A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), Seventh Edition
About this book
The seventh edition moved away from the process groups and knowledge areas of earlier editions and reorganised the guide around twelve principles and eight performance domains. It is published together with The Standard for Project Management, which carries the principles, while the guide itself covers the domains, tailoring, and a section of models, methods and artefacts. The change makes the guide method neutral, so predictive, adaptive and hybrid approaches sit alongside each other rather than one being treated as the exception. Anyone who learned the earlier structure should come to it knowing that the familiar list of processes is no longer the organising idea. Read it as the reference behind PMI examinations and as the vocabulary many organisations use in their project governance.
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Topics
Related concepts
- Project closureFinal acceptance, contract closure, releasing resources and archiving records, why a cancelled project is closed the same way, and the difference between a deliverable being accepted and a benefit being realised.
- Integrated change controlWhy a change to a baseline is a decision, the path a change request takes from submission to a reissued baseline, who may approve one and how the same problem appears on adaptive work.
- Project governanceThe framework of decision rights on a project, meaning who decides what, at which thresholds and on what evidence, and why writing it down makes delivery faster.
- Earned value managementPlanned value, earned value and actual cost, the variances and indices built from them, the forecasts that follow, and how to read each figure as a sentence.
- The PMBOK principlesSix principles carry the mindset the eighth edition expects of a project manager. They set a direction for judgement, and none of them prescribes an action.
- Performance domains and processesSeven performance domains name the areas a project has to perform in, five focus areas name the points in its life where work happens, and forty processes sit at the intersection.
- Procurement and contractsMake or buy as an economic decision, the fixed price, cost reimbursable and time and materials families and who carries the risk under each, the procurement cycle, and why a contract type is a relationship.
- Project cost managementHow a project moves from an estimate to a cost baseline to a funding requirement, where contingency and management reserve sit relative to each, and what it means to control spend.