I always thought that the PMI Standards Subcommittee that
developed the fourth edition of the Guide to the Project Management Body of
Knowledge (the PMBoK Guide) was light years ahead of the rest of us. Who else
could update that standard to allow it to answer all of our project management
questions as well as set the number of processes to provide “the answer to the great question of life the
universe and everything”1. Well, time marches on;
and so does the PMBoK Guide. During the last week of December, 2012, the PMI
released the fifth and latest PMBoK Guide edition. On 31 July 2013, the PMBoK
Guide fifth edition will become the basis for the Project Management Professional
(PMP) exam. “The answer to
the great question of life the universe and everything” just became
more complicated. Over its lifetime, the PMBoK Guide receives updates every few
years. Compared to the level of change in the fifth edition, the sum of all the
second through fourth edition updates are minor.
Don’t attempt to read the text in Figure 1; just look at the colors. Here
is the familiar table that lists the PMBoK Guide processes, within the
framework of the horizontal Knowledge Areas and vertical Process Groups. The
first thing you will notice is how colorful things are. Instead of 42 Processes,
there are now 47, and a new Stakeholder Management Knowledge Area. And how many
Processes were left untouched?...None!!...The color coding provides an indication of
how a process changed.
Fig 1 - All Fourth Edition Processes Received Changes
Figure 2 lists the types of changes the processes received. The single
largest point of this article is that all of the fourth edition processes
received some type of change in the fifth edition. That will render all of the
existing study material irrelevant. So, if you are testing on or after 31 July 2013,
you will need new fifth edition-based study material.
Fig 2 - Type Of Change (Some processes received multiple changes)
Another major change involves the migration of much of the information
from Chapters 2 & 3 to a new Annex 1 section near the back of the PMBoK
Guide. The intent is for the Annex 1 section to become a separate standard for
Project Management.
I like the fifth edition. It provides a significant update that pulls
the PMBoK Guide a whole lot closer to the actual methodologies currently in
use. It spends significant time on virtual teams and Agile. The 2000 edition (second
edition) didn’t want to admit virtual teams existed and the fourth edition only
started to mention that there is this thing called “Agile” out there. All of this
is great progress!
So, what should you do, if you are studying for the PMP exam? Hurry-up!
To beat the last minute rush, use your current materials and sit for the exam
before the end of June, 2013. If history is an indicator for potential future
situations, in July 2013 you will have a difficult time finding a test center
with an open seat.
All the study material out there right now is fourth
edition-based. It will be a couple months before fifth edition study material
will be readily available. As I tell the folks in my PM Lessons Learned Study
Group, be very careful that you know the PMBoK Guide base of anything that you
buy. Some dastardly people are still selling third edition study material!
If your personal situation forces you to sit for the PMP
exam after 31 July 2013, don’t despair. Just grab a copy of the fifth edition
now and start reading. The fifth edition study material will be along shortly.
1.
“The Answer to the Great Question... Of Life, the Universe and Everything...
Is... Forty-two,' said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.”
