One of the key professional responsibilities of a project manager is contributing to the project management knowledge base. What does this mean?

In a nutshell, don’t keep your knowledge and experience locked in your brain. Share it!! 

• Share knowledge
• Research
• Build the capabilities of colleagues (i.e., teach, mentor, provide opportunities for your colleagues and your team members to build experience and knowledge)
• Advance the profession (engage in activities that will improve the overall PM profession; engage in activities that will promote the profession)
• Step up, at your own organization, to champion the value of project management. That is, playing a key role in the growth of PM within your organization
• Always record “lessons learned” at the end of a project or project phase; contribute to your organization’s organization process assets (OPAs). These 2 activities contribute to PM knowledge base and will help your colleagues during future projects
• Participate in PM forums, conferences and PMI chapter meetings
• Write articles

PMI expects PMPs to stay engaged with the profession.

Clearing Up Some Misconceptions About the PMBOK Guide

Listening to PMP candidates, project managers, and students of management and project management,  I’ve learned that there are some misconceptions about what the PMBOK Guide is. Some think that it’s intended as a textbook on project management. Others think that it describes some kind of project  management methodology. Yet others have the notion that it’s meant as a study guide for the examination component of the PMP credential. Some even think that the PMP exam is on something called “PMBOK” (whatever that is) and that the Guide to the PMBOK is a study guide or textbook covering the topic of “PMBOK.”

I’d like to clear up some of the misconceptions.

The PMBOK Guide is a standard for the project management profession. Its intention is to serve as a guide to the body of knowledge within the project management community and as practiced by members of the profession. There is no single document that contains the project management body of knowledge. Indeed, some of it is not published at all but, rather, is simply recognized as good practices and norms within the profession. This body of knowledge is growing every day.

The PMBOK Guide is not intended to be used to learn project management or project management concepts. It’s especially not intended to teach or suggest PM techniques or methodologies.

It’s not a “how to” book nor is it a description of a methodology. It’s a standard, not a methodology. PM professionals and the organizations they work for can use the PMBOK Guide as a guide for developing their own methodologies or for creating organization standards.

It’s particularly important to understand that it is not a standard or specification for the examination portion of the PMP certification. For one thing, at least 30% of the material on the examination is not covered by the PMBOK Guide. (There IS an exam on the PMBOK Guide. It’s the CAPM exam, which only covers knowledge of the PMBOK Guide.)

While the PMBOK Guide only changes once every 4 years, the exam component of the PMP credential is constantly changing. Much of the material that showed up in the 4th (2008) edition of the PMBOK Guide has ALREADY been showing up on the PMP exam for several years – e.g., PTA, TCPI, etc. PMBOK Guide 4th edition came out in December, 2008, but these topics have been showing up on the PMP exam as early as 2006. The group at PMI that develops the standards (such the PMBOK Guide, the Standard for Risk Management, etc.) and the group at PMI that develops the the certifications and their corresponding exams (such as PMP, CAPM, PMI-SP, etc.) are two separate groups that DO NOT interface with each other. They are two separate groups. If anything, the standards group looks at the work that the credential group (PMP, CAPM) does and uses it as one of the many inputs for what they put into the standards such as the PMBOK Guide.

A reviewer on Amazon.com observed that there is a widely held notion that PMBOK = Project Management. I disagree with that observation. The false notion he observed is only held by those people who do not know what the PMBOK is. Also “PMBOK” is not the same as “PMBOK Guide.” PMBOK is an acronym for the Project Management Body of Knowledge. As I said, above, there is no single document that contains the project management body of knowledge. It’s simply the body of knowledge that is collectively known among practitioners,  academics and organizations who practice or research project management. The document known as the PMBOK Guide is simply a guide to that massive body of knowledge; an entry-point to further information and a standard for developing protocols, methodologies, techniques and practices within your own organizations and project management practices.

The PMBOK Guide is a reference work, not a text book or a study guide. It’s not meant as an introduction to project management any more than a volume of statutes is meant to be used as an introduction to the practice of law or the Physician’s Desk Reference (PDR) is meant to be used as an introduction to pharmacology for doctors and pharmacists. As with technical references for other professions (such as statute books for lawyers, clinical references for doctors, etc.), non professionals may find the PMBOK Guide difficult to follow and even dry. An experienced and trained project manager should find the PMBOK Guide perfectly understandable and not very difficult to follow. An experienced and professional project manager looking at the PMBOK Guide for the first time may find its format unfamiliar (at first), but he/she should find the material and the concepts in the document familiar (though organized in a way they may not be used to).

On the other hand, an entry-level project manager, or a non-project manager who is thrown into project management tasks may, indeed, find the PMBOK Guide difficult to follow and difficult to understand. This is not unlike a sophomore accounting student opening up a set of GAAP or IFRS guidelines and finding it hard to follow or finding the writing style very didactic and anything but light reading, while this would NOT be the experience of a certified CPA or an experienced accountant or financial professional.

Very important: The PMBOK Guide is not an I.T. text nor should it be considered part of the literature covering the topic of information technology. For some reason, the document is shelved in book stores along with I.T. books. It really should be shelved with books on management. In the same way, PMP examination study guides are also shelved next to I.T. books. The PMP credential is not an I.T. “cert.” In fact, it’s not even in the same class or category of “certifications” as technical and I.T. “certs.” The PMP is a professional credential, in the same category of certifications for other professions, such as accounting, law or medicine. Unlike I.T. “certs”, where the only requirement to earn the certification is the ability to make an appointment at the Prometric center and where the only criteria for earning the certification is the ability to pass a test, the PMP credential has experience, education, continuing education & professional contribution requirements. There is also a requirement to adhere to a professional code of conduct.

Because of the “cert” fever within the I.T. community and among I.T. workers, many non-PMs in the I.T. sector are pressured to add the “PMP” letters to their names. Recruiters are among those who create this pressure. Because they are not experienced project managers, these I.T. people are pressured into lying about their background and skills during the PMP qualification process — and getting friends to lie during the audit and vetting process. This may account for the number of (dishonestly earned) PMPs out there who may have the letters after their name (though they got those letters under false pretenses) but who are not really project managers at all. This is why people see a lot of “PMPs” who have no idea about what they are doing.

Project management is a profession. While there are many professional project managers out there practicing their profession, there are quite a lot of non-project managers who have been thrown into PM responsibilities and roles. While they do, indeed, hold a “job” as a “project manager” and are being asked to perform the tasks of a project manager (and may even have a title called “project manager”), they are not project managers. They’re just people who have been asked to do the work of project managers.

The PMP credential is not for people want to move into project management. It’s for people who ALREADY ARE project managers and have been for several years. The PMP credential verifies that the individual has the education, years of experience, professional training, adherence to a professional code of ethics, commitment to ongoing continuing education and commitment to ongoing contributions to the project management profession. The exam portion of the credential verifies that, in addition to all of the above, the individual has an understanding of the profession he/she has been practicing; that the individual knows that project management is NOT common sense and that he/she is not managing project by seat of his/her pants or via intuition; that the individual understands that sound project management is based on the past experiences of other members of the profession, based on research and sound empirical (scientific) study; that the “art” and practice of project management is based on science, not intuition.

Finally, as to the question “what would be the best alternative book”: there is no alternative. The PMBOK Guide is the accepted global standard and the recognized guide to the project management body of knowledge. That’s all it’s intended to be and it serves that purpose well. It’s not the end to all ends. The members of the project management profession who contributed to the document did not aspire to cover all there is to know about project management. It’s not perfect and it’s constantly changing (every 4 years) as the profession continues to grow and mature.

You can (and should) supplement the PMBOK Guide with other PMI standards and frameworks — e.g., The Standard for Program Management, The Project Manager Comptency Development Framework, The Practice Standard for Work Breakdown Structures, etc. There are supplemental standards and frameworks developed by other professional and academic organizations as well. However, as the GUIDE to the “body of knowledge” within the profession, the PMBOK Guide is the standard. There are other books and sources on other topics of project management, including sources on methodologies, leadership, PM tools, general management, the management of people, budgeting, scheduling, quality management practices, organizational behavior, etc. as well as industry specific literature on project management, such as marketing project management, I.T. project management, construction project management, research & development project management, etc. However, such topics are outside the scope and purpose of the PMBOK Guide. Of course, since anywhere from 60% – 70% of the material in the examination portion of the PMP certification either comes directly from the PMBOK Guide or requires understanding of the concepts in the PMP Guide, a knowledge of the material in the document is important to anyone who is planning to sit for the exam. So, while the PMBOK Guide is NOT a study guide for the exam and is not intended to serve as such, familiarity with it is an important part of both practicing the PM profession as well as earning the profession’s certification.

For more information on the relationship between the PMBOK Guide and the PMP Credential, see:
Is studying the PMBOK Guide enough to pass the PMP certification?

I came a across an interesting article on the Projects@work website, Enabling Career Advancement by Mary Ann Bopp, Diana Bing and Sheila Forte-Trammell, which is an excerpt from their book, Agile Career Development: Lessons and Approaches from IBM.

Their basic premise is that: “Project-driven organizations can benefit in many ways from creating a career framework that gives employees the opportunity to grow — and share — their knowledge and skills by moving across job roles or business units. In the process, they align company values and culture, optimize resources and increase client satisfaction.”

This information is very useful for PM professionals who have permanent, full-time jobs and for organizations whose business model calls for full-time, long-term staff as opposed to short-term, per-diem (contract) staff. However, the growing trend among organizations is to use less and less permanent resources and more temporary (per-diem) resources.

This is especially true when it comes to projects. Projects, by their very nature, are discrete and time-based. Too often, organizations can’t see beyond the end of a current project when it comes to finding and developing talent. Contract project managers along with temporary team members (often called “consultants”) are brought in for the duration of the project and let go at the end of the project. There is no value to the organization to grow the long-term skills of these temporary workers. In many cases, skill development as well as career development are seen as annoyances that just get in the way of the short-term goals of the current project. Organizations would prefer that these “consultants” would build their skills and grow their careers on somebody else’s nickel — either before they come on board or after they have successfully delivered on their short-term project and their contracts terminated.

A related trend is the attempt by organizations to use a single, temporary, contractor to fill two, very different roles. These are the, so-called, PM/BA (project manager / business analyst) spots and (for I.T. projects) the, so called, PM/Technical Lead spots. You simply can’t manage the baseball team AND play short-stop. If you try to do both, then something has to give. (See my discussion on the PM Best Practices blog: Economic Crisis).

There are some legal, financial and public relations reasons for using “temporary employees.” (1) Lack of privity between the temporary worker and the client, thus relieving the client from any legal liability or requirement to comply with tax and labor laws; (2) some cost containment and cost management, knowing that they won’t have to pay the temporary worker after the project is completed and the freedom to reduce hours during the course of the project; (3) the ability to layoff entire groups of workers without a hit to their PR — e.g., if a Fortune 500 company lays off 1,500 temporary employees, there is no report in the media that “XXX Company laid off 6% of their workforce.” Even though they did, indeed, layoff 6% of their workforce, since they weren’t “officially” employees, the layoff doesn’t get reported in the company’s turnover statistics; (4) savings on health and unemployment insurance costs, including the paperwork involved with claims.

However, I believe that the benefits (described above) are exceeded by the long-term costs to both organizations as well as to the growth and adoption of proven and repeatable project and program management standards and processes — not to mention the big hit on the careers of PM professionals. These organizations end up with a bunch of project deliverables delivered by a group of professionals who have long left the scene and moved on to another client. This short term view gets deliverables out the door, but may not deliver much value to the organization. The PMs (and their teams) rarely have the time or are given the opportunity to take the long-term view of what is happening. The organizations go from project-to-project contantly inventing the wheel over and over again. Neither the organization nor the temporary PMs they contract have much of a chance to grow.

Meanwhile, the PM professionals get a reputation for “jumping around from job to job” which is really not their fault (and very often, not their choice). Careerwise, rather than moving up a career ladder, they end up jumping sideways (and sometimes even down) on a career “jungle gym” (similar to the ones they played on in the playground of their elementary schools). At the recent (Oct, 2009) North America PMI Congress, Dr. Harold Kerzner spoke about “strategic alliances” between organizations and the consultants and consulting firms that provide the project management expertise. This gives the PM consultants the incentive to continuously hone their PM skills and their business skils if, in exchange for making the effort to do this, the organizations will form a long-term partnership with them, providing on-going business for the PM consultants. In this way, both the organizations and their PM consulting partners can grow their PM maturity together. This can go a long way to mitigating the problems associated with the overuse of “temporary employees” (as opposed to long-term, permanent staff), discussed above.

Right now, one of the biggest obstacles to achieving this partnership is the rise of the intermediary organization or “sub contactor.” The sub contractor’s only goal is to make a short-term match between a PM professional and an organization in order to collect a fee. Not only does this increase the cost to the organization and lower the earnings of the PM professional, it also gets in the way of the organization’s ability to identify and build a long-term, strategic relationship with the best PM professionals. I mentioned three of the top reasons that organizations use temporary employees, and there are many more. If organizations can somehow work around the sub-contractor obstacles or, at least, find a way to continue to gain the legal, financial and PR benefits of temporary employees while building a closer and direct relationship with the professionals in the field, the entire industry could achieve very great benefits and skilled project management professionals can build their skills, experience and their CAREERS in way that will be beneficial to both themselves and the organizations that they bring value to.