Jim Owens: May the Fourth be with you! PMBOK 4 changes Part 1/2

I’ve just returned from Mars, and so I thought it’s time I had a look at PMBOK Fourth Edition.

Iron ore mine Flat-pack truck. Photo by Jim Owens PMP

Actually I was at an Iron ore mine in Western Australia. An Artist friend went there to paint for a few weeks last year, and she sent back an email:

“Painted some great pictures, but please send LOTS more red paint!”

How PMBOK has changed over the years! I first started studying PMBOK for my PMP exam early in 1998, using the PMBOK 1996 version, which I still have by the way. PMBOK 96 was of course a quantum leap forward on the first edition in 1987. And then we had the 2000 edition with quite a few more changes, then 2004 saw another quantum leap with the “Supersize Me” Third Edition.

The Fourth Edition makes a lot of changes that should have appeared in the Third Edition – so few surprises with these!

Many of the changes are not major, and so this could not be classed as a quantum leap again, which is what one would expect because the PMBOK has matured to a stage when further major rewrites are unlikely.

Having said that, and despite advice you might read elsewhere (about the changes not being many) don’t be caught napping, there are a stack of changes in this release, and a lot more than you might think at first glance.

In fact I would expect that someone with a good knowledge of PMBOK Third edition would still need to spend quite some time re-learning enough to pass the new PMP/CAPM exams, and there are many traps for the unwary.

This means that I might have to redo all my Exam Tips for PMBOK Fourth Edition L

And as noted below, there is no period of grace with this changeover; after the change-over date you will be examined on Fourth Edition.

Freeloaders

As with PMBOK Third Edition, financial PMI members can download the new PMBOK free from the PMI.org site. You still can’t copy and paste from it (can’t understand the logic behind that) but at least you can print it, which is a big help, because despite all the advances and advantages of computers, people still need paper copies too, to help with studying..

Maybe the Kindle reading device will change that – if someone wants to give me a free kindle, I’d be happy to test it J.

Warning: Don’t be tempted to give a copy of your e-PMBOK to your friends, as the PDF file will be “watermarked” with your identity and it requires your PMI password each time you want to open it.

There’s no such thing as a free CD

On the slightly negative side, PMI no longer seem to send out PMBOK on a CD ROM to members, so if you have a poor Internet connection, or don’t know how to hack into your neighbour’s wireless Internet, or forget your PMI password, it could take a while for you to obtain a copy.

The times they are a-changing

During a leadership group meeting with PMI over a year ago, they assured me that the exams would not change until 2010, but in fact they are changing in 2009.

The change to the exams happens on June, July and August:

PMP 30 Jun 2009

CAPM 31 Jul 2009

PMI-SPSM 31 Aug 2009

PMI-RMPSM 31 Aug 2009

PgMP 31 Aug 2009

Important: Unlike the change to PMBOK Third Edition exam in 2005, all exams this time will switch to PMBOK Fourth Edition on the set dates – no exceptions!

So if you take an exam after this date, you will be tested on PMBOK four.

And if you fail a Third Edition exam, you will have to re-sit a Fourth edition exam, if it occurs after these cut-off dates.

The Changes

And now to the actual changes. As I’ve already mentioned, a lot of the changes are intended to clean up the Third Edition, and give it the same look and feel across the various sections (which is what they claimed they had done in the Third Edition).

The PMBOK has always suffered from the various sections being produced by different groups, who didn’t seem to communicate as well as they should. But the demarcation is much less obvious this time.

Other sources suggest the changes are small – don’t believe it, I’m updating my training course at the moment and almost every slide is changing. There are subtle wording changes everywhere, to improve readability (which it does, in most places) but all these changes translate to changes in exam questions too.

When people speak of the changes being relatively light, that is true from the perspective of a practicing project manager using PMBOK in the course of business – but they are not that minor from the point of view of someone studying for the exam.

The biggest changes may be for CAPM candidates, because topics that were examinable just for PMPs, are now fair game for the CAPM exam too, as a CAPM can be examined on anything in PMBOK.

Other attempts to improve readability fall flat IMHO, and others muddy the waters, such as the wording in “Create WBS”. PMBOK has always struggled with the WBS, which is essentially a very simple concept, and parts of the Fourth Edition seem less clear than the Third.

Project, Programme, Portfolio

Chapters 1 and 2 of the new PMBOK have been aligned with the Standard for Programme Management: 2^nd Edition and the Standard for Portfolio Management: 2^nd Edition (you will probably see these chapters change again in the Fifth Edition).

These changes, along with further elaboration on projects, programmes and portfolios (and their respective managers) mean of course, you can expect questions on the differences between projects, portfolios and programmes.

Go with the flow

The hard-to-understand process flow diagrams have gone, and in their place a data flow diagram has been inserted before each process.

In Order

PMBOK Fourth has attempted to be more consistent with sequencing inputs and outputs (this should not affect the exam, as just the actual inputs and outputs are examinable, rather than their order).

For example, when a process has EEF (enterprise environmental factors) and OPA (organisational process assets) as inputs, these appear last in the list. I think I would have been inclined to place them first (as you need to consult them first), but as I said, this does not impact the exam.

The Sextuple Constraint

The classic project management triple-constraint (scope, cost, schedule, or variations thereof) has been supersized as well, with the addition of budget, resources and risk (maybe you can remember it by “Super Sized Cheese Burgers Risk Rotundness” J).

This change makes sense from a theoretical point of view, because the triple constraint was too simplistic, and you will need to remember the list for the exam.

Depicting these multiple constraints graphically could be fun though, because previously we had a cute triangle – but what sort of diagram would you use now, and would it have to be 3-dimentional.

Arrows have no point

The venerable Activity On Arrow (or Arrow Diagramming Method) has finally gone. I think PMBOK finally realised that John Fondahl came up with a better method in 1961, i.e. PDM. And accordingly, AOA is no longer a Tool & Technique of “Sequence Activities” in Time management

Also gone are the conditional diagramming methods, GERT and Systems Dynamics. If you don’t know what they are, don’t worry – they’ve gone.

Do-Stuff

Process names have been standardised on “verb-noun” format, this is a welcome change because consistency makes it easier to remember things. For example, “Risk Identification” becomes “Identify Risks”, “Performance Reporting” becomes “Report Performance”, “Scope Definition” becomes “Define Scope”, and so on.

So if you see something in the exam that looks like it might be a process, but it’s not in “verb-noun” format, then you’ll know it’s not a process. But of course going from the Third Edition to the Fourth, you will have quite some relearning to do.

Undercover Inputs

Another change to the inputs that WILL impact the exam is that the Project Plan will no longer be shown as an input to any planning processes.

I think I can see why they have done this (although I don’t agree with it). I normally advise students not to memorise lists of ITTO’s (Inputs, Tools, Techniques, Outputs) but rather, understand WHY they are there – but this change makes that method a bit more difficult.

The Project Plan however remains as an input to monitoring and controlling processes. The Fourth Edition team was charged with improving the consistency of PMBOK, but in this instance I believe some consistency has been lost, and perhaps we might see this decision reversed in a later edition, because planning is iterated throughout the project, it’s not a once-off, so it should be in the planning inputs.

What they have done though is clarify the use of the Project Plan where it does appear as an input, by adding details the sub-plan of the project Plan that is actually required in each instance.

Project Documents

The next change that will impact the exam is the concept of “Project Documents”, That is, documents that are not part of the Project Plan, but are still necessary to manage the project – a “shadow project plan”, as I call it. In real life this segregation is not so clear, but be prepared for questions like, “All the following are contained in the project plan, except…”

Project documents are largely the “scratchpad” type items, such as estimates, logs, checklists, etc. A full list can be found in Appendix A of PMBOK (page 350).

I find it unusual that Activity Attributes and Quality Checklists etc are in this list, but for the exam all you need to know is that they are.

PMBOK Fourth Edition says, “While project documents are used to assist the project manager in managing the project, they are not part of the project management plan”.

Charter and Scope Statement

The Charter and Scope Statement received a long-overdue overhaul, as there were areas of overlap.

Wanted: “Soft” Project Managers

Project managers have traditionally been good in the “hard skills” areas (technical areas) and not so good in the “soft skills” (interpersonal, influencing, motivating, etc) and so the Appendix G (page 417) and Chapter 9 HR management, Develop Project Team and Manage Project Team processes, includes considerable detail on interpersonal skills, intended to highlight this very important part of the PM’s role. It’s part of what good PMP instructors have been teaching their students for many years, so it shouldn’t raise many problems for PMP students.

This means that CAPM’s will need to learn about the Soft Skills too, because traditionally the PMP exam is 60% PMBOK and CAPM is 100%, so CAPM’s theoretically didn’t need to know much in this area (to pass the exam, not to be PMs) but now that it is enshrined in PMBOK, it can be on the CAPM exam too. So read it ten times.

The Tools & Techniques for soft skills are listed in Chapter 9, but much of the detail is relegated to Appendix G, as it was felt (J) that these skills should not be considered part of a standard.

But of course, just about anything that appears between the front and back covers (except the publishing details and history of the PMBOK) can be used in the exam.

The skills listed are:

· Leadership

· Team building

· Motivation

· Communication

· Influencing

· Decision making

· Political and cultural awareness

· Negotiation

PMBOK says, “The project management team can greatly reduce problems and increase cooperation by understanding the sentiments of project team members, anticipating their actions, acknowledging their concerns, and following up on their issues. Skills such as empathy, influence, creativity, and group facilitation are valuable assets when managing the project team.”

Another change to HR management is that the Manage Project Team process was moved to the executing process group, from the monitoring and controlling group.

They’ve even changed the Changes

Change requests, corrective actions, preventive actions and defect repairs are now grouped under the heading of “Change requests”. But often the type of change (preventive or corrective action) is highlighted, with examples.

Continued in Part 2…

Related posts:

1. Roger Chou, PgMP: The Differences between the Third and Fourth Editions of the PMBOK ® Guide
2. John P. Reiling: Preparing for the PMP or CAPM Exams: PMBOK 3rd or 4th Edition?
3. Summary of PMBOK 3rd edition vs PMBOK 4th edition & references