Jim Owens: May the Fourth be with you! PMBOK Fourth changes Part 2/2

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The Quality Baseline has gone in this edition, but greater emphasis has been placed on the scope baseline (comprising the project scope statement, the WBS and the WBS dictionary.

Life Cycle needed work

It was felt that the Third Edition Life Cycle and project needed some rework and further explanation. This has been addressed in Chapter 2, where you will also find in-depth information on types of project stakeholders.

Lite process descriptions

Process descriptions at the start of each process have been slimmed down, in many cases to one sentence. This makes them easier to understand, and they are repeated at the beginning of the Knowledge area chapter, so you don’t have to flip back to read them.

Note this one though:

6.4 Estimate Activity Durations has changed from “Estimating the number of work periods” to “Approximating the number of work periods”. Yes folks, it’s all about consistency J

More graphic detail

More graphs and charts have been added to Chapter 8, Cost Management, and more detail on the cost of quality.

Preliminary Scope Developments

The “Develop Preliminary Scope Statement” process has been merged into the “Define Scope” process, so Integration Management has gone down to 6 processes. That’s fine because it’s such a lightweight operation that it doesn’t need its own process. Personally I think it really belongs in Integration Management, but it will do no harm where it’s been moved.

Call Collect

A new process that they call “Collect Requirements” appears where “Scope Planning” used to be. It doesn’t replace it per se (as I have seen other authors claim) as it has a different function.

The main outputs of this process are the Requirements Management Plan and the Requirements Traceability Matrix and Requirements documentation.

Welcome back PERT!

In the Third edition, Three Point Estimating – a simple average of Optimistic, Most Likely, and pessimistic estimates i.e.:

(O+M+P)/3

replaced PERT estimates, a weighted average, whose formula is:

(O+4M+P)/6

so that meant that PERT dropped off the exam.

The optimists thought it was gone for ever, but the pessimists thought it was 4 times most likely to return.

The pessimists were right! In the Fourth Edition, the formula for PERT is explicitly stated, and it is also compared with Three Point Estimates, so that means PERT could appear on the exam again. So learn the formula, it’s very easy and could possibly mean an easy exam point (or three).

Although the Third Edition Glossary said that the Three Point Estimate could be used for both cost and time estimates, it appeared only in Time Management.In the Fourth Edition, Three Point Estimating, has been added to Cost as well.

Note that in both Time and Cost chapters it now appears as a “Tool & Technique”.

Performance Anxiety

The Control Costs process now has TCPI (To-Complete Performance Index) explicitly as a Tool & Technique. I know I’ve explained this concept a number of times on PMHub, and it appears in exam questions, so it’s good to see it in described in PMBOK. This means that it’s something CAPM’s need to know about as well.

TCPI is “the calculated projection of cost performance that must be achieved on the remaining work to meet a specified management goal”.

Inactive WBS?

In Time Management, Define Activities, at first glance it looks like the WBS, WBS Dictionary and Project Scope Statement do not appear to be inputs, yet they are essential to the process.

The reason why they do not appear to be there is because now they are now rolled up in the Scope Baseline.

This highlights the importance of knowing what the Scope Baseline is for the exam.

Not Approved

One area that does give me problems though is the removal of Requested Changes from the Define Activities outputs, I believe it should be there, but for the exam, know that it’s not.

And if you look at the next process – Sequence Activities – you will notice that is no longer has “Approved Change Requests” as an input.

Stakeholders

The previous “Communications Planning” process has been split in two, “Identify Stakeholders” and “Plan Communications”.

Identifying the project stakeholders was implicit in the old Communications Planning. Although it doesn’t seem sufficiently complicated to warrant its own process, it is important and so highlighting it in this way will do no harm.

This process increases the process count in Communications management to five.

The process “Manage Stakeholders” has been replaced by “Manage Stakeholder Expectations”. This makes sense insofar as managing stakeholders is like herding cats, you are not really managing them stakeholders, you are managing communications with them, to reduce surprises and shocks. Additionally, the process has been moved to the executing group, to reflect its proactive nature.

There’s an interesting change in 10.4 Manage Stakeholder Expectations (nee Manage Stakeholders). Dealing with issues is included in this process (as it was previously), and as proof, you can see “Issue log” as an input. But where are the resolved issues recorded?

In PMBOK Third Edition, “Issue log” was also an output.

The answer lies in the accompanying flow diagram. – the Issue log is included in “Project Documents” (as is the Change log). But this appears to detract from the goal of consistency, i.e. project documents listed explicitly as inputs, but implicitly as outputs.

Change for change sake?

You will see minor word substitutions here and there that seem to changed for the sake of change; for example, the definition of Communications Management has changed from

“…includes the processes required to ensure timely and appropriate generation, collection, dissemination, storage, retrieval, and ultimate disposition of project information.”

To:

“…includes the processes required to ensure timely and appropriate generation, collection, distribution, storage, retrieval, and ultimate disposition of project information.”

Hard to spot, isn’t it!

From a project management point of view it makes little or no difference, but from an examination point of view (which is arguably why most people read PMBOK) it does make a difference to those who have studied PMBOK Third Edition, who will be examined on PMBOK Fourth. Because at times PMI will ask questions on key definitions, where four definitions with very similar wording are presented, with one being correct of course. But if minor changes have been made to definitions that you have memorised, it makes the question harder.

Why they changed “dissemination” * to “distribution” is a puzzle, but as I said, it’s only exam contenders, who cut their teeth on PMBOK Third, need to worry.

* Dictionary: Disseminate, “To distribute or spread something, especially information”

Procurements section contracted

Chapter 12 Procurement, has contracted from six processes to four, and removed explicit mention of “Contacting” in the process names.

The four processes are now:

1. Plan Procurements,

2. Conduct Procurements,

3. Administer Procurements, an

4. Close Procurements.

The concept of Teaming Agreements is introduced. Essentially these are temporary legal contractual arrangements between parties or entities for the purpose of harvesting an opportunity.

The wording surrounding Teaming Agreements in PMBOK is sufficiently strong to make me believe that you will be tested in them in the exam.

Conclusion

In all, the PMBOK team at PMI has done a great job, and PMBOK Fourth Edition is a very worthwhile update to the previous edition. The improved consistency, clarifications and additions (soft skills, etc) are all very welcome.

May the Fourth be with you!

Jim Owens PMP

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