How useful are BOKs?

We have the PMBOK® Guide, the APM BoK and many other BoKs and standards ranging from ISO 21500 to the PMI Practice standards.

We personally think they are useful and commit a significant amount of volunteer time to developing standards through PMI and ISO; as are certifications to demonstrate a person has a good understanding of the relevant BoK (and we make money out of running our training courses).

However, we are fully aware that passing a knowledge based credential does not demonstrate competency (and that passing a competency based assessment does not demonstrate transferable knowledge – both are needed see: Developing Competency).

We are also aware that too many organisations place too much emphasis on ‘ticking boxes’ rather then taking time to assess people or optimise solutions. The easy tick in the box may avoid ownership of a problem but also tends to avoid the solution itself……

For these reasons we commend the Association for Project Management (APM – UK, publisher of the APM BoK) for publishing a short video, based on a talk given by our friend and colleague, Dr. Jon Whitty to the APM in Reading UK in Nov last year. I hope it starts you thinking.

See the video: http://www.apm.org.uk/news/courageous-conversation#.UXE_pLXfCSp

PMBOK 5 – Some final thoughts

We are now well into the process of updating materials and writing new questions based on the PMBOK® Guide 5th Edition – From being something new, the book is now becoming increasingly familiar:

• Our daily PMP question has had a 5th Edition reference for the last 3 months, you can follow the questions on Twitter: see today’s question (the questions are good for PMP, CAPM and PMI-SP)
• Updates to our CAPM, PMP and PMI-SP courses are planned and under development – our new Mentored Email™ courses will start in late April.
• Our last classroom course based on the 4th Edition will be at the end of May 
• The PMI examination date changes are:
  - CAPM 1st July
  - PMP 1st August
  - PMI-SP 1st September
• The initial rush of people interested in buying the 5th Edition has subsided and we are effectively out of stock of the 4th Edition. 

Overall as we become more familiar with the 5th Edition we are finding it to be a significant improvement. There are certainly a few issues and problems highlighted in earlier posts in this series (view the full series) but the enhancements significantly outweigh the odd regression.

One of the minor but important improvements is he ranges for cost estimates are back to the industry standards of -25% to +75% for ROM and -5% to +10% for detailed estimates. This pessimistic shift in the ranges more accurately reflects reality.

The rearrangement of the first three chapters is also significant and is aligned with the standards for Program and Portfolio management:

• Chapter 1 sets the scene with:
  - definitions of a project and project management,
  - discussion of the relationships between project, program and portfolio management, in the context of organizational project management,- Discussions of the relationship between project management, operations management, strategy and business value
  - the role of the project manager.
• Chapter 2 focuses on organisational influences including the influence of project stakeholders and governance on the project team and the overall project lifecycle.
• Chapter 3 looks at project management processes and the structure of the rest of the PMBOK.

The reorganisation of this front section, facilitated in part by the move of the ANSI standard to Annex A1 is probably the quiet achievement in the standard. The section flows far more sensibly and logically than in previous editions.

In conclusion – the quality of the PMBOK® Guide 5th Edition has been enhanced by hundreds of small changes that make the work of transitioning our course materials hard work and will certainly require some hard work from anyone who has to update their exam preparation.

So a word of warning: If you are trained for the current exam make sure you sit before the change over dates – PMI do not have any flexibility in the timing of the system changes!! This includes re-sits. After the change over date, all new exams are based on the new standards.

But once through these changes we certainly have a better book for the next 4 years and the development team deserve congratulations for a job well done.

PMBOK® Guide 5th Edition – Some Technical Differences

We are busily working through the PMBOK® Guide 5th Edition updating Mosaic’s PMI training courses ready for the scheduled examination changes. Three of the more technical changes we have discovered (out of many) are:

The Good:
Quality management has been tidied up. The seven basic tools of quality management are now dealt with in on place, once, in 8.1.2.3 and referenced through the rest of the chapter. The ‘magnificent 7’ are: Cause and Effect Diagrams, Flow charts, Checksheets (checklist), Pareto Diagrams, histograms, control charts and scatter diagrams. Other specific techniques are discussed in the appropriate process. There is also an attempt to relate the different project/quality cycles including the basic process groups, the ‘Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle, the cost of quality and quality assurance and control.

The Bad:
Monte Carlo is missing from Time Management and Cost Management! One area that needs a major update in the 6th Edition are the aspects of time and cost management focused on three point estimates and variability. Monte Carlo has been moved out of these sections into the Risk chapter, and is defined as the source of ‘contingencies’ and as a means of ‘simulating’ schedule outcomes. Very little is included about the ways simulation through Monte Carlo are developed or used. In particular, there is no discussion of how different distributions should be chosen based on the available data. Understanding the range of potential outcomes is a critical time and cost management process as is the interactions between time and cost. The treatment in the Risk chapter is not bad, just in the wrong place, hopefully in the 6th Edition the consideration of modelling outcomes will move back into the Time and Cost chapters Or there will be far clearer links drawn between the development of the raw data and its use in cost and time management.

The Ugly:
For some reason PMI keeps bringing PERT back into consideration, ensuring the unfortunate confusion around PERT will persist for another 4 years at least! The completely inaccurate reference to ‘PERT Cost’ that crept into the 4th Edition has been killed off but the concept has reappeared in Duration Estimating (6.5.2.4), Quality Assurance (8.2.2.1) and the glossary.

There is nothing wrong with PERT being in the PMBOK if the technique is defined properly. PERT is a simplistic technique that applies a modified beta distribution and an approximation of the calculation for Standard Deviation (a polite term for inaccurate), to the activities on the critical path in a single calculation to determine the mean completion date (p50) and the effect of adding 1 Standard Deviation to approximate the p80 completion (ie, the date with an 80% probability of being achieved or bettered). PERT is prone to errors including the ‘PERT Merge Bias’ which describes the effect of a nominally sub-critical path finishing later than the critical path.

However, PERT is not synonymous with three point estimating despite a number of software vendors making the same mistake and using a ‘cute name’ to make their uncertainty calculations sound sexy. Any computation that involves simulation, different distribution options or calculating the whole network is not PERT.

PERT has an important place in history and is a useful teaching tool because you can do the calculations manually. But confusing this venerable technique with simulation and three point estimating helps no one and creates a significant communication problem – when a planner says he has done a PERT analysis you have no idea if this means a full Monte Carlo simulation, a manual PERT calculation described above or something in between. As a professional body PMI has let everyone down perpetuating this confusion.

The End:
Overall the PMBOK® Guide 5th Edition is still a significant improvement; our earlier posts have highlighted many of these changes:

To read our earlier comments:
http://mosaicprojects.wordpress.com/category/training/pmbok5/

To see more on the book:
- In Australia: http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/Books.html#PMI
- Other places: http://marketplace.pmi.org/Pages/Default.aspx

PMBOK #5 standardises its approach to planning

The PMBOK® Guide has always been designed for large projects, and assumes intelligent project teams will scale back the processes appropriately for smaller projects. The 5th Edition keeps this focus and introduces a standard process to ‘plan the planning’ at the start of each knowledge area. This concept has been embedded in earlier editions of the PMBOK, it’s made explicit in the 5th Edition.

Why plan the planning?

As a starting point, on larger projects there will be a significant team of experts involved in developing various aspects of the project plan, on $ multi-billion project frequently more than 100 people so their work needs planning and controlling the same as any other aspect of the project. With a budget of several $ millions and the success of the rest of the project dependent on the quality of the project planning this is important work.

But planning the planning and developing an effective strategy for the accomplishment of the project’s objectives is critically important on every project. If you simply do what you’ve always done there is very little likelihood of improvement. Spend a little time overtly thinking about what needs to be done to first develop the best project plan and then to manage the project effectively can pay huge dividends.

The overriding consideration in developing the plan is Juran’s quality principle of ‘fit for purpose’ you need a plan that is useful and usable that has been developed for the lowest expenditure of time and effort.

To facilitate this, the PMBOK now has process to ‘plan the management’ of: Scope, Time, Cost, Quality, HR, Communication, Risk, Procurement and Stakeholders. These planning processes develop outputs that are integrated within the overall project management plan and describe how each of the specialist areas will be managed. The management plans include the policies, procedures and documentation required for the planning, developing, managing and controlling of each discipline.

Less well developed are two key aspects that can contribute significantly to project success:

• Within the ‘PMBOK’ there is a real need to coordinate and integrate different aspects of the planning. Decisions in one area frequently impose constraints on other disciplines and managing these constraints across multiple sub-teams is vital if the objective of a coordinated and integrated project plan is to be achieved. The project core team need to set parameters for the specialists to work within, possibly at a ‘planning kick-off meeting’ and then manage issues as they arise.
• On a more general level, and applicable to projects of all sizes, there is a need to formulate the project delivery strategy before any realistic planning is possible. Answering the question ‘what’s the best way to achieve our objectives?’ frames the project planning and later the delivery. In software development choosing ‘agile’ over ‘waterfall’ as the delivery strategy changes everything else (for more on managing Agile see: Thoughts on Agile). The project objective of functioning software can be achieved either way, which strategy is best depends on the specific circumstances of the project (See our earlier post on project delivery strategy)

Certainly asking the team to think about what is needed to optimally plan, develop and deliver each knowledge area, will contribute to project success. Maybe the 6th Edition will take the integration of these processes forward.

See our other posts on the PMBOK® Guide 5th Edition.

To buy a copy in Australia see: http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/Book_Sales.html#PMI

PMBOK® Guide 5th Edition now in stock

Stocks of the new PMBOK® Guide 5^th Edition, the Standard for Program Management 3^rd Edition and the Standard for Portfolio Management 3^rd Edition are now in Australia. These updated standards continue PMI’s efforts to enhance their suite of international standards to remain at the forefront of project management standardisation.

We will be posting more comments after a careful read.  Some initial thoughts are in two earlier posts:
PMBOK 5th Edition some key changes #1
The 5th Edition of the PMBOK gets communication!

For more information and to order these new PMI standards for free delivery in Australia visit: http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/Books.html#PMI

Note: These new PMI standards are not required for current examinations – PMI will be updating their examinations in Q3 of 2013 to align with the standards and we will be updating our PMP, CAPM and PMI-SP training in Q2 in readiness for the change over.

Why are schedules failing?

There seems to be fairly wide consensus that the modern practice of scheduling is not delivering the results needed to help projects succeed.

My feeling is that with a few notable exceptions the underpinning ideas of the Critical Path Method (CPM) of scheduling developed in the 1950s and 60s have been forgotten and most software and most scheduling practice uses ideas from the 18th century.

The concept of Bar Charts was developed in the 18th century (or possibly earlier). Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) published his ‘Chart of Biography’:

He is quoted as saying “…a longer or a shorter space of time may be most commodiously and advantageously represented by a longer or a shorter line.”

A few years later a full range of modern charts were published by William Playfair (1759-1823) in his ‘Commercial and Political Atlas’ of 1786:

By the end of the 19th century sophisticated barcharts appear to have been in general use (at least in Europe – the project below was built in 1910):

For more on the early development of scheduling see A Brief History of Scheduling.

Henry Gantt developed his production management systems for factories in the early part of the 20th century with a range of charts designed as production monitoring and control tools:

Importantly Gantt did not use simple bar charts and had no interest in one-off projects. He was focused on machine shop efficiency and production quotas:

For more on his work see: Henry L. Gantt – A Retrospective view of his work.

CPM and PERT were invented in 1957 as computer based analytic models:

Importantly, in both systems, planning the logic and entering the information into the computer precedes calculating the schedule. Both CPM and PERT used ADM networks:

The ‘precedence diagram’ (PDM) network was published in 1961 as a simplified manual process to make CPM available to people without access to expensive mainframe computer time – in the PDM system as published drawing the logic diagram also precedes calculating the schedule.

There is no question CPM offered significant advantages over the traditional bar charts that had been in use for more that 100 years. In my view, the major advance that generated the improved project outcomes was the need to think through the work logically, focusing on the activities and sequence of work before any attempt to schedule the project was possible. This was equally true of both the mainframe systems and the manual systems in use through the 1960s and 70s. James Kelley (co-inventor of CPM) had a very similar view.

The same concept of good practice is embedded in the PMBOK® Guide. The separate processes in the 5th Edition are:
6.1 – Plan schedule
6.2 – Define Activities
6.3 – Sequence Activities
6.4 – Estimate Resources
6.5 – Estimate Durations
6.6 – Develop Schedule
6.7 – Control Schedule

CPM was recognised as an improvement on bar chart planning! So my question is: If CPM scheduling is supposed to be a logical process why do so many scheduling tools default to, and planners work from, 250 year old Bar Charts? Is this the cause of scheduling failures?

There are tools around that default to creating the schedule logic in a network diagram but they are in the minority. I will be discussing one of these at the Construction CPM conference in New Orleans later this month (see: http://www.constructioncpm.com/). Micro Planner X-Pert is a true CPM System that supports the PMBOK® Guide schedule development process:

And lets you chose the networking style PDM or ADM:

For more on Micro Planner see: http://www.microplanning.com.au/

But back to the key question, is scheduling failing through lack of skills and training, a lack of knowledge, poor techniques focused on 250 year old bar charts or some other reason?

The 15,000 articles a month downloaded from our planning resource page, suggest a strong interest in planning and scheduling but this interest does not seem to be reflected in the status or planners or project outcomes. I look forward to the discussions….

Communication!

The recently released Sixth edition of the APM-BoK consists of four major sections: context, people, delivery and interfaces. Typical ‘hard’ project management processes such as scope, schedule, cost, resource, risk, integration and quality comes in the section focused on delivery. This is after the section concerned with people and interpersonal skills and the first area featured in the APM-BOK under the people area is communication. The APM-BoK recognises that communication is fundamental to the project management environment, and makes a very powerful statement: “None of the tools and techniques described in this body of knowledge will work without effective communication”.

To an extent the PMBOK is playing ‘catch-up’ with other key standards including the Association of Project Management (UK) Body of Knowledge (APM-BoK) 6th Edition and ISO 21500. The good news is all three standards now see identifying the important stakeholders in and around a project or program and then communicating effectively with each stakeholder as the fundamental driver of success.

The recently released Sixth edition of the APM-BoK consists of four major sections: context, people, delivery and interfaces. Typical ‘hard’ project management processes such as scope, schedule, cost, resource, risk, integration and quality comes in the section focused on delivery. This is after the section concerned with people and interpersonal skills and the first area featured in the APM-BOK under the people area is communication. The APM-BoK recognises that communication is fundamental to the project management environment, and makes a very powerful statement: “None of the tools and techniques described in this body of knowledge will work without effective communication”.

The PMBOK® Guide 5th Edition has followed PMI’s standard practice of retaining existing chapters and adding new sections at the back so the positional prominence in the APM-BoK is not possible. However understanding the changes between the 4th and 5th Editions and comparing these to ISO 21500 does show the extent of the increased focus in the PMBOK on communication and the stakeholders you communicate with.

MANAGE STAKEHOLDERS

This is a new section in the PMBOK® Guide 5th Edition (Chapter 13). It is based on two processes moved from the communication section of the 4th edition and has been expanded.

Identify stakeholders is a beefed up version of the same process in the 4th Edition, focused on understanding who the project’s stakeholders are.

Plan Stakeholder Management is a new process that describes how the stakeholder community will be are analysed, the current and desired levels of engagement defined and the interrelationships between stakeholders identified. It highlights the fact that levels of engagement may change over time.

Manage stakeholders remains basically the same as in the 4th Edition and is similarly defined in ISO 21500.

Control Stakeholder Management is a new process that ensures new stakeholders are identified, current stakeholders are reassessed and stakeholders no longer involved in the project are removed from the communication plan. The process requires the on-going monitoring of changes in stakeholder relationships the effectiveness of the engagement strategy, and when required, the adaption of the stakeholder management strategy to deal with the changed circumstances.

As with ISO 21500, the early parts of the PMBOK discussing the management or projects in organisations also has a strong emphasis on stakeholders (Chapters 1, 2 and 3).

COMMUNICATIONS MANAGEMENT

This section of the PMBOK® Guide 5th Edition has been consolidated and expanded and is very similar to ISO 21500 in its effect.

Plan Communications remains basically unchanged, the key input is the stakeholder analysis.

Manage Communications is a new process that amalgamate the 4th Edition processes of Distribute Information and Report Performance, and in doing so removes a lot of unnecessary confusion. This new process goes beyond the distribution of relevant information and seeks to ensure that the information being communicated to project stakeholders has been received and understood, and also provides opportunities for stakeholders to make further information requests. ISO 21500 has an interesting additional function (not in the PMBOK) which is the management of the distribution of information from stakeholders to the project in order to provide inputs to other processes such as risk management.

Control Communications is a new process that identifies and resolves communications issues, and ensures communication needs are satisfied. The outputs are accurate and timely information (resolved communications issues) and change requests, primarily to the communication plan.

Summary

Communication is the means by which information or instructions are exchanged! Communication is the underpinning skill needed to gather the information needed to make project decisions and to disseminate the results from all of the traditional ‘hard skills’ including cost, time, scope, quality and risk management. Good communication makes these processes effective, whereas poor communication leads to misunderstood requirements, unclear goals, the alienation of stakeholders, ineffective plans and many other factors leading to failure.

The common theme across all three standards is that communicating the right information to the right stakeholders in the right way (and remembering communication is a two-way process) is fundamental to success. The basic requirement is to deal effectively and fairly with people, their needs, expectations, wants, preferences and ultimately their values – projects are done by people for people and the only way to influence people is through effective communication.

Project communication skills include expectation management, building trust, gaining user acceptance, stakeholder and relationship management, influencing, negotiation, conflict resolution, delegation, and escalation.

What’s really pleasing to me is how similar these ‘standard’ requirements are to the ideas embedded in my Stakeholder Circle®methodology, books, blogs, White Papers and tools. I have no idea how much influence my writings have had on the various standards development teams but it is pleasing to see a very common set of ‘best practices’ emerging around the world. Now all we need is the management will to implement the processes to improve project and program outcomes.

PMBOK 5th Edition some key changes #1

We are starting work on the updates to our training courses (for the change dates see: Examination Updates) and rather like most of the enhancements in the 5th Edition (due for publication on 31st December). Over the next few months we will be posting a number of commentaries on the changes and improvements. This post looks at some of the key changes.

The new PMBOK® guide now has 47 processes (up from 42) and a new Knowledge Area:

Four planning processes have been added: Plan Scope Management (back from the 3rd Edition), Plan Schedule Management, Plan Cost Management, and Plan Stakeholder Management. This change provides clearer guidance for the concept that each major Knowledge Area has a need for the project team to actively think through how the related processes will be planned and managed, and that each of the subsidiary plans are integrated through the overall project management plan, which is the major planning document for guiding further project planning and execution.

The addition of a new knowledge area called ‘Stakeholder Management’ has been created making 10 Knowledge areas. In keeping with the evolution of thinking regarding stakeholder management within projects, this new Knowledge Area has been added addressing Project Stakeholder Management. Information on stakeholder identification and managing stakeholder expectations has been moved from Project Communications Management to this new Knowledge Area to expand upon and increase the focus on the importance of appropriately engaging project stakeholders in the key decisions and activities associated with the project. New processes were added for Plan Stakeholder Management and Control Stakeholder Engagement. We will be discussing this important initiative in later posts.

Data flows and knowledge management concepts have been enhanced:

The PMBOK® Guide now conforms to the DIKW (data, information, knowledge, wisdom) model used in the field of Knowledge Management. Information/Data is segregated into three phases:

Work Performance Data. The raw observations and measurements identified during the performance of the project work, such as measuring the percent of work physically completed.

Work Performance Information. The results from the analysis of the performance data, integrated across areas such as the implementation status of change requests, or forecasts to complete.

Work Performance Reports. The physical or electronic representation of work performance information compiled in project documents, intended to generate decisions, actions, or awareness.

Understanding the information in the reports and making wise decisions are functions of the competence of the individual manager reading the report and are therefore beyond the scope of a process (for more on effective communication visit our PM Knowledge Index )

Annex A1 – The Standard for Project Management of a Project created.

This new annex has been designed to serve as a standalone document. This positions the Standard for Project Management away from the main body of the PMBOK® Guide material allowing the evolution of the Body of Knowledge material to be separated from the actual Standard for Project Management. Chapter 3 remains as the bridge between Sections 1 and 2 and the Knowledge Area sections and introduces the project management processes and Process Groups as in the previous editions of the PMBOK® Guide.

More on the improvements next time – in the interim, from now onward our daily question will be Tweeted with reference to both the 4th and the 5th Editions of the PMBOK® Guide: see today’s question.

PMBOK® Guide and Examination Updates

The 5th Edition of the PMBOK® Guide will be published on the 31st December 2012 and PMI will be updating its credential exams in Q3 of 2013. The new examinations for the credentials we offer courses for are:
PMP®         31 July 2013
CAPM®      31 July 2013
PMI-SP®   31 August 2013

Mosaic’s courses will updated during the second quarter of 2013 to prepare trainees for the new examinations.

Free PMP Questions

Over the years we have collected 1000s of practice questions for our PMP, CAPM and PMI-SP exam prep courses, far more then we need. Rather than simply keeping them we have decided to publish a ‘daily question’ for you to have fun with… Our current stock of question means there will be no repeats for the next 3 years!

If you already hold a PMI credential, the questions will help retain the knowledge you learned when studying.

If you are still studying for a credential, the questions will help with your practice. Each question comes with an answer and is graded √  ? or X for each exam:
√ = Applies to the examination (PMP, CAPM or PMI-SP)
? = Useful but probably too hard
X = Probably not relevant

To round out the page we are also posting a ‘Weekly Tip’ for Project Managers.

Today’s daily question is posted at: http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/Training-PMP-Q-Today.html – When you think you know the right answer click through to the answer page to see today’s question & answer plus the Q&As sent earlier in the week.

So you don’t miss any of the questions, we are Tweeting the daily question – you can click to ‘Follow’ the questions through our dedicated: @PMPQuestions. If you find the questions ‘fun’ – reTweet to your friends and colleagues, the more people following the questions, the more encouragement for us to keep going.

Good luck!!