added related to managing the knowledge that is generated during the project. This includes lessons learned and other artifacts. Better management of this activity can help disseminate the knowledge to project teams more effectively increasing productivity.
Project Scope Management – Relationship and interactions between project managers and business analysts in managing and controlling scope.
Perform Quality Assurance – This knowledge area has been replaced with “Manage Quality”. This is because, in many organizations, quality is managed outside the project. So, this ensures that even in those cases, the project managers are always managing quality in their projects.
There are some sections and knowledge areas that have been renamed. More specifically, “Project Time Management” has been replaced with “Project Schedule Management” because in reality that’s what that knowledge area is about, which is to manage the schedule of the project and not to manage time.
The second knowledge area that has been renamed is “Project Human Resources Management”. This is because each project has other resources other than “human resources” that have to be managed as well. Therefore, this knowledge area has been renamed to “Project Resources Management.”
Knowledge area related to “Project Communications Management” hasn’t been changed much in the sixth edition of the PMBOK guide but more clarity has been provided related to “communication” and “communications” and how they are different and impact the overall project communications.
In Project Risk Management a number of changes have been introduced. The important change has been that this section now addresses the overall project risk and not just “event-driven” risk. Also, in project risk management, an “escalate” function has been added to enable risks to be escalated to program and portfolio levels, especially when projects are part of programs and portfolios.
The “Project Procurement” knowledge area has been redone to make the focus more international based to account for worldwide procurement.
Project Stakeholder Management – similar to program management, the knowledge area has been renamed to “Project Stakeholder Engagement” as that’s what a project manager usually does, which is to engage with project stakeholders rather than manager stakeholders. Stakeholders can come from all parts of the organization and external to the organization and they can’t be “managed” in the traditional sense. The correct way is to engage with them and to have a plan to engage with them. That’s what’s different in the sixth edition of the PMBOK guide.