Outline Key Differences between the PMBOK 2000 and 2004 Editions
This summary was prepared by Robert Perrine to describe the structural changes to the PMBOK 2004.
Additional details are found in Appendix A in the PMBOK.
 
Knowledge Area PMBOK 2004 Prior Version
Integration Develop Project Charter (from Scope / Initiation)
Develop Preliminary Project Scope Statement  
Develop Project Management Plan Project Plan Development
Direct and Manage Project Execution Project Plan Execution
Monitor and Control Project Work  
Integrated Change Control Integrated Change Control
Close Project (from Communications / Administrative Closure)
 
Scope (moved to Integration) Initiation
Scope Planning Scope Planning
Scope Definition Scope Definition
Create WBS (Work Breakdown Structure)  
Scope Verification Scope Verification
Scope Control Scope Change Control
 
Time Activity Definition Activity Definition
Activity Sequencing Activity Sequencing
Activity Resource Estimating (from Cost / Resource Planning)
Activity Duration Estimating Activity Duration Estimating
Schedule Development Schedule Development
Schedule Control Schedule Control
 
Cost (moved to Time) Resource Planning
Cost Estimating Cost Estimating
Cost Budgeting Cost Budgeting
Cost Control Cost Control
 
Quality Quality Planning Quality Planning
Perform Quality Assurance Quality Assurance
Perform Quality Control Quality Control
 
Human Resource Human Resource Planning Organizational Planning
Acquire Project Team Staff Acquisition
Develop Project Team Team Development
Manage Project Team  
 
Communications Communications Planning Communications Planning
Information Distribution Information Distribution
Performance Reporting Performance Reporting
>Manage Stakeholders  
(moved to Integration) Administrative Closure
 
Risk Risk Management Planning Risk Management Planning
Risk Identification Risk Identification
Qualitative Risk Analysis Qualitative Risk Analysis
Quantitative Risk Analysis Quantitative Risk Analysis
Risk Response Planning Risk Response Planning
Risk Monitoring and Control Risk Monitoring and Control
 
Procurement Plan Purchases and Acquisitions Procurement Planning
Plan Contracting Solicitation Planning
Request Seller Responses Solicitation
Select Sellers Source Selection
Contract Administration Contract Administration
Contract Closure Contract Closeout
  • Key Changes to the Processes
      - Recognize that Integration starts earlier and add two processes to replace “Initiation”.
          + Develop Project Charter
          + Develop Preliminary Project Scope Statement
      - Add a few processes to recognize additional aspects of the project managers role.
          + Direct and Manage Project Execution
          + Monitor and Control Project Work
          + Create WBS (Work Breakdown Structure)
          + Manage Project Team
          + Manage Stakeholders
      - Move a couple processes to locations where they fit better.
          + Close Project into Integration rather than Communications.
          + Activity Resource Estimating under Time rather than Cost.
  • Knowledge Areas – There are still 9
      - Project Integration Management
      - Project Scope Management
      - Project Time Management
      - Project Cost Management
      - Project Quality Management
      - Project Human Resource Management
      - Project Communications Management
      - Project Risk Management
      - Project Procurement Management
  • Process Groups – There are still 5
      - Initiating Process Group
      - Planning Process Group
      - Executing Process Group
      - Monitoring and Controlling Process Group – new name
      - Closing Process Group
  • Project Domains – I was surprised to find that this terminology is still missing from the PMBOK
      - Also “Professional Responsibility” is not covered as a topic in the new PMBOK.
      - This implies that the PMP test is going to continue to pull from the Role Delineation Study.
  • Integration – The Knowledge Area with the largest number of changed processes.
      - The charter should either include or reference an external document that includes:
    PMBOK 2004 Project Charter Prior Version
    Assign the project manager while the charter is being developed The project manager is identified in the charter and assigned to the project.
    Projects are usually authorized external to the organization that will execute the project The charter is created by a manager external to the organization that will execute the project.
    Business need Business need
    High level project description High level project description
    Assumptions Assumptions
    Constraints Constraints
    Requirements from: sponsor, customer and other stakeholders  
    Product requirements  
    Purpose  
    Milestones  
    Stakeholder identification and needs  
    Project organizational chart  
    Justification  
    Cost estimate and return on investment  

      - I view this as typical – more text, more explanation and more details. Yet this is not a deviation from the prior practice. These content of the project charter was already expanded upon in other documents available from PMI such as the PMI Compendium.
      - The name and contents in the project management plan also changed.
    PMBOK 2004 Project Management Plan Prior Version
    Subsidiary management plans including:
    Scope management plan Scope management plan
    Schedule management plan Schedule management plan
    Cost management plan Cost management plan
    Quality management plan Quality management plan
    Staffing management plan Staffing management plan
    Communications management plan Communications management plan
    Procurement management plan Procurement management plan
    Risk management plan Risk management plan
    Process improvement plan  
    Together with key baselines and project management components including:
    Milestones Milestones
    Schedule baseline Schedule baseline
    Cost baseline Cost baseline
    Risk register Risk response plan
    Resource calendar Staffing schedule with cost
    Quality baseline  
      Scope baseline, Scope statement and WBS


      - The project management components of the project management plan are also detailed more thoroughly in the 2004 edition. Specific bullet points identify the following topics that should be addressed in the project management plan:
          + Project management process with details about how to execute those processes
          + Change monitoring and control
          + Configuration monitoring and control
          + Maintenance of the performance baselines
          + Stakeholder communication
          + Project lifecycle including management reviews
      - Note the inclusion of both “Change” and “Configuration” monitoring. There is a subtle shift in the 2004 edition around these topics. In the 2000 edition, Configuration Management is positioned as a subset of the Change Management process. The 2004 edition switches the arrangement and notes that Change Management is often a process within Configuration Management.
      - In my opinion, the 2004 edition attempts to better align with other industry standards on Change and Configuration Management. Consider the following comparison with the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) documentation from the “Best Practice for Service Support” published by the British Office of Government Commerce (ISBN 011 3300158).
          + ITIL version 2.0 has ten processes and one function:
              Service Support: Incident, Problem, Configuration, Change and Release
              Service Delivery: Service Level, IT Financial, Capacity, IT Continuity, Availability
              Service Desk is a function within the Service Support “best practices” framework.
          + PMBOK 2004, page 97: “The configuration management system with change control provides a standardized, effective, and efficient process to centrally manage changes within a project.”
          + ITIL Service Support: 7.1 “Configuration Management provides a logical model of the infrastructure or a service by identifying, controlling, maintaining and verifying the versions of Configuration Items (CIs) in existence.”
          + PMBOK 2004, page 96: “Change control is necessary because projects seldom run exactly according to the project management plan. The project management plan, the project scope statement, and other deliverables must be maintained by carefully and continuously managing changes, either by rejecting changes or by approving changes so that approved changes are incorporated into a revised baseline.”
          + ITIL Service Support 8.1 “The goal of the change management process is to ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all Changes, in order to minimize the impact of Change-related incidents upon service quality, and consequently to improve the day-to-day operations of the organization.”
          + PMBOK 2004, p97 lists the following as examples of the activities in Configuration Management:
              Configuration Identification
              Configuration Status Accounting
              Configuration Verification and Auditing
          + ITIL Service Support 7.2 identifies the following activities within Configuration Management:
              Planning
              Identification
              Control
              Status accounting (reporting through life cycle, traceable, “under development”, “live”)
              Verification and audit
          + Note the similarity. While not wholly transitioning to the ITIL perspective, PMI has shifted to a better alignment.
     
  • The New Processes
      - Develop Preliminary Project Scope Statement
          + This process recognizes the need to begin solidifying scope early in the process.
          + The introduction notes that this statement is to be based on information from the project sponsor. Perhaps this is a recognition of the tendency of a project to take on a life of it’s own once the team starts writing documentation. This preliminary statement is a focused effort to gather the requirements from the project sponsor. Later, the team will start progressive elaboration and develop the formal project scope statement. In my experience, scope statements often speak from the point of view of the implementation team rather than the sponsor. Also, in my experience anyway, project sponsors often have a great deal of focus up front and are often pulled away once the project seems to be moving.
          + The Inputs link to the “Develop Project Charter” process and include the project charter, and the organizational and environmental “factors” such as best practices and corporate standards. The SOW is also a key input into this process as it is the predecessor to the scope statement.
          + The Tools and Techniques loosely align with the “Develop Project Charter” process.
          + There is only one output – the preliminary project scope statement. Note how the new process titles describe the purpose for the process.
      - Create WBS
          + This project separates the creation of the WBS from the elaboration of that occurs in the Scope Definition process. Interestingly, the name of the process uses the abbreviation WBS rather than the name.
          + The Inputs include the scope statement, scope management plan and “organizational process assets”. The old “Assumptions” and “Constraints” are gone. Significantly, part of the overall update to the PMBOK was to show inputs to match up with the output from other processes. This new process now has an input of approved change requests.
          + The Tools and Techniques are as expected for a WBS – decomposition and templates.
          + The primary output is the WBS along with the WBS dictionary.
      - Monitor and Control Project Work
          + There are three new processes created to reflect key aspects of the project manager’s job in controlling the project: “Monitor and Control Project Work”, “Manage Project Team” and “Manage Stakeholders”.
          + This new process appears to be a key controlling process.
          + The key Inputs are the project management plan and the project measurements summarized in the work performance information.
          + The primary Tool and Technique is earned value along with project management expertise in the form of “methodologies” and “expert judgment”. The PMIS supports this process.
          + The Outputs fit well with the PMI emphasis on building recommendations rather than just identifying problems. The key recommendations are: “corrective actions”, “preventative actions” and “defect repairs”. EV leads to “forecasts”. And the driving force is “requested changes”.
      - Manage Project Team
          + This new process acknowledges the role of the project manager as a resource manager in a matrix organization.
          + The Inputs into this process are the human resources documents (roles, responsibilities, organizational chart, process and policies) and the performance data (project performance and team performance).
          + The Tools and Techniques are both hard (issues log and performance appraisals) and soft (observations, conversations and conflict management).
          + The Outputs from the “Manage Project Team” process align well with the outputs from the “Monitor and Control Project Work” process.
      - Manage Stakeholders
          + The description of this process is clearly understated. This is one of the most difficult challenges facing a project manager. After all, if this was easy to do, then functional managers would do the work and no one would need project managers. It is precisely because projects cross boundaries that project managers spend so much time communicating.
          + The primary Input into this process is the communications management plan. The only other identified input is the vague “organizational project assets” – essentially this is the project team.
          + There are two Tools and Techniques: “Communications Methods” and the “Issues Logs”.
          + The goal for this process is to Output “resolutions”.
     
  • Final observation
      - PMI includes Inputs, Tools and Techniques and Outputs in their OPM3 (Operational Project Management Maturity Model). In that guide, however, they also identified “Controls” for each process. The “Controls” for Project Scope Initiation, for example, are:
          + Stakeholder acceptance
          + Customer review and sign-off
          + Management review
      - I am surprised that the 2004 PMBOK does not include controls, key performance indicators, or any other linkage to metrics other than earned value. Clearly earned value is still beyond the reach of many organizations and yet metrics are a very hot topic right now. I considered the addition of “controls” to the OPM3 guide as a precursor of things to come.
      - While Six Sigma is mentioned in this version, I expect that the influence of Six Sigma will make a more concrete appearance in the next edition.
    PMBOK 2004 Prior Version
    Section 1
      Introduction
      Project Life Cycle and Organization
    Section 1
      Introduction
      The Project Management Content
      Project Management Processes
    Section 2
      Project Management Processes for a Project
     
    Section 3
      9 Knowledge Areas
    Section 2
      9 Knowledge Areas
    Section 4 Appendix Section 3 Appendix
    Section 5 Glossary and Index Section 4 Glossary and Index