Implementing the PMBOK in practice

[franjeteque]

Hi,

As part of a larger program to improve all the processes in our company, we are evaluating the possibility of implementing the Project Management Body of Knowledge from the Project Management Institute in our company. Our objective is to promote project management best practices among our PMs.

I have the PMBOK in pdf format and my doubt is the following:
- Which is the best way to make its content and principles accessible by our PMs?
- Would it be interesting to distribute a copy to each PM?
- Is writing its content in a series of web pages a good idea? (although it would be a tedious task)
- Do you know of any software tool that facilitates the deployment of the PMBOK?
- What are your recommendations?

Thanks in advance for your responses,
Fran

 

[PDQBach]

You're confusing processes with a methodology. The PMBOK is a description of the processes you need to implement; the methodology is the implementation. There is only one PMBOK but there are many methodologies (PCubed, Macroscope, MS Project 2003's built-in methodology, etc.)

Putting the PMBOK on your website is both impractical and, probably, an infringement of PMI's copyright. They are known to zealously protect the copyright so you might want to discuss this with them before you do it. (But, of course, as I said in the previous para, you would be implementing the wrong stuff.)

The rollout of a methodology is a _very_ non-trivial project and you need to do a lot more research before you can reach the stage of asking the questions you are asking.

 

[franjeteque]

PDQBach, thanks for your response.

I agree with your point of view. I think I must have expressed uncorrectly (I am a non native english speaker). What I wanted to ask is on line with your comments.

Let me reformulate the question:

I would like to follow the PMBOK as a set of practices that we would like to see being applied in my organization. To achieve that I want PMs to use the tools and apply the the techniques described in the PMBOK guide. I need physical tools that support the use these techniques (IE, I need to "write" somewhere the Responsability Assignment Matrix).

One question is, which is the best way to finish up with a toolset that permit the PMs apply the PMBOK practices to their projects? are there packaged toolsets or applications that cover the whole of it?

Other question is, is there a better way to make the PMBOK guide available to anyone interested in learning than putting a printed version on a shelf? Is any vendor selling a version in a more comfortable format? e-learning?

I agree with you that it is not a trivial project and I am just starting to make research. I only wanted to gather real experiences soon.

Thanks in advance,
Fran

 

[PDQBach]

I do not have the spare time this week to give your questions the answer they deserve. I'll put something up later.

(Wish I could speak French ... and I do speak it somewhat ... as well as you write English.)

 

[jfrost10]

Just a heads up: There's a new version of the PMBOK that's being released shortly.

D

 

[mperry8888]

Dear Fran,

There are a number of vendor solutions that do exactly what you want. That is, they provide a complete project management process solution aligned to de facto standards for project management like the PMI PMBOK and others. Typically, these solutions are web-based and can be implemented on your on intranet or LAN and customized to work with your already existing IT infratructure, PM applications, and user tools. In fact, it is very helpful for your process to be "tool independent". Though PM vendors will tell you that their PM application may have a built in process workflow, generally it is best to keep you processes, best practices, and standard operating procedures independent of vendor tools. A PM Process solutions enables your entire project organization to access easily and follow project management workflows, step by step guidance for such things as process step inputs, outputs, tools & techniques, project management templates forms and checklists, and linkage to your choice of applications for enterprise project management and platforms for collaboration such as Lotus, SharePoint, and others. I would recommend that you query Google for such keywords as "PM process software" or "PMBOK process software" and visit the leading vendors for Project Management Process solutions. In response to your post, I would encourage you to look at three solutions that each have very good PMBOK aligned PM process solutions: Processes On Demand by BOT International, PMCoP by PM Solutions, and Tensteps. Hope this helps. -- Mark Perry