Everything you need to know about Project Management Body of Knowledge

The competition in the corporate world is increasing by the day. As a result, businesses need to take proactive measures in to realize their goals and meet customer requirements. But no matter the scale or type of business, the competence of its employees is what sets it apart from others.

Every employee within the organization must clearly understand effective project management to drive results. Unfortunately, it’s easier said than done, unless you can leverage the right strategy and approach. This is where the Project Management Body of Knowledge comes into play.

How to facilitate effective project management?

The way a business or organization manages its projects differentiates a successful business from an unsuccessful one. Hence this is not an area where businesses can show complacency and expect to get results at the same time. Now there are many ways you can facilitate effective project management and get results.

This revolves around thorough planning, execution, and monitoring of the progress of a project. Businesses must seek the competence of effective and thorough management to take care of three aspects. The better the management, the better the results one gets from a project. Fortunately, some tools and means can help one realize that goal.   

What Is the Project Management Body of Knowledge?

A Project Management Body of Knowledge, or PMBOK, is a framework of best practices, process guidelines, and standard terminologies coming together to help one get results. The entire framework was designed to help one be updated with evolving requirements of a given project. Currently, the Project Management Body of Knowledge is in its sixth edition and is internationally recognized as an essential resource for project management.

The guidebook or the framework has a total of 49 processes that are categorized into five process groups and 10 knowledge areas. The guide mainly covers specific topics such as project management but also mentions broader topics like planning, budgeting, staffing, and management science. According to the guidebook, the three phases of a project are inputs, outputs, and tools and techniques. These are used to create an outline of typical project management steps.

With that explained, let’s get into the details of the process groups and knowledge areas for PMBOK.

Process Management Body of Knowledge: understanding 5 process groups

The PMBOK has listed five important process groups to classify operations of general project management to run an organization or oversee a project.

1. Initiating: As the name suggests, initiating is starting or beginning a new project. The process includes identifying the need, setting the goals and objectives, addressing the concern, or getting authorization before kickstarting a project.

2. Planning: It is a process that establishes the proposal of the project. The things that come under planning are objective communication, scope limiting, and defining the plan of attack for the project.

3. Executing: This is one of the crucial stages of project management. The process involves further improvement in the project’s performance along with defined planning and meeting the specifications.

4. Controlling and Monitoring: This process involves tracking the executing process of the ongoing project. The process involves reviewing the project’s development, making changes, and even extending deadlines when needed.

5. Closing: This process involves checking the quality of the work done; verifying the details of the earlier processes. This helps to ensure proper planning of the ongoing project. If not checked thoroughly, the error might change the outcome.

Read: The ultimate guide to project planning

Process Management Body of Knowledge: 10 knowledge areas

The five processes mentioned above can be further divided into ten knowledge areas that overlap during the different stages of the ongoing projects.

1. Integration Management: Project integration management simply refers to the process of effortlessly bringing together or combining the various moving parts of the project. Project managers do the integration in order to work towards a common goal.

2. Scope Management: This ensures that all the work for each project is identified at the beginning. This is also important as the project scope will not expand as time goes by.

3. Schedule Management: This is a process where one needs to keep track of the schedules and update events accordingly. This will include keeping track of establishing accountability and making adjustments to deadlines whenever needed.

4. Cost Management: Cost management is the stage where one will plan and manage all budget allocations and get better control over the project’s finances. It is important to keep the materials, equipment, and labor costs from the first finalized budget.

5. Quality Management: This stage is for establishing the quality policies and objects at the beginning of the project. This is planned so that recurring checks can be made to ensure the project will satisfy everyone’s needs.

6. Resource Management: In this stage, the project managers delegate specific tasks to the team members of the project in such a way that utilizes skills, knowledge, and expertise most systematically.

7. Communication Management: Communication management helps the project managers to communicate with the team members working together on the project. It helps to determine the efficient way of distributing, controlling, monitoring, and storing data for everyone.

8. Risk Management: One of the most important stages of project development is risk management. It involves conducting the risk management plan for each project. This is done by identifying, addressing, analyzing, and controlling the risk by establishing a response plan.

Read: All you need to know about project risk management

9. Procurement Management: This stage refers to acquiring the products or services needed to complete the project. Subsets in this area include procurement planning, source selection, solicitation planning, contract administration, and contract closeout.

10. Stakeholder Management: This phase refers to identifying all the people or groups involved in the project, what task they will be given, what their aspirations are, and what management strategies will be employed to make the project successful.

To sum up

The project management body of knowledge, or PMBOK, is an important and effective tool for all aspiring project managers. Many big organizations and bodies have, time and again, recognized the significance of the PMBOK.