Comments on PMBoK 5th Edition

I and many others spent much time reviewing the 5th Edition of the PMBoK. 10,000 of increasingly defcocussed. faddish and repetitious opinion.

Sadly the general resposnse is “rejected” often with the rather circular justification that the suggestion disagrees with the PMBoK’s accepted content. The idea that the comments are indication that the content is not accepted, in places even wrong has passed them bye.

Notification from PMI regarding the PMBOK® Guide—Fifth Edition

Thank you for participating in the PMBOK® Guide—Fifth Edition Exposure Draft process. Below you will find a list of the recommendations that you have made and the committee’s decision for each of your recommendations. If you have any additional questions or comments you can contact pmi.

If you are unsatisfied with the final decision made by the committee you have the opportunity to appeal. You will have until Monday, 18 June 2012 to do so. The link provided below “Go to exposure draft” will take you to where you can submit your appeal, however, this link will not be made available until tomorrow, Tuesday, 5 June 2012.

Go to Exposure Draft

Adjudication will end on: 6/4/2012

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1 The PMBOK® Guide—Fifth Edition

Your Recommendation

Extend the review time to 6 months

Your Justification

You released three documents for review in 6 weeks, two simeltaneously. My review metrics suggests that it takes a full working day to read, reflect, and write comments on 500 lines. This document alone is 10,000 lines long

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

Our justification: Recommendation DEFERRED – out of scope for current update committee project charter. Recommendation will be forwarded to next update committee for their consideration.

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1 The PMBOK® Guide—Fifth Edition

Your Recommendation

Move inserted activities so that 4th ed activity identifiers are unchange and new activities take previously unassigned numbering

Your Justification

All references to process numbers in existing company documentation is unnecassarily invalidated by shuffling numbers to refer to new or moved elements. Leave a space for deleted items, give a new higher number to added items – it makes assimilation of revised guidance easier

Our vote on your recommendation: Editorial

Our justification: Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback on the exposure draft for the PMBOK® Guide—Fifth Edition. The core committee has reviewed your recommendation and determined that the recommendation is editorial and not substantive. This request will be forwarded to the editorial department for possible inclusion.

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7 A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) – Fifth Edition

Your Recommendation

Delete the claim to be “the Standard” in the places it occurs Here line 8

Your Justification

There is honest humility in claiming to be “a guide”, and it just isnt true that you are “the standard”. In part your publishing power is reducing diversity of ideas while the document suffers bloat that dilutes its value. With your increased words are comming misconceptions. Sadly less than best guidance. Also historical errors appear to be outside your will to fix (like the persisting with terms like WBS & SOW and then getting into linguistic knots- see line 1614). We need you to publish short, correct guidance not waffle around populist “of the moment” fads Sorry if this (and subsequent comments) sounds harsh – it isn’t intended, it is passion: you must reflect on the influence over those who have no opinion/ knowledge of their own and the potential to create really world-class advances in global caability – sadly this draft isn’t going to do that as is

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation conflicts with other accepted material in the standard

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15 of process interactions among the ten Knowledge Areas and five Process Groups. Chapters 4

Your Recommendation

Reduce the number of Knowledge Areas to a maximum of 9 two reasons

Your Justification

First communication can only be between stakeholders while stakeholders are only influencing/ being influenced if communicated with – by definition there cannot be two topics here – this is just a factual error to seperate them Second Good process design and good knowledge transmission recognises human psychology and human limitations. Miller in his seminat 1956 paper showed that peoples peak capability is at 7 plus or minus 2 symbols, ideas, concepts etc – here you are stepping (wrongly and needlessly) outside of guidance whose use strengthens and broadens comprehsension and application.

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient justification provided with recommendation.

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68 Since practitioners come from diverse backgrounds and cultures, the Project Management

Your Recommendation

Reword to be true

Your Justification

“Since… therefore applies globally” says taht because people come from different backgrounds your code of conduct is by that fact applicable globally, The logic is backward, and is not true. What should be true but is not observable in what is presented is “since people cone from different contexts the code must be written with cultural and ethical sensativity and applied in a locally pragatic fashion” – A tone different to that used to write it and very different meaning to line-68

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Several comments were received on lines 68 through 69. We have modified the sentences to best represent the intent of all comments. We believe that the following re-write addresses your comment. “Practitioners come from diverse background and cultures, and the Project Management Institute Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct applies globally.”

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80 1.2 What is a Project?

Your Recommendation

Consider the views expressed here and through the whole document and either add explicit explaination that the document is slanted to the performing organisation’s perspective (supplier) not the recieving (customer) organisation’s interests (OR balance the guidance here and address the consequential conclusions to the whole of teh rest of the book.

Your Justification

The definition here fits and suits only the performing, supplying organisation. For a customer a project is the step in a journey that delivers change from current-stable-operations to future-state-business-as-usual. If you want to write from one side that is fine if you provide the context otherwise you are misleading readers by omission which is not ethical. An alternative is to write so as to represent the interests of all stakeholders. In this case a project is the diversion of funds and energy to the creation of a future-state-business-as-usual, It involves investigation and sanction, product deleopment that uses pmbok processes in combination with product development processes and benefits harvesting through operational control. State your ‘bias’ or represent wider opinions, do not allow it to appear that there is a pretense to inclusion and an reality of exclusion of opinions

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content.

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161 other factor is likely to be affected. For example, if the schedule is shortened, often

162 the budget needs to be increased to add additional resources to complete the same amount

163 of work in less time. If a budget increase is not possible, the scope or quality may be

Your Recommendation

Clarify the claim by explaining how cost will rise or pick an umambigious, even plausible example.

Your Justification

If a finite amount of work is delivered in reduced timescales by increasing resources then this implies fixed productivity. So unless labour rates are changed (which is not your example) cost is equal in either case. All that is traded is amount of parallel working for duration of assignment so cash-flow profile changes but gross expenditure does not. What concerns me is that the document’s guidance has similar unsound assertions throughout it. Left unchallenged by a niave reader they add up to the folk lore that is the current woeful state of project capability in most organisations. To misinform a client this way with an ultimatum that they must inject more money and thus eroding their investment is unethical. When will suppliers embrace “deliver the result within constraints, abandon a failed approach” over “its not my money, suck more out of the client” ? This poor state does not have to continue but to improve it we need the most influential writers to say stuff that is sensible, pragmatic and above all else correct – IMHO the above shows that insufficient though was applied here and I see that this lack of thinking is repeated in further asserions – I’m trying to be diplomatic to say you need extra care in lots of places – many small misdirections add-up to a big influence I’m also concerned that a month is not practical to review so much volume with so many places that need cleaar error addressed and many places where debate is warranted

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content.

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169 Because of the potential for change, the project management plan is iterative and goes

Your Recommendation

Consider the use of the term “management plan” throughout the document and where applicable replace with which ever of “management ‘strategy’ or ‘policy’ or ‘standard’/ ‘guideline’/ ‘procedures’/ ‘role’ ” best fits

Your Justification

Your job is to publish “guidance”, IE to inform and communicate. Where choice of terminology reduces communication it is poor choice, where it enhances understanding it is better choice. “plan” is a term that is at best ambigious and at worst synonymous with ‘resourced and dated schedule of work” for many people. You use it in several ways without explicit differentiaion. Writing guidance is centrally about isolating and labelling superficially similar concepts/ contexts/ ideas so as to allow precision where it is needed Sometime you use ‘plan’ to mean procedures and roles as in reqirements management plan and sometimes “everything” including schedule of tasks as modelled in a network and resource profile and displayed in a gantt chart. Disambiguate by defining and using seperate terms Simon@logicalmodel.net

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content.

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169 Because of the potential for change, the project management plan is iterative and goes

Your Recommendation

Reword to be correct

Your Justification

A plan is not iterative it is planning that is iterative. Perhaps you should say “The plan existsing in sucessive versiosn (via the discipline of version-control) as a result of each iteration of planning activities”

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Several comments were received on lines 169 through 170. We have modified the sentences to best represent the intent of all comments. We believe that the following re-write addresses your comment. “Due to the potential for change, the development of the project management plan is an iterative activity and is progressively elaborated throughout the project’s life cycle.”

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172 specific information and more accurate estimates become available. Progressive elaboration

Your Recommendation

change accuracy for precision. Estimate must always be accurate (correct) by expressing a range within which the actual result is certain to fall, the degree of accuracy of an estimate is the displacement between the range’s average and the actual value – which is often only knowable post-fact. Precision should improve over time. Precision is variation within the range and should reduce as cause and effect relationships are identified and clarified over time

Your Justification

inaccurate estimates are a useless incompetence while imprecise estimates are a fact of life, The 4th ed pmbok had a reasonable explaination on pg 190. I think your treatment of it at line 5171 of this document weakens previous guidance when what we need is better guidance – see my suggestions elsewhere in this document

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation conflicts with other accepted material in the standard.

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5170 The project management team must determine the appropriate levels of accuracy and

5171 precision for use in the quality management plan. Precision is a measure of exactness. For

5172 example, the magnitude for each increment on the measurement’s number line is the interval

5173 that determines the measurement’s precision. Accuracy is an assessment of correctness. For

5174 example, the measured value is very close to the true value of the characteristic that has

5175 been measured. Precise measurements are not necessarily accurate measurements and accurate

5176 measurements are not necessarily precise measurements.

Your Recommendation

Rewrite. The 4th ed pg 190 was better (but not great) this is a backward step. What is here jumbles the concepts and omits any clear description of the underlying components. Unless we understand it we’ll never describe it well. Without good description capable creation and use of estimates is impossible. Without capable estimate the management of both schedule and cost are bankrupt activities. First every-day language allows “degree of accuracy” and people understand this axiomatically to mean how close together two things, normally one fixed like a target and one varable like a cost or time allowance are. Next to aid in estimating and enable statistical analysis we encourage the use of ranges inorder to embrace the uncertainty in quatities. Now we get ability to define an estimate as ‘accurate’ if the actual value is or will be in the range and the degree of accuracy is the displacement between the range’s avaerage and the ‘actul’. Actuals may be unknowable until post-fact. Last we have precision which is a measure of the variability that the range encompasses – in short its ‘absolute width’ on whatever scale is used to measure

Your Justification

EG Imagine a project that when completed will have cost $1,000,000.00 an estimate of $999,999 is inaccurate (missed the target) but has a high degree of accuracy (was close) . An estimate of 500k to 1.5m is accurate (contains the final value), has a high degree of accuracy (average is ‘spot-on’ and is sets a level of precision at a range of 1m$. An estimate of $900k to $1.2m is also accurate, has higher precision (300k$) but lower degree of accuracy. Thus what we want is accurate in a binary ‘in the range sense’ and as precise as is cost-effectively practicle to determine. Simon@logicalmodel.net

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended.

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180 understand how they relate to organizational project management (OPM). OPM is a strategy

181 execution framework utilizing project, program, and portfolio management as well as

182 organizational enabling practices to consistently and predictably deliver organizational

183 strategy producing better performance, better results, and a sustainable competitive

184 advantage.

Your Recommendation

Delete

Your Justification

This is the language of ‘soap-powder’ adverts and just ‘bullshits’ the reader with adjectives . If these assertions are true then cross-reference some credible, independant research to support it and tone the self-promotion down –

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

Our justification: Thank you for participating in PMI’s public exposure draft process. We truly value your opinion. However, we will defer your recommendation at this time due to a collaborative effort to align and harmonize selected content with other PMI foundational standards. The harmonized content reflects the alignment of multiple standards and the consensus agreement with other standards development committees. In January of 2012, PMI presented the selected harmonized content in another public exposure draft where recommendations were reviewed and changes were incorporated. Since this process was recently performed, recommendations on the harmonized content from this round of public exposure are collected and deferred. Because your recommendation belongs in this category, we are deferring your feedback to the next harmonization cycle. If you would like additional information regarding this process, please contact Quynh Woodward at quynh.woodward@pmi.org.

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203

Your Recommendation

Get some thinkers together and determine meaningfull criteria that differentiate between the nodes in the table such that it can be used to deterimine when one is looking at a project or a program. Projects do not have to be smaller than programs, or less well defined, neither is defined by the actions of its participants, Your lack of clear comprehension of three columns is evident in the vauge waffle used to express each node’s characteristics. Vaugeness has no place in “The standard” but may be acceptable in “a guide”

Your Justification

What we currently have are overlapping concepts that fail to differentiate what really could be argued as determinates of the three column’s characteristics. EG the description of portfolio scope fits program scope. What you could say is taht a program is definately finite in scope and a subset of a portfolio while a portfolio’s scope is constrained by the organisation’s legal constitution (EG its Articles of Association) – THINK people

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

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214 the water projects may be grouped together as a water program.

Your Recommendation

Change program to portfolio

Your Justification

your own definition at line 230/231 !

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: We agree with basic recommendation. We have modified the sentence and believe that the following re-write addresses your comment. “the water projects may be grouped together as a water program. Thus, the power program and the water program become integral components of the enterprise portfolio of the infrastructure firm.”

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227 program in order to meet the program requirements and to obtain benefits and control not

Your Recommendation

Tidy-up all the myriad duplications of “a pgm is …benefits and control…” the most recent being a mere 5 lines prior at L-222

Your Justification

Saying it over and over makes the document lower value A program – at least as your Pgm Mgt 3rd Ed guide sees it is just a project viewed from the customer’s perspective. Given that mankind is pretty crap at projects its probable that we don’t know how to define them well – what hope then that we can define something as nebulous as a program to be in some essential and meaningful way different from project? Not high given what follows on L-241 We need guidance that is crisp and right – leave vauge and debateable out of “the standard” – If you want o explore it then some other publication is appropriate.

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

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241 An example of a program is a new communications satellite system with projects for design

242 of the satellite and the ground stations, the construction of each, the integration of the

243 system, and the launch of the satellite.

Your Recommendation

Replace this wrong example with a meaningful example – if you can find one I offer:- A program might be illustrated by “energies focussed on ‘Reduce deaths from heart disease'”. Here reducing alchol intakes and promoting physical exercise are two endeavours that are free-standing of each other, while linked by pursuit of a single benefit – both makes an independantly valid contribution to the benefit sought but competes for access to a finite resource pool to realise objectives. Combining their outcomes increases benefits, and combining their management reduces project-control overheads.

Your Justification

If we design and build a satallite that is not two projects in the sense encompassed by the definition at L-80 & 81 – the design is not a product that any sponsor wants – its intermediate, temporary, disposable, way-marker on the journey to the results that is wanted. It might be a project for a supplier but its useless to the customer. Nor is the ground station as sperate project. Neither satallite nor ground station is of use in isolation – they are just elements of an integrated system whose only value is when each deliverable exists in the presence of the other – You are mis-quoting and using an example of a project, multi-phased, parallel developments, complex and expensive but still a project. Worse (or better) its a project with well defined end-point when it starts which makes it even less of a candidate to be called program. Simon@ogicalmodel.net

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content.

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298 The PMO is one of the best options to integrate data and information from corporate

Your Recommendation

Reword, clarify and ‘add the others’

Your Justification

If a PMO is “one of the best” then what are the other ‘bests’ of which it is one This line is indicative of the general tendency to add adjactives an superlatives that do not add value or stand scrutiny but add insincerity, length and potential for trouble for those to whom english is a foreign language

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: We agree with basic recommendation. We have modified the sentence and believe that the following re-write addresses your comment. “The PMO integrates data and information from corporate strategic projects and evaluates how higher level strategic objectives are being fulfilled.”

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336 Operations are an organizational function performing the ongoing execution of activities

Your Recommendation

delete one of performing or execution

Your Justification

tautology

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: We agree with basic recommendation. We have modified the sentence and believe that the following re-write addresses your comment. First sentence in ine 336-337 will be rewritten to: “Operations management is responsible for overseeing, directing, and controlling business operations.”

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336 Operations are an organizational function performing the ongoing execution of activities

Your Recommendation

Add reference that Ops generate teh funds that pay for projects, eiter by promise that supports investor/ banker capital injection or by generating revenue

Your Justification

Key taht PMs realise that Ops are what matters

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content.

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337 that produce the same product or provide a repetitive service. Operations evolve to

Your Recommendation

Reword to say operations evolve WHILE they carry out day-to-day business

Your Justification

Statement better reflects reality: ops don’t evolve TO do something that they aren’t doing, they evolve while they are doing it

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content.

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366 Operations are permanent endeavors that produce repetitive outputs, with resources

Your Recommendation

move to be with 336 and 337

Your Justification

reverts to describing what ops are and we did that in previous section

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation not related to referenced text

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369 projects are temporary endeavors.

Your Recommendation

delete

Your Justification

how any times can you usefully repeat something and when does it add length not value ?

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended.

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371 Operations management is a subject area that is outside the scope of formal project

Your Recommendation

Define “formal” and contrast to informal/ non-formal/ … or delete teh word

Your Justification

Adds confusion not clarity

Our vote on your recommendation: Editorial

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373 Operations management is an area of management concerned with ongoing production of goods

Your Recommendation

Move to 336 et seq

Your Justification

reverted to defining what ops are – we did taht at 336

Our vote on your recommendation: Editorial

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376 managing processes that transform inputs (e.g., materials, components, energy, and labor)

377 into outputs (e.g., products, goods and/or services).

Your Recommendation

Replace with a decent example or definition

Your Justification

As written the description applies just as much to project or even portfolio so these lines do not give the reader guiance taht allows then to differentiate or identify when they are faced with ops or a project. Again it is worrying tha guidance is offered where the determinin characteristic isn’t even vaugely differentiated in the document. Operations is charecterised by cycles of activity whose end point is not envisaged during their execution – unlike projects whose whole existance is focussed on delivering the circumstances that cause the project’s termination. Both transform i/p to o/p. A project is typically event driven and ops may be event driven (eg reciept of a customer’s order) but is also largely driven on annual and quarterly cycles Eg Wheat is harvested in September

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

Our justification: Recommendation DEFERRED – out of scope for current update committee project charter. Recommendation will be forwarded to next update committee for their consideration.

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379 While it is clear that operations management is different from project management (see

380 Section 1.5.1.1), the stakeholders who perform and conduct business operations are

381 important considerations in projects that will affect their future work and endeavors.

Your Recommendation

reword! How about “Projects are temporary and create change. The change is delivered into the organisation’s operational environment during the project’s execution or at the latest at project termination. It is normally useful for transition of deliverables into operational use with the maximum post-project benefit that representatives of operational areas are appropriately engaged in relevant project activities from project definition onwards

Your Justification

As given what an awkward collection of words to poorly express something so important

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

Our justification: Recommendation DEFERRED – out of scope for current update committee project charter. Recommendation will be forwarded to next update committee for their consideration.

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387 part of the risk management plan.

Your Recommendation

Rename RMP to be Risk Management Guidelines or RM Policy or RM Strategy or RM Policies

Your Justification

“Plan” is often misconcieved as schedule and what we are dealing with are readers who need the document to convey complex topics with the greatest clarity possible – so as authors the duty is to pick the words that communicate wit the most people in the clearest possible way

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation conflicts with other accepted material in the standard

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403 Governance usually sets high-level strategic direction and performance parameters. The

Your Recommendation

NO!!! Reword Governance does not set objectives. Governance is a PROCESS and it is a process by which we check objectives are set, that they align with stakeholder needs, that they are the best set of objectives, that work is being carried out to realise the objectives, that changes to context change objectives appropriately

Your Justification

As written it is gramatically incorrect and the assertion is wrong

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Several comments were received. We have modified the sentences to best represent the intent of all comments. We believe that the following re-write addresses your comment. “Organizations use governance to establish strategic direction and performance parameters.”

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418 approaches. They can refer to either entire firms (as in telecommunications, oil and gas,

419 construction, consultancy and professional services) or multi-firm consortia or networks;

420 it is also possible that some large project-based organizations have functional support

421 areas or that the PBO is nested within subsidiaries or divisions of larger corporations.

Your Recommendation

Delete

Your Justification

Adds length but not value

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation conflicts with other accepted material in the standard

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416 by the final result rather than position or politics.

Your Recommendation

Reword to correct sentiment

Your Justification

All resuts, including those created in projects are always judged politically. Its wrong to imply otherwise or denigrate the importance of this reality

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended.

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414 organizations (i.e., functional, matrix, or projectized). The use of PBOs weakens the

415 hierarchy and bureaucracy inside the organizations as the success of the work is measured

Your Recommendation

Reword to reflect reality and what you mean

Your Justification

The defence indusrty is project based and its hierarchy isn’t weakened as a result! Why is bureaucracy included here – is a PBO proposed to be more/ less/ better at admin?

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended.

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429 stay up to date on corporate/organizational governance policies and procedures pertaining

430 to the subject matter of the product or service (e.g., if an organization has adopted

431 policies in support of sustainability practices and the project involves construction of a

432 new office building, the project manager should be aware of sustainability requirements

433 related to building construction.)

Your Recommendation

Reword to correct te sentiment that currently suggests the PM has domain expertise

Your Justification

It is the PM’s job to conduct the project within the organisations governance procedures IT IS NOT the PM’s job to know all the subject matter expert’s domains – As PM I dont have to know the correlation between sustainability and designs for office blocks, what I do have a duty for is to create a project QC ethos so that the architect creates an audit trail that shows that poilcy affected design and a QA ethos that shows the governance function checked our QC logs for relevant compliances

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation’s level of detail inappropriate for a standard

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438 strategy, it is incumbent upon the project manager to document and identify such conflicts

439 as early as possible in the project. At times the development of an organizational

Your Recommendation

reword to reflect the correct intention

Your Justification

It is the PM’s duty to ensure such a conflict is discovered and then COMMUNICATED: that may be by documentation but to document and not communicate is failure while to communicate and not document ranges from desirable to omission

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended.

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443 1.6 Business Value

Your Recommendation

Delete “Business”

Your Justification

The topic is “Value”

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

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444 Business value is a concept that is unique to each organization. Business value is defined

Your Recommendation

Delete “Business”

Your Justification

Sentence is more applicable as “Value is…each organisation”

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

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457 Successful business value realization begins with comprehensive strategic planning and

Your Recommendation

Introduce and define teh concept of utility

Your Justification

Utility is what your trying to express, so use the correct term. Since its not an easy idea for some to grasp axiomatically and your writng “guidance” provide an explaination or definition

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

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463 program, and project management techniques is essential.

Your Recommendation

delete ‘essential’ or reword previous scentence

Your Justification

PPPM may be useful during times of change, when strategy is for stability then PPPm are irrelevant. It isn’t yet proven that program managment does other than substitute/ distract operational management from their responsibilities to manage change – thus ‘essential’ is misleading

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

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464 Portfolio management aligns components (projects, programs or operations) to the

Your Recommendation

Delete

Your Justification

Repeating what has already been said without extra value being added just lengthens the document and decreases its ultimate readership and influnce

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

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488 The project manager is the person assigned by the performing organization to lead the team

Your Recommendation

change “lead” to “manage” or add a section to explore the balance between the attributes, triggers for when to accentuate one or other

Your Justification

A project leader leads and a project manager manages – there is a deep philosophical point here about the duty to ‘do the right thing and enable others’ – leadership and teh duty to ‘do things right within constraints’ management

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

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505 competition and the marketplace. The project manager’s role therefore becomes increasingly

Your Recommendation

Reword

Your Justification

The PM’s role may be driven by strategic imperatives but that does not make the PM role strategic – PMs splashing strategy puddles are political beasts and this document’s contents is devoid of political guidance or savvy insight

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation conflicts with other accepted material in the standard

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506 strategic. Many of the tools and techniques for managing projects are specific to project

Your Recommendation

Delete the sentence

Your Justification

Non of the tools in the pmbok are unique or specific to project management – it is the otherway around – project management is dependant on techniques like decomposition and tools like hierarchical rooted tree structures. Even the gantt chart is commonly used in such generalised and universal applications as showing holiday bookings in operational departments or squashcort reservations in a sports centre.

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted

Our justification:

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537 This standard is unique to the project management field and has interrelationships to

Your Recommendation

Reword

Your Justification

There are many such guides available, almost every company that handles projects, and every one with a pmo has a similar guide. Perhaps you mean “this guide is narrowly framed and so is suitable only to projects”? I’d disagree in part that it applies more widely than just projects – unless all change is by definition encapsulated in a project

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content

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543 • The Standard for Program Management addresses the management of programs.

544 • The Standard for Portfolio Management addresses the management of portfolios,

545 • Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3®) examines an enterprise’s

546 project management process capabilities.

547 Your Recommendation

Add other sources of guidance

Your Justification

Your title is “…guide…” but your evolving intent is to monopolise certification revenue and deny existance of other guidance. It is entirely unethical to write a section such as this and not mention ISO 25001, ansi 10006 (ok thats pmbok again), BS 6079, PRINCE2, The IPMA APMBoK, etc

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

Our justification: Recommendation DEFERRED – out of scope for current update committee project charter. Recommendation will be forwarded to next update committee for their consideration.

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553 organization’s established practice methodologies. This chapter describes how

Your Recommendation

Define “practice methodoligies”

Your Justification

You’ve used what looks like a defined term without definition. it certainly isn’t meaningful English on its own

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: We agree with basic recommendation. We have modified the sentence and believe that the following re-write addresses your comment. “organization’s established practices. This chapter describes how”

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569 2.1.1 Organizational Cultures and Styles

Your Recommendation

Rewrite to rationalise and seperate your messages

Your Justification

You mix messages of ‘culture is nationality’ and ‘culture is shared perception’ While both are true and could have ‘culture is discipline like finance isn’t engineering isnt’t sales’ to provide guidance to the reader you need to think deeper and seperate out the themes and then link them to how to cause effects with tools and actions

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient justification provided with recommendation. Submitter did not provide sufficient justification regarding why the recommended change should be included within the standard and proper linkage with other areas of the standard. Therefore, reviewers cannot determine what the Submitter may have meant or intended.

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572 sponsor or perform projects, they directly influence the project and its conduct depending

Your Recommendation

Reword the sentence

Your Justification

Do you mean something as simple as “An organisation’s culture affects how it conducts projects” ? if so say it simply, if not you need to say what you mean without indefinate terms like “they”

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: We agree with basic recommendation. We have modified the sentence and believe that the following re-write addresses your comment. “An organization’s culture and style affect how it conducts projects”

OriginalText

587 2.1.5. Cultures and styles are learned and shared and may have a strong influence on a

Your Recommendation

How ironic given you propensity to absolutes where indicative would be better that here you say “may” when you should say “do” 🙂

Your Justification

Culture or style (learned shared behaviour patterns) ARE indisputably significant deteminantes of a project’s ability to meet objectives

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient justification provided with recommendation.

OriginalText

592 decision makers or influencers and work with them to increase the probability of project

Your Recommendation

Add linkage to organisations legal constitution and the authorisation of officers to make decisions and delegate that right

Your Justification

Too much of this document is insular, written without observation of or reference to the organisational context (eg SOX/ Combined Code/ COSO type considerations). Decision makers have that right through the organisation’s governance structures and that must be explained if your to give readers good guidance that equips the to link their project’s decision making needs to the organisations levers of power Many projcts fail because the leaders and managers don’t know how to access escalation mechanisms and you’ve just failed to state what matters in a spot ripe for its inclusion Simon@logicalmodel.net

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended. Recommended text was not provided.

OriginalText

596 organizations may often be multinationals or international organizations. Another effect

Your Recommendation

Delete tautology

Your Justification

How can anything be “multi-” national without being “inter-” national or vice versa – These examples of obvious poor thinking behind the pen server by proxy to illustrate how many subtler less obvious but insidious similar thoughts creep in. Each is individual close to irrelevant but in total they add up to a tone to the document that contributes to project management’s poor capability and poor standing EG Projects are only temporary to suppliers, to customers its an investent that with luck, skill and a fair wind with be permenent. We need guidance that is free of stupid weaknesses so we can bring debate to the crucial questions

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Numerous comments were received on this section. It has been revised as follows: Previous Text: Knowledge of the cultural influence that sponsoring or performing organizations have on a project becomes critical for a project manager in light of globalization, where these organizations may often be multinationals or international organizations. Another effect of globalization is the increasing number of projects involving diverse organizations and locations around the world. Replaced with: In light of globalization, understanding the impact of cultural influences is critical in projects involving diverse organizations and locations around the world.

OriginalText

604 In the face of globalization of the project management profession, project management

Your Recommendation

Reword

Your Justification

PM isn’t globalised – look at what happens in China vs. Italy vs Africa vs Germany to see how un globalised it is, nor is it a profession (its a set of T&T that everyone uses more or less formally al the time. Its practitioners may behave professionally to deliver projects with global span but that is quiet different

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Numerous comments were received on this section. It has been revised as follows: Project management success in an organization is highly dependent on an effective organizational communication style, especially in the face of globalization of the project management profession,

OriginalText

606 communication style. This has been made possible with the advent of global mass media and

Your Recommendation

delete

Your Justification

this is waffle that adds to document length but not to reader capability – it adds reader cost not reader value

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Numerous comments were received on this section. It has been revised as follows: Deleted the sentence “This has been made possible with the advent of global mass media and other forms of technological development such as the internet.”

OriginalText

619 Organizational structure is an enterprise environmental factor which can affect the

Your Recommendation

Rewrite the section

Your Justification

This is a tired old section that is good for text books, and does set-out some conceptual foundations but it misses the whole point – the Org Structure is about the definition of the communication lines by which instruction and control over resource is delegated and escalation of contradictory concurrent constraints are escalated – in short “Chain of command”. The options exist because of competing needs for effective projects and effecient resource utalisation, capital equipment and standards cost/ usage plus the human need for appreciation from peer groups

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation. Cannot determine what is being recommended.

OriginalText

658 organization, shown in Figure 2-5. In a projectized organization, team members are often

Your Recommendation

Reword

Your Justification

It is the project that is projectised not the whole organisation. Even in a company whose revenue is 100% derived from servicing contracts that are each a project the organisation (Finance, Payrol, Staff management, Marketing, Sales, Operations/ Delivery) is functional – the only projectised bit is to draw a cross functional team with 100% time allocation to focus on a result until it is achieved. All the less extreme examples are still only projectised in the context of the achievement of objectives that deliver a change

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended. Recommended text was not provided.

OriginalText

688

Your Recommendation

Delete or replace and then link to the text. Think through what message you trying to deliver. If teh white space represents “percentage of time spent” or “relative importance of” then its entirely the wrong shape. It is shows “number of” it is probably still the wrong shape Look also at your labels “Strategic” and “Middle Management” are a mix of concepts, Strategic and operational might be better?

Your Justification

A meaningless triangle Maybe what you meant was some elements from “time available to the PM at teh top is limited but authority is great” while without clear direction the bottom spends a fortune going in the wrong direction and without good tracking and escalation the top is not in control – it all passes throgh the middle who generalise, delete and distort all messages

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Numerous comments were received on on lines 676 through 690. It has been revised as follows: We’ve deleted Figure 2-7 and renumbered Figures up through 2-14 and references to Figures. We’ve modified the text to read: Many organizational structures include strategic, middle management, and operational levels. The project manager may interact with all three levels depending on factors such as: • the strategic importance of the project, • the capacity of stakeholders to exert influence on the project • the degree of project management maturity, • project management systems and, • organizational communications This interaction determines project characteristics such as: • Project manager’s level of authority; • Resource availability and management; • Entity controling the project budget; • Project manager’s role; and • Project team composition.

OriginalText

701 2.1.4.1 Processes and Procedures

Your Recommendation

Delete “Processes and ” or define the terms don’t perpetuate the confusion by doubling up the terms out of ignorance of which to use

Your Justification

If your using both then deifferentiate them and then use consistentlywith your definitions I suggest taht processes occur in the nature of the world – sugar disolves in tea. Procedures are the human imposition of sequence and assessment criteria so – the use of a dry tea-spoon to add two rounded spoonfulls before then stirring (and thus wetting the spoon precluding further dispensing of sugar) and by stirring to accelerate creation of a solution – is a procedure.

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient justification provided with recommendation.

OriginalText

702 The organization’s processes and procedures for conducting work include, but are not

Your Recommendation

reword to reflect either all work or limit to project work and link to culture

Your Justification

You say “work” but the list you give is that subset of work that is project oriented. The full set of OPA (for example as assessed by the Baldrige Award) must cover all organisational activity. The OPA constrain and in part define the organisation’s “shared understaning of appropriate responses to events” otherwise known as organisational/ departmental ‘culture’

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: We agree with basic recommendation. We have modified the sentence and believe that the following re-write addresses your comment: 702 The organization’s processes and procedures for conducting project work include, but are not …

OriginalText

707 • Specific organizational standards such as policies (e.g., safety and health

708 policy, ethics policy, and project management policy), product and project life cycles,

Your Recommendation

Rewrite to remove ambiguity and error one of the more subtle examples of thinking behind teh pen whose aggregation devalues our abilities as a ‘profession’

Your Justification

A policy is not a standard and vice versa A policy sets out intention in a way that avoids specifics in order that it can be applied in novel situations A standard is the interpretation of policy in specific context which may introduce elements of expression or assessment that do not translate to other contexts. In other contexts an alternate standard is required to fulfil the invariant needs of the policy Simon@logicalmodel.net

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation’s level of detail inappropriate for a standard

OriginalText

710 checklists, and standardized process definitions for use in the organization); and

Your Recommendation

Revise the list Reporting templates, meeting agendas that highlight decisions to be made and job descriptions are more important than those listed

Your Justification

Job descriptions are viseral and they translate directly to actions that drive reporting and the decisions to be made in meetings

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content

OriginalText

711 • Templates (e.g., risk, work breakdown structure, project schedule network

Your Recommendation

See 2412

Your Justification

linked

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient justification provided with recommendation

OriginalText

714 • Change control procedures, including the steps by which official company

715 standards, policies, plans, and procedures or any project documents, will be modified, and

716 how any changes will be approved and validated;

Your Recommendation

Add expression of creating baslines

Your Justification

You can only have control of change to baselines and it is possible that change doesn’t arise: thus the most important piece of guidance is to create baselines

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content

OriginalText

717 • Financial controls procedures (e.g., time reporting, required expenditure and

Your Recommendation

move or repeat contract to other headings

Your Justification

Contracts are not exclsuive to finance

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content

OriginalText

732 2.1.4.2 Corporate Knowledge Base

Your Recommendation

Make reference to Quality Management Systems as a key OPA

Your Justification

A key K-B is the collection of product standards (acceptance criteria – AC) whose achievement marks contractural discharge of obligation and the collection of procedures (or method statements) with which compliance is required for validity of estimates, adherence to SHE, and maybe also achievement of AC

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

Our justification: Recommendation DEFFERED – out of scope for current update committee project charter. Recommendation will be forwarded to next update committee for their consideration.

OriginalText

770 • Company work authorization systems;

Your Recommendation

Move to (or add to) OPA ditto PMIS at L-777

Your Justification

The WAS is an OPA as much if not more than an EEF

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

Our justification: Recommendation DEFFERED – out of scope for current update committee project charter. Recommendation will be forwarded to next update committee for their consideration.

OriginalText

777 • Project management information systems (e.g., an automated tool, such as a

Your Recommendation

Move to (or copy to) OPA

Your Justification

When done right the use of a PMIS is more of an asset than environmental factor

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation conflicts with other accepted material in the standard

OriginalText

782 perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of a project.

Your Recommendation

Reword and remove tautology A better definition would be “Project stakeholders includes everyone who is affected by or can affect the projects conduct or results. Groups of stakeholders may have common interests either as individuals, as citizens or as organisations

Your Justification

decsion and outcome are inclusive of each other, organisation is inclusive of group but ultimately organisations are just people.

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

OriginalText

783 Stakeholders may be actively involved in the project or have interests that may be

Your Recommendation

change “or” to “and” –

Your Justification

The “may” earlier in the sentence makes the “and” optional but “or” makes the two always exclusive not potentially inclusive

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content

OriginalText

786 team members in order to achieve a set of outcomes that satisfy strategic business needs.

Your Recommendation

reword to clarify that team members are stakeholders. perhaps “S/h influence other stakeholders (eg customers infleunce development teams) to influence….”

Your Justification

As written the excellent inclusiveness of L-782/3 is diluted to imply team are not stakeholders

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Numerous comments were received on line 785 to 789. We have modified the sentences to best represent the intent of all comments. We believe that the following re-write addresses your comment: “Stakeholders may also exert influence over the project, its deliverables, and the project team in order to achieve a set of outcomes that satisfy strategic business objectives or other needs. Project governance—the alignment of the project with stakeholders’ needs or objectives—is critical to the successful management of stakeholder engagement and the achievement of organizational objectives. Project…”.

OriginalText

787 Project governance—the alignment of the project with stakeholders’ strategic objectives—is

Your Recommendation

NO NO NO! Governance is not alignment or even aligning: Governance is checking the alignment and reporting degree to authorised decision makers – even if the checker is also the decider

Your Justification

it is important when publishing guidance to refelect foundational concepts correctly – exploring a world using language is already hard, add in geographic culture differences and foreign languages and what words you use and how you link concepts is inflential – possibly critically.

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation. Cannot determine what is being recommended. No alternative replacement text provided.

OriginalText

792 that satisfy both stakeholder expectations and organizational strategic objectives.

Your Recommendation

NO! Stakeholders are not all positive, Stakeholders are not all in agreement about objectives and relative merits of outcomes and teh PM is not necessarily (often isn’t) the decision maker how about something like “provides a framework by which the PM is enabled to direct decisions to appropriate decision makers” – this still leave out some essential characteristics but is better than what is there now

Your Justification

Foundational concets must be weel described, small errors here accumulate over the whole document to undermine PM’s ability in the wider-world

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Numerous comments were received on line 785 to 792. We have modified the sentences to best represent the intent of all comments. We believe that the following re-write addresses your comment: “Stakeholders may also exert influence over the project, its deliverables, and the project team in order to achieve a set of outcomes that satisfy strategic business objectives or other needs. Project governance—the alignment of the project with stakeholders’ needs or objectives—is critical to the successful management of stakeholder engagement and the achievement of organizational objectives. Project governance enables organizations to consistently manage projects and maximize the value of project outcomes and align the projects with business strategy. It provides a framework in which the project manager and sponsrs can make decisions that satisfy both stakeholder needs and expectations and organizational strategic objectives or address circumstances where these may not be in alignment.”

OriginalText

793 2.2.1 Project Stakeholders

Your Recommendation

Reword to start with those who pay wages of the team and expect return: eiether taxpayer, shareholder or lender. Then flow that sentiment through the rest of the section and the rest of teh document

Your Justification

WOW! Scary that providers of capital don’t even get a mention – this is a root-cause of project management’s failure to provide excellent service to humanity

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: We agree with basic recommendation. We have placed “Sponsor” at the start of the bulleted list of stakeholders starting at line 831.

OriginalText

794 Stakeholders include members of the project team as well as interested entities who are

Your Recommendation

Add “all” to members and interested parties to emphasis inclusiveness

Your Justification

stakeholders are everyone stakeholder analysis determines significance

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Several comments were received on lines 794 through 800. We have modified the sentences and believe that the following re-write addresses your comment. “Stakeholders include all members of the project team as well as all interested entities who are internal or external to the organization. The project team must identify internal and external, actively involved or passively affected, positive and negative, and performing and advising stakeholders in order to determine the project requirements and the expectations of all parties involved. The project manager should manage the influences of these various stakeholders in relation to the project requirements to ensure a successful outcome. Figure 2-8 illustrates the relationship between the project, the project team, and various stakeholders.”

OriginalText

2862 5.4 Create WBS

Your Recommendation

Take a deep breath and grasp the nettle on scope – over the years foundational flaws in vocabulary and concepts expressed in PMBOK have created growing problems in the guidance that manifest in ways such as twisted definitions for “W”bs. Work Breakdown Structure and Statement of Work really are used incorrectly through PMI guidance. Other people (EG PRINCE2 have better ideas that you need to add to yours – P2 goes off the rails with product flow diagrams. PmBoK use of AON networks is a much better tool, but P2 use of PBS is a better name for the start point- We need to combine isolated BEST practices to move our ‘profession’ along. First embrace and write from the perspective that “projects create results. Results may or may not be physical but together they are the delivered products of the project’s work. No action should be taken in a project if it does not create the result or improve the result’s value or quality or timeliness or through life cost or the uncertainty o any of these factors.” Scope is therefore two hierarchical lists with 100% 2-way tracability between them – everything we must produce – and everything we must do. The content of both lists is usefully explored by the technique of decomposition and usefully modelled in a BREAKDOWN structure – not all BS are WBS some are Product (Result/ Impact/ Outcome) BS SO STOP CALLING IT A WBS WHEN IT ISN’T and only call it a WBS when it is SO MOVE ACTIVITY DEFINITION INTO SCOPE MANAGEMENT where it belongs – IT ISNT part of time management. Time management’s legitimate inputs are the WBS and accompanying SOW both created in Scope management. Scope Management’s legitimate input is the Statement of Objectives (or Statement of Outcome or goal statement). Look at the Department of Defence’s Smart Acquisition work of 30 years ago – projects SHOULD NOT RECIEVE SOWs (unless as part of a RFQ) when sponsing an RFP project teams create SOWs by using the project team’s expertise to solve the customer’s problems 1st: Problem, 2nd: Required outcome, 3rd: Development Lifecycle choice, 4th: PBS & SOO (or “product backlog”), 5th WBS & SOW )or sprint’s contents), 6th: Resourced, Levelled Critical Path/ Chain schedule (even if called “psrint”)and somewhere appropriate to the parties in this sequence is the Contract – either of-employment of for-services

Your Justification

The guidance as written is debatable, I’d say wrong. Its continued propogation is one of the biggest causes of project management failures We can easily make a major contribution to fixing it through getting this document right.

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

Our justification: Recommendation DEFFERED – out of scope for current update committee project charter. Recommendation will be forwarded to next update committee for their consideration.

OriginalText

1614 4.1.1.1 Project Statement of Work

Your Recommendation

See also comment at L-2862 Replace SOW as input with SOO, unambiguously define SOW as describing the performing organisation’s approach (“Work”) to satisfying the receiving org’s needs. Define SOW as equal to WBS dictionary, Move Activity definition to Scope Management, Define BS as breakdown structure and WBS as one ending in verb-noun pairs that match the SOW and PBS as one containing only Nouns and organised by product not phase or other options – which should be reserved for alternate views of the WBS This guide propagates a few memes (sic) that are poisoning humanity’s ability to deliver projects. The Department of Defence created Smart Acquisition guidance 30 years ago to address one of them – the SOW. DOD pointed out that the “smart” customer’s approach uses a SOO – Statement of Outcome (or Objective) and leaves the supplier – performing organisation – to create a SOW AFTER the objectives or outcome are understood – and perhaps elaborated via rolling-wave. Understanding an outcome yields to an iterative decomposition of deliverables and their component parts (in association with configuration management’s Configuration Item Identification and Quality Planning’s selection of appropriate product standards). Eventually we reach a point where decomposition is either impossible or not useful and we can then map the CIs through their lifecycle for creation or acquisition, test, integration, test and finally delivery. These transformations are the work steps of the subject matter experts. The guidance would be SO much clearer if this section were amended so that the input to Scope Management was Statement of Objectives or Statement of Outcome and the steps were: 1) decomposition of Objective in a PRODUCT (or Outcome or Results ot Impact) Breakdown structure – See PRINCE2’s description of a PBS and Product Description (but ignore PFD) 2) Decomposition of each lowest level CI’s lifecycle for creation or acquisition and then integration and delivery in a Product Oriented Work Breakdown Structure – And now all those overly contorted WBS definitions and caveats can be thrown away. The PoWBS needs a WBS-Dictionary but this is just a synonym for SOW so map the terms together and use either – now contorted definitions of Sow WBS, Work-package etc melt away to reveal a simple, elegant and robust process. The resulting process addresses scope properly: everything we must deliver AND everything we must do. The “must deliver/ must do” definition easily accommodates development lifecycle choices such as Agile/ Iterative/ Exploratory/ Design 2nd lifecycles as well as Traditional/ Waterfall/ Design 1st/ High Integrity lifecycles without friction or angst to fit into a rolling-wave/ continious elaboration approach

Your Justification

The guide is influential but it has taken may “sensible” steps from an old start point and so does not offer the best insights that could be shared. Other advice (including that from DOD and PRINCE2) have ideas that the guide ignores to the detriment of everyone involved in PM. Neither of the others are universally correct or applicable but this guide could be improved by a million miles by staring with a lucid view of what scope really is – at teh moment it has bent and twisted definition – any time something is this twisted its because it is wrong. When ‘right’ is discoveredit can always be recognised because it is simple, elegant and inclusive. Simon@logicalmodel.net

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

Our justification: Thank you for participating in PMI’s public exposure draft process. We truly value your opinion. However, we will defer your recommendation at this time due to a collaborative effort to align and harmonize selected content with other PMI foundational standards The harmonized content reflects the alignment of multiple standards and the consensus agreement with other standards development committees. In January of 2012, PMI presented the selected harmonized content in another public exposure draft where recommendations were reviewed and changes were incorporated. Since this process was recently performed, recommendations on the harmonized content from this round of public exposure are collected and deferred. Because your recommendation belongs in this category, we are deferring your feedback to the next harmonization cycle. If you would like additional information regarding this process, please contact Quynh Woodward at quynh.woodward@pmi.org.

OriginalText

4014

Your Recommendation

A much more intuitive convention and easier calculation convention is widely used across the world and would be sensible reflected in your diagram. First use the TOP of the node as EARLY and the BOTTOM as LATE Second put DURATION as centre top or bottom which leaves room for TF in 1 of 3 places (Middle right being a good choice) AND MOST IMPORTANT the calculation of ES/ EF, LF/ LS should run as follows for you diagram: Task “A” earliest start is AFTER ZERO and being 5 days finished ON 0+duration = day 5, Tasks “B” and “C” start AFTER 5 and finsih on 5+5 = 10 and 5+10 = 15 respectively so Task “D” starts AFTER 15 and finishes on 15+15 = 30 Task “D” Must therefore finish on 30 at the latest so must starts after 30-duration=15 latest Tasks “B” & C” have a must finish by 15 so a must start for 15-10 = 5 and 15-5 = 10 Task A must therefore finish for min(5,10) so 5 and being 5 days must start after 0 This also accomodates very simple transcription to a gantt format For educational design you should also vary the numbers so for example D are not involved in descriptions with the number 15 in each. IE Its “start after” and duration of 15+15=30 would be better as 15+14=29 so each is unambigiously traceable to its source for the learner.

Your Justification

It would be a shame to proceed as drafted as this is unintitive and contradicts conventions already in use by many (most?) people

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Several comments were received on Figure 6-17. We have modified the content of the figure to best represent the intent of all comments. We believe that the following change addresses your comment: Modify the diagram to improve clarity and meaning and to conform with accepted conventions of labeling, placement, calculation, and enumeration.

OriginalText

3320 • Level of accuracy. Activity duration estimates will adhere to a rounding of the

Your Recommendation

See also line 4465 and 5171 Reword to properly express what your trying to say Estimates must always reflect reality (we might say “be accurate”). Reflecting an uncertain reality normally requires expressing vales as ranges and probabilities. The breadth of the range determines the variability and may be referred to as “precision” rather than using precision to mean number of decimal places. You need to define the terms and then use them consistently – without good vocabulary it is impossible to have clear communication.

Your Justification

precision and accuracy are two crucial important terms to undestand if we are to ever move estimating from its woeful state of guesses, hidden fudge factors and post-event mis-recording of actuals to escape blame. Previously (4th Ed) there was a reasonable definition on pg 190. What is included in this edition is a backward step, less clear, less correct See L-5171

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Several comments were received on lines 3320 through 3327. We have modified the sentences to best represent the intent of all comments. We believe that the following re-write addresses your comment: Level of accuracy. The acceptable range used in determining realistic activity duration estimates is specified, and may include an amount for contingencies; Units of measure. Each unit used in measurements (such as staff hours, staff days, or weeks for time measures, or meters, liters, tons, kilometers, or cubic yards for quantity measures) is defined for each of the resources; Organizational procedures links. The WBS (Section 5.4) provides the framework for the schedule management plan, allowing for consistency with the estimates and resulting schedules; Project schedule model maintenance. The process used to update the status and record progress of the project in the schedule model during the execution of the project. Control thresholds. Variance thresholds for monitoring schedule performance may be specified to indicate an agreed-upon amount of variation to be allowed before some action needs to be taken. Thresholds are typically expressed as percentage deviations from the parameters established in the baseline plan;

OriginalText

4465 • Level of accuracy. Activity cost estimates will adhere to a rounding of the data

Your Recommendation

See also line 3321and 5171 Reword to properly express what your trying to say Estimates must always reflect reality (we might say “be accurate”). Reflecting an uncertain reality normally requires expressing vales as ranges and probabilities. The breadth of the range determines the variability and may be referred to as “precision” rather than using precision to mean number of decimal places. You need to define the terms and then use them consistently – without good vocabulary it is impossible to have clear communication.

Your Justification

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Several comments were received on lines 4464 through 4469. We have modified the sentences to best represent the intent of all comments. We believe that the following re-write addresses your comment: For example, the cost management plan can establish the following: Units of measure. Each unit used in measurements (such as staff hours, staff days, weeks for time measures, or meters, liters, tons, kilometers, or cubic yards for quantity measures., or lump sum in currency form) is defined for each of the resources. Level of precision. The degree to which activity cost estimates will be rounded up or down (e.g., US$100.49 to US$100, or US$995.59 to US$1,000), based on the scope of the activities and magnitude of the project. Level of accuracy. The acceptable range (e.g., ±10%) used in determining realistic activity cost estimates is specified, and may include an amount for contingencies;

OriginalText

826 An important part of a project manager’s responsibility is to manage stakeholder

Your Recommendation

Amend to reflect PM’s true duty

Your Justification

An important part of teh PM’s role is to ensure all S/H are identified and managed appropriately – the PM cannot manage those who are above prorject level nor thse whose stake is highly technical nor do they necessarily have time to manage all S/Hs thus the PM runs SH management on behalf of the sponsor

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation. Cannot determine what is being recommended.

OriginalText

839 • Sponsor. A sponsor is the person or group that provides resources and support for

Your Recommendation

Amend to reflect the sponsor’s interests and duties

Your Justification

Again we have this slightly incorrect view that colours the advise and leaves us with a ‘profession’ that fails. The sponsor’s role is not “provide the resources” like a father paying for a daughter’s wedding. The sponsors role should be to define what equates to value for them or their constituients. The sponsor should also both drive the PM and support the PM in every way needed to cause project results to be delivered Enabling value/ utility should be the project’s end-state so the sponsor must provide definition of the the end-state, expressed in terms that allow teh ‘performing organisation’ to show discharge of obligation

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

OriginalText

848 reviews, and go/no-go decisions when risks are particularly high. The sponsor also ensures

Your Recommendation

Amende to reflect the sponsor’s missing duties

Your Justification

The sponsor is, or represents those who are investing in the project and will collect teh benefits enabled, the sponsor is or represents those who are the final arbiters of decisions particularly related to response to threat and opportunity

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended

OriginalText

872 • Other stakeholders. Additional stakeholders, such as procurement entities,

873 financial institutions, government regulators, subject matter experts and consultants, may

874 have a financial interest in the project, contribute inputs to the project, or have an

875 interest in the outcome of the project.

Your Recommendation

Move the consideration of those stakeholders with financial interest to be first and split from those in this catchall bucket whose interests are non-financial

Your Justification

another example of how the culture/ tone of this documnent establishes the level of pm capability in the wider world. These constant, subtle shades of emphasis or omission or inclusion are strong influences on the global capability in pm You owe us all a duty under theethics guide to get this stuff right – 1 month to comment on 10,000 lines isn’t enough. A month is further stretch beciuase comments are needed to address conceptual issues and expressional issues and typographic errors and not to just focus on best practices of PM. The allocated duration also overlapped with the Program guide exposure making it even less viable to comment properly. The overlap is apporopraite but the one month is not

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended

OriginalText

877 Project governance is the alignment of project objectives with the strategy of the larger

Your Recommendation

Reword How about “Project governance IS THE PROCESS by which golas are set and their alignment witheth organisations context is checked, mismatches escalated and responded to, decisions made and approvals granted

Your Justification

project governance is not “the alignment of projects..” it is a process conducted or a duty assigned…

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Several comments were received on lines 877 through 878. We have modified the sentences to best represent the intent of all comments. We believe that the following re-write addresses your comment: “Project governance is an oversight function, that is aligned with the organization’s governance model and that encompasses the project lifecycle. Project governance framework provides the project manager and team with structure, processes, decision-making model and tools for managing the project, while supporting and controlling the project for successful delivery. Project governance is a critical element of any project, especially on complex and risky projects. It provides a comprehensive…”

OriginalText

880 documenting reliable, repeatable project practices. It includes a framework for making

Your Recommendation

change documenting to communicating

Your Justification

the aim is not to document and sucess is not created by documenting. The aim is, and sucess arises from communicating – communication may use documentation but it may not and it is not restricted to documentation as a channel. Say what we need you to mean and say it clearly – think! – please!!

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: We agree with basic recommendation. We have modified the sentence and believe that the following re-write addresses your comment. “documenting and communicating reliable, repeatable project practices. It includes a framework for making”

OriginalText

924 be assigned to work full time or may just participate on the team when their particular

Your Recommendation

reword to reflect the true states of engagement Core team memmbers and other project participants may have to time-slice or multi-task between other duties for the duration of the project: and are thus ‘part-time’ or the project may required they devote 100% of theier energies for part of the rojects duration – so also ‘part-time’ or a portion of their efforts for a portion of the time – still part time or be entirely devoted to the project (full-time?)

Your Justification

incomplete as written

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended

OriginalText

936 2.3.1 Composition of Project Teams

Your Recommendation

Relocate and merge with discussion of matric management structuresbat L-618 et. seq.

Your Justification

The topic of organisation structure and team composition are the same discussion, splitting it into two parts in the document fragments coverage and makes assimilation of ‘guidance’ slower, more error prone and less likely

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

Our justification: Recommendation DEFFERED – out of scope for current update committee project charter. Recommendation will be forwarded to next update committee for their consideration.

OriginalText

936 2.3.1 Composition of Project Teams

Your Recommendation

Relocate and merge with discussion of matric management structuresbat L-618 et. seq.

Your Justification

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

Our justification: Recommendation DEFFERED – out of scope for current update committee project charter. Recommendation will be forwarded to next update committee for their consideration.

OriginalText

969 • Virtual. Telecommunications allow team members in different locations or countries

Your Recommendation

Rename

Your Justification

Poor vocabulary precludes good communicaton, global reach and influence imposes a duty on your to use it to create good guidance and bring factual accuracy to bear A dispersed group working to a common goal with interdependencies and mutally supportive skills is not a “virtual” team it is a real team with lots of advantages – follow-the-sun-working, diversity of world-views, constant focus on the need to communicate, no worries about the person who arrives to the webex sneezing and coughing! These are REAL TEAMS

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Several comments were received on lines 960 through 974. We have modified the sentences to best represent the intent of all comments. We believe that the following re-write addresses your comment: “Project team composition may also vary based on organizational structure. An example of this is a partnership based project. A project may be established as a partnership, joint venture, consortium or alliance among several organizations through contracts or agreements. In this structure, one organization takes the lead and assigns a project manager to coordinate the efforts among the partners. Partnership-based projects can offer flexibility at lower cost. These advantages may be offset by the project manager’s lower degree of control over team members and the need for strong mechanisms for communication and monitoring progress. Partnerhip projects may be set up to exploit industrial synergies, undertake ventures that one partner could not afford alone, or other political and strategic reasons. Project team composition may also vary based on geographic location of its members. An example of this is virtual project teams. Communication technologies allow team members in different locations or countries to work as virtual teams. Virtual teams rely on collaborative tools such as shared online workspaces and video conferences to coordinate their activities and exchange of information about the project. A virtual team can exist with any type of organizational structure and team composition. Virtual teams are often necessary for projects where resources are located onsite or offsite or both depending on the project activities. A project manager who is leading a virtual team needs to accommodate differences in the culture, working hours, time zones, local conditions, and languages.”

OriginalText

975 2.4 The Project Life Cycle—Overview

Your Recommendation

This whole section needs a major overhauls to sepertae out concepts and describe them clearly. You maybe also need to stop the populist knee-jerk retitle to be Life-cycles and then introduce sub-headings for Project Life-Cycle, Product Development Life-Cycle and perhaps also Product (Configuration Item) Lifespan First a project may be broken into chunks for approval. These are best called Stages and cross referenced to prince2. Each Stage requires an overlapping sequence of Initiation, Planning, Monitoring /Control and Close-out by the project management team while technical SMEs execute product development tasks. RUP includes a great diagram of the overlay of effort by position in the staging – including for configuration management and other supporting disciplines Product development tasks follow a sequence of activities often called phases that may also overlap and are often characterised as Requirements gathering, Design, Develop or Build and Unit Test, Integrate and system test and deliver. The steps in a product development life-cycle may be organised to apply each phase to 100% of the project’s scope. In this arrangement the development may be called predictive or waterfall or traditional. It focuses on design conducted with knowledge of the full requirements and completed before construction commences. It is appropriate to systems needing high integrity such as nuclear power station. Alternatively the phases of the development process may be organised so that all steps are applied to a subset of scope with successive subsets being worked on possible in overlapping or even parallel efforts. These approaches are often called agile or iterative and are useful for products that track changes in a dynamic world or when customers are unable to state their requirements clearly at project commencement. Most projects will merge and blend staging, phasing and product development approaches. Choice is partly dictated by product characterises, culture and fashion. Some project products like progress reports are ephemeral but many of the products of a project have a life-span that extends beyond the project’s completion. Through-life ownership considerations should be considered when hoosing development approach and configuration management procedres. How the product development is spread across stages is a project control decision. Each stage will need a full compliment of project lifecycle components

Your Justification

The current section fails to clearly differentiate the contributing factors, principles and concepts

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended

OriginalText

986 Project life cycles can be described as falling somewhere in a continuum from predictive

Your Recommendation

NO! what you describe are PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT lifecycles, a PROJECT LIFECYCLE is invariante Who matters? What do they want? How do we give it to them, Go do it, Have you finsihed? Closeout, Goodbye (or start again) Even as a description of a Pd-DLC its weak See comment at L-975

Your Justification

The statement is WRONG as it stands

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended

OriginalText

989 the project and any changes to scope are carefully managed. In an adaptive life cycle, the

Your Recommendation

NO NO NO All approaches are careful about change – indeed your comments belie that fact that agile often fobids interupting the team for change mid sprint. In an agile world the requirements are never declered frozen because the date and resources are. In a non agile world it is primarily when a contract exists with a date and cost attached that requirements in the supplier’s hands are deemed frozen with respect to the approved budget. In all cases we expect the ‘sponsor’ to oversee decisions of what is in/out via a change control process – The two approaches are intrinsically no different in concept or operation only in description, expectation o the level and timing of involvement to make decisions

Your Justification

The sentence is misleading as written and needs to be factual and complete

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended

OriginalText

999 This generic life cycle structure is often referred to when communicating with upper

Your Recommendation

Add caveat that what follows is true for the predictive approch or rewrite to broaden your perspective – your writing could be inclusive of all approavches but it isn’t

Your Justification

You say “generic” then describes the world through a ‘predictive’ filter. How things are is different in the adaptive world – not better, not worse, just different, more suited to some developments and cultures and less suited to others I think you need more insight behind the pen of this section

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient justification provided with recommendation

OriginalText

1023 particular, are developed with the intent of keeping stakeholder influences higher and the

1024 cost of change lower throughout the life cycle than in predictive life cycles.

Your Recommendation

NO “cost of change low” is at best misleading and so needs to be rewitten Adaptive approaches (in software) focus on making change something that can be accomodated by writing tests first and automating them. Change still costs money. They also work on small chuncks of capability – you can expand a software application or a house like this If you use it to build a skyscrapper or software with needs for throughput or integrity early errors still cost a lot to fix You need to read Royce, Gilb et al cos you aint got it right at the momnet

Your Justification

A junmble of popular beliefs that don;t stand scrutiny when expressed as set-out here. there is merit in these approaches when applied to the right context but your not setting out what the differentiators, strengths, weaknesses and consequenecs of using each are nor how to combine them

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content

OriginalText

1031 must be completed before the project scope can be completely defined. Large and complex

1032 projects in particular may require this additional level of control. In such instances,

1033 the work carried out to complete the project’s objective may benefit from being formally

1034 divided into phases.

Your Recommendation

Add description that differentiates this description from program back into difficult terrartory – Using teh content of this document can you cross-reference guidance that shows when “certain deliverables… large and complex project… broken into phases” is and is not a program?

Your Justification

The document does not give clear guidance – you need to reduce the word count and concept count and focus on getting the basics firmly established.

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation rejected due to content already included elsewhere–other sections of standard define distinctions between projects and programs.

OriginalText

1038 deliverables. Project phases are used when the nature of the work to be performed is

1039 unique to a portion of the project, and are typically linked to the development of a

1040 specific major deliverable. A phase may emphasize processes from a particular Project

Your Recommendation

Reword – currently misses the crucial elements of guidance that we need which is the isolation and definition of conceptually different but initially, superficially similar attributes of projects At teh current level of guidance we don’t get isolated topics corectly described but to be competent we need integrated relationships described – the guide is not currently reaching this need.

Your Justification

Phases are a specific charecteristic of a product’s development. Current normal practice is to group similarly named phases for each sub-component of the end result thus creating ambiguity about phase boundaries – they never align with all product driven phaseing You need to seperate out the concept of “authorised chunk of work” from “tasks groued by their creation of a result” The authorised chunk could usefully be called stage and phase should be explicitly linked to product life-cycle step and their exit criteria, verification and configuration management of CIs created

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended

OriginalText

1042 some form in each phase. Project phases are typically completed sequentially, but can

Your Recommendation

Reword A project may be divided into stages, each of which is authorised to consume resources in expectation of producing results. Phases relate to the logical grouping of tasks within a product’s development lifecycle. Phases typically overlap within one product’s develoment and are parallel when many products are being created simeltaneously. A project may group a number of product’s similar lifecycle steps and name the currently authorised stage to reflect thet bulk of the technical activity in hand. Thus we may have a project stage called “Design”.

Your Justification

Your job is to provide vocabulary that disambiguates concepts not to repeat commonly repeated fallacies and misconceptions, and failures of insight

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended

OriginalText

1075 treat the feasibility study as a separate, stand-alone project. Likewise, one project team

1076 may divide a project into two phases, whereas another project team may choose to manage

1077 all the work as a single phase. Much depends on the nature of the specific project and the

1078 style of the project team or organization.

Your Recommendation

NO NO NO Your suppossed to guide not reinforce “its all a black art” Phases are dictated by the product to be produced and the accepted normal approach to product life-cycle steps as documented in industry standards and local method statements. The choice of stages and thus formal review and reauthorisation is a more complex decisions that must balance the technical realities of the product’s phasing with the project’s significance to investors, the managagements need for control and availabilty to exercise control. High levels of control typicall cost more and take longer but increase the probability of delivery to expectations.

Your Justification

As written tere isn’t any insight given just a repeat of worries and excuses from the less competent when things don’t go right. What we need is the strategies and insights of the competent so that the wisdom spreads and the global state of the art improves Just how much though when into writing this stuff?

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended

OriginalText

1079 2.4.2.1 Phase-to-Phase Relationships

Your Recommendation

Seperate out teh two concepts of “authorised chunk” from “group of tasks related by their outcome” then rewrite to give clear guidance

Your Justification

The use of the word phase to represent two distinct concepts without distinction on the writing is a grave error that could be so easily corrected and wuold move us all on to talk about what are the difficult projblems. At present we are redebating the kindergarten lessons because you keep publishing them as “best practice”

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – no replacement text proposed to be able to assess the comment.

OriginalText

1087 entirely sequential phases. The step-by-step nature of this approach reduces uncertainty,

1088 but may eliminate options for reducing the schedule.

Your Recommendation

Reword – it doesnt reduce uncertainty it provides a strategy for dealing with scope uncertainty by tradinig it for schedule uncertainty AND it only does this in those product development lifecycles you call predictive. In adaptive lifecycles the scope uncertainty is transferred to end point in terms of what gets delivered because schedule is defined as invariant at the start. Again the DOD 5000/ Cost as An Independant Variable (CAIV)/ Smart Federal Acquisition Regulation have been here 30 years ago – You need to express best thinking not commonest errors

Your Justification

Fedreal Acquisition and DOD 5000 and Adaptive methods are all well known, well grounded, usable and vary to a greter or lesser extent to what youve written here as itf it were a universal truth rather than a sometime relevant consideration

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – no replacement text proposed to be able to assess the comment.

OriginalText

1107 2.4.2.2 Predictive Life Cycles

Your Recommendation

Rename Waterfall Product Development Lifcycles (and rewrite the section or delete it)

Your Justification

This approach is widely known as the waterfall model – its a product development lifecycle, worse as shown here its explicitly software development – in which case maybe you should quote its original author Winston Royce

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended

OriginalText

1107 2.4.2.2 Predictive Life Cycles

Your Recommendation

Rewrite or delete as discussed in Justification – if you include this then how about including heart surgery, children’s toy development, oil n gas field development and everything else…

Your Justification

This is a SWDLC or Software development lifecycle, when building a ship there is a box marked “Lay Keel”, when building a hospital there is a box marked “Construction” We are not software developers nor shipwrights nor civil engineers we are project managers. If you want to be generic then the “Design first” lifecycles are “Determine 100% of customer wants and needs, Translate needs to determine technicians approach, Execute approach, Demonstrate capability, Terminate obligations”

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – no replacement text proposed to be able to assess the comment.

OriginalText

1125 Predictive life cycles are generally preferred when the product to be delivered is well

1126 understood or where a product must be delivered in full to have value to stakeholder

1127 groups.

Your Recommendation

replace with a meaningful discussion of pros and cons – You might read Royce! but he isn’t the best source

Your Justification

Design first are prefered when/ because – all other things equal they are the cheapest. the quickest, and require the least sophistication, so they are the easiest to understand and use, they give good visibility of progress and perhaps most important they provide the highest integrity products They are only possible when the customer knows wit hcertainty what they want in advance of planning AND he team know with certainty how to create it – Every heart replacement operation since the first one or two falls into this category Design first may not preferred because there is typically a need for long memory between steps which results in documentation, the customer only recieves a result comparatively late after asking for them at which time misalignement of want and developer understanding is discovered – this is called “Late breakage” – read Winsoton’s son Walker Royce in RUP ). Breakage plus documentatio results in high rework costs Adaptive, Incremental are all children of the ideas of Tom Gilb – go read – have an equally long list of pros and cons that GUIDE when to select them and whe theor selection is inappropriate. many people are making fashionable but inappropriate choices these days – surely this guide should be written to contain what is needed to appreciate the choices> – contact me an i’ll help you identify the factors Simon@logicalmodel.net

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended

OriginalText

1128 2.4.2.3 Iterative and Incremental Life Cycles

Your Recommendation

move after adaptive or make introductory comment taht predictive and adaptive are approaches with extremely polorised approaches and itertive, incremental are a hybrid of the approaches

Your Justification

Without a caveat it reads like a poor/ wrong description of adaptive your job isn’t just to set-out data but to set it out in the manner accessible to readers

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content

OriginalText

1170 Adaptive methods are generally preferred when dealing with a rapidly changing environment,

1171 when requirements and scope are difficult to define in advance, and when it is possible to

1172 define small incremental improvements that will deliver value to stakeholders.

Your Recommendation

Add discussion of when adaptive is inappropriate

Your Justification

Adaptive is all other things equal the most expensive, most sophisticated so requires most skilled people, requires people are forged into a team, that configuration management works well and leads to the need to redevelop previously delivered capability when its non-functional attributes are found to be deficient

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended

OriginalText

1156 Adaptive life cycles (also known as change-driven or agile methods) are intended to

Your Recommendation

Discuss weaknesses EG Adaptive prioritise functionality at teh expense of non-functional attributes such as capacity and throughput – these are the attributes that are subject to late breakage – adaptive works well for service based, non-physical products but is often inapprproriate to physical products – eg a Railway line

Your Justification

Curent discussion omits factors relevant to a reader’s understanding of the product development lifecycle choices that the team must consider

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation is prescriptive rather than descriptive

OriginalText

1157 facilitate change and require a high degree of ongoing stakeholder involvement. Adaptive

Your Recommendation

Reword to be correct No they don’t facilitate change and at two levels – 1) “Change” would mean a baseline is established and then amended. Instead at project level a baseline is not established, an open request pipeline is created. 2) Second at sprint level a baseline is created that the user/ sponsor community MAY NOT change – cancellation being their only option. this isn’t facilitating change !

Your Justification

As written it is wrong

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: We agree with basic recommendation. We have modified the sentence and believe that the following re-write addresses your comment: “Adaptive life cycles (also known as change-driven or agile methods) are intended to respond to high-levels of change and ongoing stakeholder involvement. Adaptive…”

OriginalText

1169 are created and to ensure that the product backlog reflects their current needs.

Your Recommendation

Define product backlog I think this section is made awkward by avoiding scrum terms but you cannot then use one without defiing it

Your Justification

Undefined terms obfuscate the meaning and thus undermine the whole purpose of publishing “guidance” – what use is guidance if it isn’t understandable, when understandable it has to be correct and when correct it has to be ‘best’, its weaknesses and limits to applicability must be explained. When competing ‘best’ guidance is available their differentiating characteristics must be exposued

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended

OriginalText

1175 PROJECT MANAGEMENT PROCESSES FOR A PROJECT

Your Recommendation

Retitle

Your Justification

Its an awkward mouthful and its tautology Given the document’s title how could they be for anything else

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Several comments were received on lines 1175 through 1176. We have modified the sentences to best represent the intent of all comments. We believe that the following re-write addresses your comment. “Project Management Processes”

OriginalText

1181 the tools and techniques that can be applied, and the resulting outputs. As explained in

Your Recommendation

reword “…can be applied TO TRANSFORM THE INPUTS INTO the outputs”

Your Justification

explicit reference to linkage betwen i/p and o/p via T & T

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content.

OriginalText

1188 In order for a project to be successful, the project team must:

1189 • Select appropriate processes required to meet the project objectives;

Your Recommendation

In order to be sucessful the team MUST DELIVER delivery must be first in the list and mandatory and the rest advisory

Your Justification

back to the subtle misdirections that add-up to current PM state Delivery is mandatory all the rest is optional and helps to varying degrees in dependant on circumstances

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation rejected due to content already included elsewhere.

OriginalText

1195 The project processes are performed by the project team and generally fall into one of two

Your Recommendation

Given the tone of the document so far maybe you should reword – something like The project processes are performed by interactions between project stakeholders. In many processes the project team conduct the procedures tat satisfy the processes’ steps and other stakeholders provide inputs or recieve outputs

Your Justification

Better (?) explaintion than currently written

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: We agree with basic recommendation. We have modified the sentence and believe that the following re-write addresses your comment. “…The project processes are performed by the project team with stakeholder interaction and generally fall into one of two….”

OriginalText

1201 • Product-oriented processes. These processes specify and create the project’s

Your Recommendation

reword these processes move the products through steps in their life-span that overlap the project’s scope

Your Justification

better (?) guidance

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content.

OriginalText

1202 product. Product-oriented processes are typically defined by the project life cycle (as

Your Recommendation

No, Diametrically the wrong way around – the tail does not wag the dog – the project’s characteristics are determined BY the product’s life-span staps that overlap the project’s scope not vice versa. The customer’s clarity of goal and the team’s clarity and skill in approach DEFINES the best choice of product development life-cycle The interaction between product development life-cycle steps (in the lifespan that overlaps the project) DEFINES the options for stages and phases and the sponsor’s apitite for uncertainty and teh project’s significance influce the choice for the imposition of controls/ constraints/ escalation paths.

Your Justification

Wrong as written Another subtle mis-guidance that adds to poor pm capability – Einstien said “it is what I know that stops me learning” the consequences of that are in this document and will be spread to all its readers who know know different, worse anyone who knows it to be weak guidance cannot then give good guidance if the reciever is to sit the pmp since now “good” is “wrong” for the exam

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation conflicts with other accepted material in the standard.

OriginalText

55 development programs and certifications. As a foundational reference, Annex A1 is neither

Your Recommendation

Please refer this intention to your ethics committee with the following assertions and questions The use of an exam requires students to repeat the contents of the document, perhaps with applicaton but with blind-adherence, at least for the duration of the exam The document contains many debatable sections (as I’ve gone through it many cause effect relationships are backward or missing, many terns are used ambigiously or differently from other guidance such as IPMA/ PRINCE2 and others) Where there is a dichotomy should a student prepering for the exam be educated to run projects well, or to follow your document’s world view blindly. Or should their be no dichotomy becuase the document’s authors spend the time and effort to create advise that is not wrong and exposes opinions in order that it be “A Guide To…”? It could never be complete and never be universally correct but it can (is in places?) wrong.)

Your Justification

There are lots of places where what you write is dubios, they all contain something that was of merit or is partially of merit but whose repetition to educate others seeking to sit a pmp based on the writings is going to be an ethical dilema between pass and exam versus able to run a project Many small steps, each reasonable adds up to being a long way off the path

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation’s level of detail inappropriate for a standard.

OriginalText

1204 life cycle. The scope of the project cannot be defined without some basic understanding of

1205 how to create the specified product. For example, various construction techniques and

Your Recommendation

reword The project scope in activity terms cannot be finalised until the scope in deliverable terms and the product development lifecycles of the project’s results are know

Your Justification

better (?) guidance

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient justification provided with recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended.

OriginalText

1206 tools need to be considered when determining the overall complexity of the house to be

Your Recommendation

Delete “the” house and build a self contained inline example rather than force a cognative load of linking this to a previous part of the doumnent – links are great if the are joining up the guidance but this isn’t, its joining up the analogy in a lazy and detremental way maybe “The product to be produced dictates the techiques required, for example building a house requires someone skilled in brick-laying, while building a reputation needs someone skilled in copywriting” – also note brick laying is 9i think universal) while “drywalling” is not – its plaster-boarding in my world

Your Justification

Present examples that illustrata and educate not stress memory reduce assimilation

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content.

OriginalText

1228 often require tradeoffs among project requirements and objectives, and the specific

Your Recommendation

change “requirements and objectives” (R&O) to “constratints” or reword

Your Justification

the tradeoffs are between factors that are limited so constraint is a necessary element of the guidance, we don’t trade off because there are R & O we trade-off because we cannot simeltaneously meet all currentl requested R&O withing constraints

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation conflicts with other accepted material in the standard

OriginalText

1252 • Closing Process Group. Those processes performed to finalize all activities across

1253 all Process Groups to formally close the project or phase.

Your Recommendation

Add “confirm transition or conduct transitio of deliverables to post-project recipients” If the sponsoring organisation has not already recieved the project’s outputs then this is key to both parties. If they receieved outputs during execution, monitoring & controlling then the key for the project is to confirm acceptance criteria are met and obligations under contract or charter or both are discharged.

Your Justification

As written this is incomplete guidance

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation conflicts with other accepted material in the standard

OriginalText

1257 3.1 Common Project Management Process Interactions

Your Recommendation

It would be helpful at this point to say KAs contain activities linked by domain while PG contain the same activities but linked by approximately concurrent execution

Your Justification

Clarifies the guidance

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

Our justification: Thank you for participating in PMI’s public exposure draft process. We truly value your opinion. Recommendation DEFFERED – out of scope for current update committee project charter. Recommendation will be forwarded to next update committee for their consideration.

OriginalText

1283 Project Management Process Groups are linked by the outputs they produce. The Process

Your Recommendation

Rewords something like “…are linked by the interface created by one processes inputs having been other process(s) output(s)” not this is both correct and expands the concept to be inclusive of 1:M and M:1 relationships

Your Justification

thare are not linked by ouputs they are linked by an O/P –> I/P English is a poor means to transfer complex concepts and it isn’t everyones mothertounge so not everyones world view flows right to left, or is based on Newtonian mechanics, reductionist logic and engineering principles – Were you can avoid ambiguity and create clarity the do so

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation conflicts with other accepted material in the standard

OriginalText

1290 level of overlap at various times. If the project is divided into phases, the Process

1291 Groups interact within each phase.

Your Recommendation

Deserves emphasis – own paragraph? embolden? Reword “If the project is divided into stages, the Process Groups repeat and interact to varying degree within each stage”.

Your Justification

Key point clearer as amended

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation conflicts with other accepted material in the standard

OriginalText

1296 An example of this would be the exit of a design phase, which requires customer acceptance

Your Recommendation

Replace with an unambigious example 1296 is an example of transition between product development life cycle episodes (steps) not of process group interaction: That might be illustrated by the end of design being closure for some staff and the start of construction being Initiation for others. it would also be appropriate to note that both close and initiate will be occurring in parallel in this scenario so Fig 3-2, good as it is, is less that complete

Your Justification

Example quoted is not (indesputably) of the concept illustrated, your publishing guidance and it is possible to find examples that are solid illustrations of your points and it is your duty to search for the ‘best’ ie works for the widest audience not stop at teh first that works in your own head

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

OriginalText

1305 The following sections identify and describe the five Project Management Process Groups

1306 required for any project. These five Process Groups have clear dependencies and are

1307 typically performed in the same sequence on each project. They are independent of

1308 application areas or industry focus. Individual Process Groups and individual processes

1309 are often iterated prior to completing the project. The processes can have interactions

1310 within a Process Group and among Process Groups. The nature of these interactions varies

Your Recommendation

Reconsider the section asking “is this true in an adaptive and a waterfall” context?

Your Justification

1306 says “any” yet the tone has waterfall shining through as an underlying assumption

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation conflicts with other accepted material in the standard

OriginalText

1304 3.2 Project Management Process Groups

Your Recommendation

reconsider and revise the whole of chapter 3 and specially this section to seperate out the concepts – curently your exposure of them is jumbled

Your Justification

The fact that you have a line in bold in this section is evidence that so far you’ve failed to describe something important clearly so that it is obviusl to the reader – the capitals are an acknowledgement of your realisation that your description is unclear

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

OriginalText

1311 from project to project and may or may not be performed in a particular order.

1312 The process flow diagram, Figure 3-3, provides an overall summary of the basic flow and

Your Recommendation

Reword to say what you means as 1311/12 contradicts 1307 and other lines

Your Justification

1307 “in the same sequence” 1311 “not…in…order” Straight contradiction!

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Several comments were received on lines 1306 through 1312. We have modified the sentences to best represent the intent of all comments. We believe that the following re-write addresses your comment. “These five Process Groups have clear dependencies and are typically performed in each project and highly interact with one another.These five Process Groups are independent of application areas or industry focus. Individual Process Groups and individual processes are often iterated prior to completing the project and can have interactions within a Process Group and among Process Groups. The nature of these interactions varies…”

OriginalText

1315 the result or outcome of one process becomes the input to another. The Process Groups are

Your Recommendation

1315 shouting does not make a point clearer, but it does show you’ve acknowledged that your descriptions upto this point are insufficient to clearly describe the crucial differentiators. your problems start way-back by mixing two concepts under the word “phase” – split the concepts out and give each an element of vocabulary Maybe what you need to say is process groups us temporal grouping of activitis in different KAs and are required to a great or lesser degree in each project stage. Particularly closing and initiating are required to interface to governance processes controlling portfolio management. it is possible for a simple single stage project’s phases to closely match the process groups and require use of each only as illustrated in fig 3-2 at L-1294 L:1294, F:3-2 reinforces the misconception – perhaps you should redraw it – i have some good graphics if you’d like a copy drop me a line – Simon@logicalmodel.net

Your Justification

Your own bold text shows this ain’t right yet and shouting at foriegners don’t make em understand any better but it does show you own shortcommings

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

OriginalText

1327

Your Recommendation

Revise the initiating guidance to start with Statement of Objectives (or Outcome) not SOW DOD has spent 30 years trying to educate people that a SOW – “WORK” is a document created BY THE SUPPLIER to respond to a customer’s need, perhaps expressed in a RFP (request for proposal). Suppliers create SOWs so they can put them in contracts that establish the discharge criteria to be ‘performed the sow’ and are thus not accountable when the results are unfit for purpose but are owed the fee. In your picture and words here is yet more subtly wrong, old ‘best practice’ whose insidious effects destroy project capability bit by bit If you publish with SOW here then you perpetuate weakness that could so easily be eradicated and replaced by strength, replaced with good insightful guidance that will improve the State Of The Art.

Your Justification

This diagram’s use of SOW and all the subsequent discussion of SOW and WBS comprise stressed, twisted and tourtured descriptions because your starting with an error. you know there is an error, you keep running into its ghost with lines like 2881 & 2882 – weasel words required to patch a flaw in earlier foundations. A WBS DOES refer to work – everyone knows it axiomatically it uses verbs. Yet you keep trying to deny facts as if this were catholicism and the orbit of the sun in te age of the inquisition. A PBS describes products/ deliverables and a PBS + Verbs is a Product Oriented WBS and is a natural step towards scope deinintion in readiness for Scheduling whos inputs ARE correctly defined as the WBS and SOW

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

OriginalText

1332 phase. Within the initiating processes, the initial scope is defined and initial financial

Your Recommendation

reword Something like ..initial resources (such as skilled people and funding)…”

Your Justification

skills are often harder to access than money – money is liquid, people are illiquid

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation conflicts with other accepted material in the standard.

OriginalText

1340 visibility about the scope, objectives, and possible participation in the project or

Your Recommendation

change “and possible participation…” for something like “and their mandatory commitment required for success….”

Your Justification

THE factor in project sucess is participation, thus every stakeholder’s minimum manadatory support must be spelt out and agreed between them and chartering authority at every stage

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Numerous comments were received on this section. It has been revised as follows: “The key purpose of this Process Group is to: align the stakeholders’ expectations with the project’s purpose, give them visibility about the scope and objectives, show how their participation in the project and it associated phases can ensure that their expectations are achieved. These processes help to set the vision of the project and to establish what is needed to be accomplished.”

OriginalText

1341 phase. These processes help set the vision of the project, what is needed to be

Your Recommendation

Consider the program guide that defines a program as “has a vision” and differentiates it from project as a workhorse to “deliver clearly prespecified products” and then guide us on when is an undertaking a project and when is it a program Personally I think collectively your all talking about the same thing, pmbok is 99% supplier view and Program guide is 30% customer view – just enough to be confusing

Your Justification

PMBOK and Program Guide contradict each other and PMBoK lacks guidance on how to differentiate

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

OriginalText

1351 Involving the customers and other stakeholders during initiation generally improves the

Your Recommendation

reword to somthing like “Involving stakeholders through the project is crucial to sucess, generally increased involvement in initation to create an earlier shared understanding of sucess criteria and sucess factors redcues the overhean of involvement, particulary in remidial activities later”

Your Justification

unecessarily weak as given at the moment

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: We agree with basic recommendation. We have modified the sentence and believe that the following re-write addresses your comment: “Involving the customers and other stakeholders during initiation creates a shared understanding of success criteria, reduces the overhead of involvement, and generally improves…”

OriginalText

1371 scope of the effort, define and refine the objectives, and develop the course of action

Your Recommendation

reword – Initiation must ‘define’ even if planning ‘refines’ – Initiation must indicate or better set the constraints within which planning operates

Your Justification

Better (?) as revised

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content.

OriginalText

1376 understood, additional planning may be required. Significant changes occurring throughout

Your Recommendation

Describe criteria by which to assess “significant” Signifcance varies by project, by stage and by stakeholder – what is constant is the requirement of teh PM processes to define the scale of significances and ensure all parties can place concerns on the appropriate scale and infron f relevant decision makers

Your Justification

better as revised (no “?” this time)

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended.

OriginalText

1382 successfully complete the project or phase. When the Planning Process Group is well

1383 managed, it is much easier to get stakeholder buy-in and engagement. These processes

Your Recommendation

Wrong way round – this is written from a perspective of a supplier thrusting tactical IT solutions down the busines’ throat When you involve stakeholders to engage their motivation in defining something that gives them value then not only planning but change management, deliver and transition are all much easier. Whether a project’s initiation starts top down or bottom up affects how you proceed and where the challenges are not the need to engage in order to plan – in that order – planning is everything, in planning involvenment and teh expressing of doubt, disbelief and concerns are crucial pre-requisites to building motivation by debating and resolving concerns. All you need to suceed is motivation.

Your Justification

Two thoughts – written backwards is another of these subtle weakenings of PM that is stunting our abilities Written backwards is evidence of so many more similar mis-appreciations in the 8,500 lines ahead – how do we address all of those!? Not with a short commentary window and two other guides in the recent past also having sucked-up time

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended.

OriginalText

1373 plan and the project documents that will be used to carry out the project. The

Your Recommendation

“project documents” needs definition or reference to L-1989?

Your Justification

it appears at L-715 & 736 in a context that doesn’t immediately show its a ‘defined term’ but as we move through the document it becomes apparent it has a less than totally general meaning yet is undefined Terms with specific meanings and no definition undermine the value of “guidance”

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content.

OriginalText

2881 In the context of the WBS, work refers to work products or deliverables that are the

2882 result of activity and not to the activity itself.

Your Recommendation

2281 add and differentiate the useful forms of breakdown: A b-s is the result of decomposition. decomposition is applied to the customer’s needs to produce a product breakdown structure down to the level at which the customer is concerned to provide specification. The pbs,’s lowest level may then be decomposed by product life-cycle steps to describe the work related to products as part of deliniating project boundaries. The resulting breakdown is a Product oriented WBS PoWBS. Other common bs are organization and phase. All breakdown orientations are con-currently valid and each provides a different hierarchical aggregation of project elements

Your Justification

Somewhere in history a useful observation that what was then habitually called a WBS should be Deliverable oriented started a train of thought, writing and examining that grew arms and legs and went off in the wrong direction – The awful 1st Edition WBS Practice “Standard” maybe deserves a lot of blame but subsequent PMBoK have erpetuated a problem A Deliverable oriented view and a work breakdown can coexist in the same structure but dont have to. A WBS can be phase oriented – this is useful when drawing Gantt charts FOR REPORTING. A WBS can be Product oriented – ths is useful when agreeing THE TEAMS SCOPE OF WORK and a BS most usefully starts of PBS with no “W” in it at all when talking to customers about RESULTS required PLEASE grasp the nettle and clear-up the mess you created and are propogating

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended.

OriginalText

4108 6.6.3.2 Project Schedule

Your Recommendation

Add swimlane flow-charts – they are a superior tool to many “scheduling” tools or representations as the can show duration and assignment and task logic so critical path/ chain. Conditional logic beats the CPM/ PDM network diagram and still aloows for FS/ SS/ Sf/ FF relationships, they are a superior reporting tool to the Gantt where detail is needed and do not displace teh gantt where detail is not needed. Inclusion of a timescale allows determination of timescaled cost data for cash-flow and BCWS/ PV determination

Your Justification

They deserve inclusion in “guidance” applicable to “most projects most of the time”

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Numerous comments were received on this section. It has been revised as follows: The outputs from a schedule model are schedule presentations. All of the examples listed below are classified as presentations. The project schedule is an output that presents linked activities, with planned dates, durations, milestones, and resources. At a minimum, the project schedule includes a planned start date and planned finish date for each activity. If resource planning is done at an early stage, then the project schedule remains preliminary until resource assignments have been confirmed and scheduled start and finish dates are established. This process usually occurs no later than the completion of the project management plan (Section 4.2.3.1). A target project schedule model may also be developed with a defined target start and target finish for each activity. The project schedule presentation may be presented in summary form, sometimes referred to as the master schedule or milestone schedule, or presented in detail. Although a project schedule model can be presented in tabular form, it is more often presented graphically, using one or more of the following formats: ? Bar charts. These charts, also known as Gantt charts, represent schedule information where activities are listed on the vertical axis, dates are shown on the horizontal axis, and activity durations are shown as horizontal bars placed according to start and finish dates. Bar charts are relatively easy to read, and are frequently used in management presentations. For control and management communications, the broader, more comprehensive summary activity, sometimes referred to as a hammock activity, is used between milestones or across multiple interdependent work packages, and is displayed in bar chart reports. An example is the summary schedule portion of Figure 6-20 that is presented in a WBS structured format. ? Milestone charts. These charts are similar to bar charts, but only identify the scheduled start or completion of major deliverables and key external interfaces. An example is the milestone schedule portion of Figure 6-20. ? Project schedule network diagrams. These diagrams are commonly presented in the activity-on-node diagram format showing activities and relationships without a time scale, sometimes referred to a pure logic diagram, as shown in Figure 6-10, or presented in a time-scaled schedule network diagram format that is sometimes called a logic bar chart, as shown for the detailed schedule in Figure 6-20.These diagrams, with activity date information, usually show both the project network logic and the project’s critical path schedule activities. This example also shows how each work package is planned as a series of related activities. Another presentation of the project schedule network diagram is a time scaled logic diagram. These diagrams include a time scale and bars that represent the duration of activities with the logical relationships. It is optimized to show the relationships between activities where any number of activities may appear on the same line of the diagram in sequence. Figure 6-20. Project Schedule Presentations —Examples Figure 6-20 shows schedule presentations for a sample project being executed, with the work in progress reported through the data date, a point in time when the status of the project is recorded, which is sometimes also called the as-of date or status date. For a simple project schedule model, Figure 6-20 reflects schedule presentations in the forms of a milestone schedule as a milestone chart, a summary schedule as a bar chart, and a detailed schedule as a project schedule network diagram. Figure 6-20 also visually shows the relationships among the three different levels of schedule presentation.

OriginalText

8891 CHAPTER 13

Your Recommendation

Delete the section and move contents into communications or delete comms and merge here

Your Justification

The ONLY communications possible is between stakeholders and the only influnce stakeholders wield is via communications – the 2 are one topic line 8895 says we do this for “engaging” – that *IS* 2 way communication

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation conflicts with other accepted material in the standard – agree that communications and stakeholder management are tightly related (just as with scope, time, cost and quality), however communications management is focused on the mechanism of communicating, while stakeholder management on relationships.

OriginalText

1401 identifiable risk until after significant planning has been done. At that time, the team

1402 might recognize that the cost and schedule targets are overly aggressive, thus involving

1403 considerably more risk than previously understood. The results of the iterations are

Your Recommendation

replace risk with threat

Your Justification

your own definition of risk equates to ‘includes upside’ which doesn’t seem to fit your usage here

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation conflicts with other accepted material in the standard.

OriginalText

1430 configuration management (as applicable in certain industrial sectors) so only approved

Your Recommendation

delete or explain “(as applicable….)”

Your Justification

This isn’t guidance its cryptic comment and as such lowers comprehension not raises it as should be your constant goal

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: We agree with basic recommendation. We have modified the sentence and believe that the following re-write addresses your comment. “…configuration management so only approved…”

OriginalText

1437 to implement corrective or preventive actions to bring the project into compliance with

1438 the project management plan. This review can result in recommended and approved updates to

Your Recommendation

reword to express sentiment taht pactions should always be aligned on the customer’s goal not eth supplier’s plan. Thus an off-plan that capitalises on advantage is good, an on-plan that does not pursue advantage is bad

Your Justification

It is so sad that you advise people that the plan is the magnet to return to when it is the customer’s end-point that matters not the plan. The plan needs to be changed when ever it won’t deliver the best value for money

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended

OriginalText

1439 the project management plan. For example, a missed activity finish date may require

Your Recommendation

Reword to reflect best practice. How do you quote Goldratt in one place and ignore his insight in others What customer’s want is dates that are beaten and adjustment to plans to capitalise on the acceleration so that any subsequent delays do not translate to end date change. You perpetuate the myths that make projects habitually late and over budget rather than expose them and guide for their removal.

Your Justification

If the performing organisation sees all dates as indicative and all task-starts as truly executed asap then projects will be as likely to be early as late. The writing here reflects “slippage – late agian” witout also discussion upsice – early. Where a customer doesn’t want delivery early then that needs to be managed too

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended.

OriginalText

1451 projects, and projects in exception, etc.

Your Recommendation

expand “etc”

Your Justification

Etc is not guidance – to guide you must be explicit

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Several comments were received on lines 1450 through 1451. We have modified the sentences to best represent the intent of all comments. We believe that the following re-write addresses your comment. “Prematurely closed projects may include, for example: aborted projects, cancelled projects, and projects in a critical situation. In specific cases, when some contracts cannot be formally closed (e.g. claims, ending clauses etc…) or some activities are to be transferred to other organizational units, specific hand over procedures may be arranged and finalized.”

OriginalText

1456 • Document lessons learned,

Your Recommendation

Change learned to ‘observed’

Your Justification

Lessons are first observed and only learned if applied, application is primarily during start-up of a phase

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation conflicts with other accepted material in the standard.

OriginalText

1471 often used interchangeably. The indiscriminate use of these terms can lead to confusion

Your Recommendation

1471 yes! indiscriminate use of ill defined terms is a major source of weak guidance! This key point needs to be learned and applied consistently through this document in aspects such as responsibility and accuracy

Your Justification

PMBOK is weakened by indiscriminate use of poorly defined or undefined terms for key concepts like responsibility/ accountability

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

OriginalText

1476 percent of work physically completed, technical performance measures, start and finish

Your Recommendation

Reconsider and reword to reflect true raw measures

Your Justification

by definition a percent is derived FROM a raw measure, eg 100 of 500 words is 20% – the raw is 100, the % is derived – not raw.

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended.

OriginalText

1481 areas. Examples of performance information are status of deliverables, implementation

Your Recommendation

Reconsider and reword – given your definitions something observed in the field must be “data” not “information” – an observation that 100 words are written is raw data, that it is 20% of what is required is derived from knowing the required total

Your Justification

Your own definitions and examples are inconsistant

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended.

OriginalText

1483 • Work performance reports. The physical or electronic representation of work

Your Recommendation

Reword a Report should be ANY form of transmission between statekolders. Typically upwards from those handling raw data, to those who synthesis percent or ev and then from then to those who decide responses to ‘reports’. typically we go observation, measurement, trend, graph, traffic light

Your Justification

a report is not a representation – which is what youve said. Infact what you probably mean in this section is that raw data is synthesised and then transmitted so it can be ‘input to current or held pemding future decision making’

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended.

OriginalText

1485 actions, or awareness. Examples include status reports, memos, justifications, information

1486 notes, recommendations, and updates.

Your Recommendation

delete in favour of saying “any information provided to analysis or action”

Your Justification

partial list that does not guide

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content.

OriginalText

1490

Your Recommendation

Redraw as a swimlane flowchart with management hierarchy illustrated across sponsor/ PM & PMO/ Technical leads/ subject matter experts

Your Justification

would be clearer guidance than currently expressed

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

OriginalText

1734 Described in Section 4.1.3.1. The project charter may be a short document of only a few

Your Recommendation

Gather-up ALL the fragmented snippets that refer to each artefact (like Charter) and put them in one place. eef and opa and expert judgement are specially poor examples of good guidance

Your Justification

1734 a major issue with all previous pmbok has been the way that the total information set for an artefact is spread across its mentions in different processes This revision should address such major annoyances

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Several comments were received on lines 1734 through 1737. We have modified the sentences to best represent the intent of all comments. We believe that the following re-write addresses your comment “The size of the project charter may vary, depending on the complexity of the project and the information known at the time of its creation. At a minimum, the project charter should define the high-level boundaries of the project. The project manager uses the project charter as the starting point for initial planning throughout the Initiating Process Group.”

OriginalText

1751 distribution system, or web interfaces to other online automated systems),

Your Recommendation

Explain why you single out ‘web’ or delete apply here and elsewheer – vis 779, 1751, 1906, 1936, 2083, 2234, 2664 and I leave you to find the other 3

Your Justification

If its a special case where mention provides guidance it needs to be explained, otherwise the form of transmission (http) and presentation (html) are irrelevant and so their specification (as in ‘web’) is an error (EG it could as validly be ftp and pdf)

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation. Cannot determine what is being recommended.

OriginalText

1759 • Standardized guidelines, work instructions, proposal evaluation criteria, and

Your Recommendation

Start with links to the Corportate Governance frameworks and the trace through to quality management system contents like method statements

Your Justification

Current first bullet point can be improved to be better guidance if the first item is a firm anchor to any organisations legal constitution

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation. Cannot determine what is being recommended.

OriginalText

1769 • Project files from past projects (e.g., scope, cost, schedule and performance

Your Recommendation

Merge with line 1772 or explain the differentiation

Your Justification

these items ARE examples of Historical Information

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Several comments were received on lines 1769 through 1772. We have modified the sentences to best represent the intent of all comments. We believe that the following re-write addresses your comment. “.. files from previous projects …”

OriginalText

1773 • Configuration management knowledge base containing the versions and baselines of

Your Recommendation

Reword These are the contents of a **QMS** – Quality management System which is being administered by a CMDB

Your Justification

these are not cmdb. A cmdb is applied to a qms (or any knowledge repository) to manage it. The level of understanding demonstrated is scary comming from the authors of “THE Standard”! This sort of mixed half perception is what is keeping pm at the start of its journey to maturity rather than allowing it to be the power behind an improvement in the human condition. We shouldn’t be correcting this sort of stuff we should be moving to develop higher levels of insight on firm foundations not repairing the cracks in poorly build foundations it is a knowledge base that is configuration managed not a cmdb – big diference

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation. Cannot determine what is being recommended.

OriginalText

1783 4.2.2.2 Facilitation Techniques

Your Recommendation

Gather the contents of each element of relevance to PM into one place and cross reference the definition, do not scatter fragments of a single item through the whole document Apply this ‘policy’ to OPA, EEF, Expert Judgement and the 101 other items fragmented across 10,000 lines

Your Justification

The representation of the content is as much a concern about the applicability and usability of the guidance as its actually semantic content At present the pmbok is about as far from an “excellent guide” as it is possible to be in presentational/ knowledge representation terms

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

Our justification: Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback on the exposure draft for the PMBOK® Guide—Fifth Edition. Recommendation DEFFERED – out of scope for current update committee project charter. Recommendation will be forwarded to next update committee for their consideration.

OriginalText

1793 • Life cycle selected for the project and the processes that will be applied to each phase;

Your Recommendation

Reappraise how you discuss “lifecycles” and apply consistently through the guide there is a collection of lifecycles that attach to management of projects, they organise goal definition, solution definition, constraint balancing, activity control, and recognition of discharge of duty. There is a collection of lifecycles that attach to realisation of products: they organise requirement, design, construction, verification, integration, verification and validation and use nouns and verbs that are product specific (Like “Glue Spine” to make a cheap book or “Stick spine” to hand-make a book) A “Phase” is a collection of actions in a product lifecycle that are grouped by their contribution to a recognisable intermediate point in a products development (like “Draft the words” ends with a “first draft”) it would be wise of you to adopt a different term for what you ambigiously refere to by writing “phase”. It would be doubly smart to adopt “Stage” and explicitly acknowledge its definition to be as used in prince2

Your Justification

You have concepts mixed and muddled. Guidance requires their differentiation, their labelling with appropriate vocabulary and the vocabularies consistent use – who is guiding whom? Simon@logicalmodel.net

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation. Cannot determine what is being recommended.

OriginalText

1793 • Life cycle selected for the project and the processes that will be applied to each phase;

Your Recommendation

Your Justification

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation’s level of detail inappropriate for a standard.

OriginalText

1805 • Description of how integrity of the performance measurement baseline will be maintained;

Your Recommendation

reword to reference change control and configuration management (since these are teh prcedures by which intergrity of baselines are defined and managed)

Your Justification

As written the link between intergrated concepts is masked rather than explicitly revealed. the beginning reader is given a harder cognitive load to bear when trying to assimilate teh guidance – a guide should be written to make each link explicit and absorbtion as easy as possible – you can improve your delivery of value to the reader but you have to work on it by addressing all the items of which this is but one illustration

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Numerous comments were received on this section. It has been revised as follows: “* Description of how the integrity of the project baselines will be maintained;”

OriginalText

1807 • Key management reviews for content, extent, and timing to address open issues and

Your Recommendation

define what a “review…[of] extent” is

Your Justification

currently undefined so does not guide but instead obfuscates your meaning

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: We agree with basic recommendation. We have modified the sentence and believe that the following re-write addresses your comment. 1807 • Key management reviews for content, the extent of, and timing to address, open issues and

OriginalText

1818 Subsidiary plans include, but are not limited to:

1819 • Scope management plan (Section 5.1.3.1),

1820 • Requirements management plan (Section 5.1.3.2),

1821 • Schedule management plan (Section 6.1.3.1),

1822 • Cost management plan (Section 7.1.3.1),

1823 • Quality management plan (Section 8.1.3.1),

1824 • Process improvement plan (Section 8.1.3.2),

1825 • Human resource plan (Section 9.1.3.1),

1826 • Communication management plan (Section 10.1.3.1),

1827 • Risk management plan (Section 11.1.3.1),

1828 • Procurement management plan (Section 12.1.3.1), and

1829 • Stakeholder management plan (Section 13.2.3.1).

Your Recommendation

Throughout teh document change these titles from “…..plan” to “….policy” or strategy or similar to differentiate from connertations of “resourced schedule”

Your Justification

“plan” has a common usage and elsewhere you seek to give it a specific usage that is different to the specific usage here – a recipie for confusion. Guidance must differentiate similar but different ideas and artefacts and label them distinctly and then use the distinct labels carefully if guidance is to be transmitted to those seeking enlightenment

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: “Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended”

OriginalText

1832 project management plan to achieve the project’s objectives. The key benefit of this

Your Recommendation

Either add to the tools and techniques section the must haves of “specialist techniques, eg bricklaying or sutchering” or amend for what is really happening when a PM is Directing and Managing – it isn’t making products that are final deliverables to the future state of business as usual. That isn’t done by the PM role but by the subject matter experts The profound need is to reflect the reality of four process groups: Initiate, Plan, Control, Close – i suspect that is a bit much for you to adopt – should guidance be “right” when published or published to a date what ever its state?

Your Justification

You can hardly “perform the work defined in the pmp to achieve…objectives” with just ej, meetings and a PMIS. All you could achieve with these is to “direct and monitor the work being performed by others using their relevant skills….” and this is clearly identical to “monitor and control”. Your issue is youve defined two process groups yet one of these process groups ‘real’ content is outside your scope of describing the project management – technical product related task execution isn’t project management.

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended

OriginalText

14 project management field. Chapter 3 summarizes the Process Groups and provides an overview

Your Recommendation

Reduce the number of process groups to 4 by acknowledging that creation of products by subject matter experts as described at line-1832 (et al) is not within the scope of project management

Your Justification

L-1832 says “…work … to achieve project objectives…” but process 4.3 omits T&T for any SME work so it is only monitoring and controlling ‘real’ work. We already have an adequate process group for M&C – We don’t need two, infact having two confuses the guidance as we proceed so rationalised guidance would be clearer, better guidance.

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient justification provided with recommendation.

OriginalText

1845 • Perform activities to accomplish project requirements;

Your Recommendation

Add explaination of difference from 1846 or delete

Your Justification

1845 & 1846 are tautology

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: We agree with basic recommendation. We have modified the sentence and believe that the following re-write addresses your comment. ” … to accomplish project objectives;”

OriginalText

1846 • Create project deliverables;

Your Recommendation

change to say something like “meet acceptance criteria and so discharge obligations”

Your Justification

Clearer guidance – creating deliverables is only “ok” if they meet acceptance criteria while meeting acceptance criteria must encompase producing all deliverables to a required standard

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: We agree with basic recommendation. We have modified the sentence and believe that the following re-write addresses your comment and to match further detail on line 1864 & 1865: “* Create project deliverables to meet the planned project work.”

OriginalText

1847 • Staff, train, and manage the team members assigned to the project;

Your Recommendation

reword – you dont “staff… a team member” you staff a role

Your Justification

poorly worded

Our vote on your recommendation: Editorial

Our justification: Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback on the exposure draft for the PMBOK Guide -Fifth Edition. The core committee has reviewed your recommendation and determined that the recommendation is editorial and not substantive. This request will be forwarded to the editorial department for possible inclusion.

OriginalText

1852 • Generate project data, such as cost, schedule, technical and quality progress, and

Your Recommendation

reword to use the defined terms created earlier for projct data/ information/ report (assuming that you get eth defiitions straightened out)

Your Justification

Guidance requires that concepts are isolated and labelled and that the labels are then used consistently in relevant places

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: We agree with basic recommendation. We have modified the sentence and believe that the following re-write addresses your comment • Generate work performance data, such as cost, schedule, technical and quality progress, and status to facilitate forecasting;

OriginalText

1854 • Issue change requests and adapt approved changes into the project’s scope, plans,

Your Recommendation

adOpt not adApt

Your Justification

we take changes into effect (or affect) but we don’t change the changes – at least not in the context presented here

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: We agree with basic recommendation. We have modified the sentence and believe that the following re-write addresses your comment. “… Issue change requests and implement approved changes. …”

OriginalText

1856 • Manage risks and implement risk response activities;

Your Recommendation

Remove teh tautology

Your Justification

It isnt possible to “manage” unless you conduct “activities” so “impleent responses” is wholly included by “manage risks”

Our vote on your recommendation: Editorial

OriginalText

1857 • Manage sellers and suppliers;

Your Recommendation

Move to be a sub-bullet of communicate and (or) meet acceptance criteria

Your Justification

it is a subset of communicating and meeting A/C

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content

OriginalText

1859 • Collect and document lessons learned and implement approved process improvement

Your Recommendation

change “learned” to “observed” or expand to say something like “observed, analysed, and applied to adjust plans”

Your Justification

They only become learned when applied, unless otherwise stated at this stage they are mearly being recorded

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content

OriginalText

1862 the planned project activities and manages the various technical and organizational

Your Recommendation

Add reference to unplanned work

Your Justification

PM must manage the consequences of unplanned activity – either what teh team does that is off-plan and not helpful to project objectives (eg called away on urgent alternative priorities) and off-plan work that is helpful (eg fire-fighting or capitalising on a windfall)

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: We agree with basic recommendation. We have added the following sentence at the end of this sentence. “The project manager must also manage any unplanned activities and determine the appropriate course of action.”

OriginalText

1866 project management plan. Work performance data, information about the completion status of

Your Recommendation

cross reference definition of these terms

Your Justification

Guidance aids the reader by linking terms to their definitions when those definitions are specfically framed in narrow ways that are outside daily and axiomatic usage

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Several comments were received on lines 1866 through 1868. We have modified the sentences to best represent the intent of all comments. We believe that the following re-write addresses your comment. “During project execution, the work performance data is collected and appropriately actioned and communicated. Work performance data is the information about the completion status of deliverables.”

OriginalText

1871 Direct and Manage Project Work also requires implementation of approved changes

1872 addressing:

Your Recommendation

add reference to waivers

Your Justification

incomplete list as given

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation. Cannot determine what is being recommended.

OriginalText

1871 Direct and Manage Project Work also requires implementation of approved changes

1872 addressing:

Your Recommendation

Add discussion of capitalising on advances.

Your Justification

We get positive deviations as well as negative but if you only write about teh negatives you create in the impressionable and reinforce for the ‘seasoned practitioner’ a mindset that accounts for current project performance – gains dissipate and losses accumulate – the reason is in the tone of your writings and the remedy should be explicity as well as implicit in the tone of your writings

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content

OriginalText

1873 • Corrective action—An intentional activity that realigns the performance of the

Your Recommendation

Reword We only realign to the plan when the plan is correct and reality is straying in a way that is overall detrimental. Otherwise we realign the plan with reality – y

Your Justification

You have to set-out the full analysis of what occurs in reality not just be selective through a filter that imagines everythig that can happen is detrimental – it isn’t all bad and whn its better than the plan then its the plan that goes through the change – deliver the result do not be a slave to the plan

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

OriginalText

1875 • Preventive action—An intentional activity undertaken to avoid an event that would

Your Recommendation

add reference to preventative is only for negatives, for positives we enhance and in both cases action is choosen based on cost versus benefit of possible actions and of inaction

Your Justification

What is written is a narrower description than occurs in reality and so is not adequate ‘guidance’

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

OriginalText

1883 include, but are not limited to:

1884 • Scope management plan (Section 5.1.3.1),

1885 • Requirements management plan (Section 5.1.3.2),

Your Recommendation

Explain how scope and requirement are different or delete one. Further explain the relationship of what is left (Scope would be appropriate) to the Quality Management System’s specificatin of product standards to define product acceptance criteria and to specification of process standards (eg Method Statements) for process definition

Your Justification

Scope IS requirement and both ARE bounding the criteria by which obligation is discharged (whether an explicitly writen contract is placed before a court or not) Until we reduce PM to its core concepts and then provide vocabulary we can advance the state of the art. This ‘guide’ perpetuates the muddle when it should/ could so easily cut through it so we can move on to hard questions not keep revisiting basic, avoidable confusions

Our vote on your recommendation: Deferred

Our justification: Recommendation DEFFERED – out of scope for current update committee project charter. Recommendation will be forwarded to next update committee for their consideration.

OriginalText

1892 changes to expand or reduce the project scope. The approved change requests can also

Your Recommendation

Remove the error Change does not “exapnd or reduce scope” it amends the project’s baseline , one element of which is scope which may but also might not be affected

Your Justification

Its not only wrong as written it creates an ethos or mindset that precludes progress: byy a thousand small missrepresentations the total PM capability is warped, concepts muddled, things that should be easy become hard, things that would be hard become impossible. If we can get this document into a decent shape PM can make a step change but that is not going to happen with what we currently have. What we currently have is probably a reversal over what 4th Ed givs us.

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Several comments were received on lines 1889 through 1895. We have modified the sentences to best represent the intent of all comments. We believe that the following re-write addresses your comment: “Approved change requests are an output of the Perform Integrated Change Control process, and include those requests reviewed and approved for implementation by the change control board (CCB)t. The approved change request may be a corrective action, a preventative action, or a defect repair. Approved change requests are scheduled and implemented by the project team, and can impact any area of the project or project management plan.”

OriginalText

1903 • Stakeholder risk tolerances; and

Your Recommendation

Add uncertainty – it is the catalyst whose interplay with risk tolerance creates an effect

Your Justification

Risk tolerance is only 1/2 the equaton. It is a factor only when the level of uncertainty is added

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content. Recommended change does not provide sufficient improvements in the existing text to warrant the change.

OriginalText

1924 Expert judgment is used to assess the inputs needed to direct and manage execution of the

1925 project management plan. Such judgment and expertise are applied to all technical and

Your Recommendation

A crispr definition is need, EG why “assess the inputs”, also when is EJ about managing and when is it doing? How about “EJ encompases the skills of the project’s participants to both create the project’s results in accordance with the acceptance criteria and manage the project’s conduct. With respect to project conduct EJ is used in order to maintain visibility over the evolving status versius baseline of the project and take actions to achieve the results within constraints”

Your Justification

1923 the definition seems to morph, unannounced from including work to deliver specialist technical results eg a transplanted heart, to being the pm work that tracks earned value – A clear statement that EJ is both would help and vocabulary for both sub-parts would also help Eg “Technical judgement” and “Management judgement”

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content

OriginalText

1935 factors, provides access to an automated tool, such as a scheduling software tool, a

Your Recommendation

Remove “automated” or at least make the point that we keep reord and analyse data and that can be assisted with automated tools but it is not constrained to being automated and often automation brings its own drawbacks

Your Justification

As written it is confusing what might be an aid with an expression that reads as if it is a constraint

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Several comments were received on lines 1934 through 1938. We have modified the sentences to best represent the intent of all comments. We believe that the following re-write addresses your comment: “The project management information system, which is part of the enterprise environmental factors, provides access to tools, such as a scheduling tool, a work authorization system, a configuration management system, an information collection and distribution system, or interfaces to other online automated systems used during the Direct and Manage Project Work process.”

OriginalText

1939 4.3.2.3 Meetings

Your Recommendation

Redraft – as written it isn’t guidance to anyone with enough intellect to be able to read it. Somewhat more insight might be to define meetings as of three types, best not mixed. information exchange, option elecitation/design and decision making, better to also say every attended should be challenged and able to respond why they need to be their and why their presence is needed by the project – Meeting attendees must always either advise on options/decisions or they can make determination now or in the future – otherwise attendees should be dismissed if present and summoned if absent

Your Justification

Adding words to the document is detrimental if they don’t guide the reader – they make the document longer so reduce its effectiveness and its economy of communication

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Numerous comments were received on lines 1939 to 1946.. It has been revised as follows: “Meetings are used to discuss and address pertinent topics of the project when directing and managing project work. Attendees at the meetings may include the project manager, the project team and appropriate stakeholders involved or affected by the topics addressed. Each attendee should have a defined role to ensure appropriate participation. Meetings tend to be one of three types: * Information exchange, * Brainstorming, option evaluation or design, or * Decision making. Meeting types should not be mixed as a best practice. Meetings should be prepared with a well-defined agenda, purpose, objective, and time frame and should be appropriately documented with meeting minutes and action items. Meeting minutes should be stored as defined in the project management plan. Meetings are most effective when all participants can be face-to-face in the same location. Virtual meetings can be held using audio and/or video conferencing tools, but generally require additional preparation and organization to achieve the same effectiveness of a face-to-face meeting.”

OriginalText

1949 An approved deliverable is any unique and verifiable product, result, or capability to

Your Recommendation

1949 if it is approved then it must have ben subject to sucesful verification or been exempted or failed and been granted a waiver. By the time it is “approved” it is not (just) “verifiable”

Your Justification

Improved wording possible

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Several comments were received on lines 1949 through 1950. We have modified the sentences to best represent the intent of all comments. We believe that the following re-write addresses your comment. “An approved deliverable is any unique and verifiable product, result or capability to perform a service that must be produced to complete a process, phase, or project. Deliverables are typically tangible components completed to meet the project objectives and can include elements of the project management plan.”

OriginalText

1950 perform a service that must be produced to complete a process, phase, or project.

Your Recommendation

Add something ike “a result may be conceptual, cultural, behavioral…and does not have to be a physical artefact”

Your Justification

The terms “deliverable” an “product” are widely misconstrued to imply physical item so an explicit statement to the contrary is useful

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

OriginalText

1951 4.3.3.2 Work Performance Data

Your Recommendation

Merge with l-1474

Your Justification

fragmentation and duplication of topic coverage

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation. Insufficient recommendation. Cannot determine what is being recommended.

OriginalText

1955 often viewed as the lowest level of abstraction from which information is derived by other

1956 processes.

Your Recommendation

add note that the least abstract or most directly measured, detaild and concrete data provides the best foundations for decision making but may need aggregation and analsysis to more abstract for for decision making

Your Justification

improved guidance

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Several comments were received on lines 1951 through 1956. We have modified the sentences to best represent the intent of all comments. We believe that the following re-write addresses your comment: “Work performance data are the raw observations and measurements identified during activities being performed to carry out the project work. Data are often viewed as the lowest level of detail from which information is derived by other processes. Data is gathered through work execution and passed to the controlling processes of each process area for further analysis.”

OriginalText

1957 Examples of work performance data include reported percent of work physically completed,

Your Recommendation

reword “Percent” is an abstraction not raw data. Imagine progress reporting heart surgery. Raw data might be “made 4 sutchers” the percent abstraction is “so 33%” because baseline says “Make 9 sutchers”

Your Justification

Wrong as written

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Several comments were received on lines 1957 through 1959. We have modified the sentences to best represent the intent of all comments. We believe that the following re-write addresses your comment: “Examples of work performance data include work completed, key performance indicators, technical performance measures, start and finish dates of schedule activities, number of change requests, number of defects, actual costs, actual durations, etc.”

OriginalText

1960 4.3.3.3 Change Requests

1961 A change request is a formal proposal to modify any document, deliverable, or baseline.

Your Recommendation

First a CR is a record and second it changes something which resluts in an amended basline – it can’t be defined by “or baseline” the baseline is the abstract collection of things some of which are changed. reword to something like “A CR is the record of a request by one party to an agreement to vary the terms of the agreement. typically a request to change one element of an agreed baseline requires changes to dependant factors. Any newly agreed baseline replaces the previous ‘current baseline’

Your Justification

Improved guidance

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: We agree with basic recommendation. We have modified the sentence and believe that the following re-write addresses your comment: “A change request is a formal proposal to modify any document, deliverable, or baseline. An approved change request will replace the associated item and may result in an update to other parts of the project management plan.”

OriginalText

1962 When issues are found while project work is being performed, change requests are issued

Your Recommendation

reword to avoid using “issue” twice in the line with different meaning Also avoid issue as it has negative only connertations and change should whenever possible be positive, and hopefully for all partys

Your Justification

You want to communicate as clearly and widely as possible to provide the best possible guidance

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: We agree with basic recommendation. We have modified the sentence and believe that the following re-write addresses your comment. “… change requests are submitted …”

OriginalText

1963 which may modify project policies or procedures, project scope, project cost or budget,

Your Recommendation

After “modify” add “one or more of ….simeltaneously”

Your Justification

clearer guidance

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: We agree with basic recommendation. We have modified the sentence and believe that the following re-write addresses your comment. “… may modify any …”

OriginalText

1966 change can be direct or indirect, externally or internally initiated, and can be optional

Your Recommendation

Explain what an “indirect change” is and what a “direct change” is

Your Justification

inscrutable as written

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content.

OriginalText

1967 or legally/contractually mandated and may include:

Your Recommendation

Weve alrady had all this “realign…” so merge to previous discussion dont replicate

Your Justification

taultology makes the document longer without more value so degrades the guidance

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation. Insufficient recommendation. Cannot determine what is being recommended.

OriginalText

1974 • Updates—Changes to formally controlled documentation, plans, etc., to reflect

1975 modified or additional ideas or content.

Your Recommendation

clarify intent An update to a plan to replace an estimate (eg task start date) with data that reflects actual performance is “an update” but not within th eintent here. So what you mean here might be better labelled “enhancement” or amendment” rather than update

Your Justification

Extremely ambigious as written

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: No substantive improvement in content. Recommended change does not provide sufficient improvements in the existing text to warrant the change.

OriginalText

1977 Elements of the project management plan that may be updated include, but are not limited

1978 to:

Your Recommendation

Add reference to the result to be delivered and thus size and timing of benefits and duration over which their return is spread

Your Justification

Surely the return on investment is a sufficiently important element of pmp to be mentioned!?

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended. Submitter provided insufficient information in the recommended change to allow a review and disposition. No change was made to the text because no alternate text was provided.

OriginalText

2907 5.4.2.1 Decomposition

Your Recommendation

research decomposition and then redraft the whole section Seperate what decomposition is from the discussion of peripheral topics like workpackage and breakdown structure groupings at intermediate levels

Your Justification

A BS is the result of using decomposition, decomposition as a technique needs to be described first Then the options for structuring BS could be discussed: first product oriented in discussion with teh customer – nouns only, then extend with team to include verbs, then rearrange with resource owners to create RAM/ARCI (RACI) in a phase-oriented structure Then the criteria to judge useful depth and breadth for control without micromanagement, without too wide a span of control etc there is a two part paper on the American Society For The Advancement Of Project Management’s website in last year or the year before’s newsletter

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Insufficient recommendation – cannot determine what is being recommended.

OriginalText

2908 Decomposition is a technique used for dividing and subdividing the project scope and

2909 project deliverables into smaller, more manageable parts. The work package is the work

Your Recommendation

reword cant say “scope and deliverables” deliverables ARE scope its “scope: dliverables and tasks to create them”

Your Justification

Decomposition is a key technique and achieving a clear description will advance Pm while a garbled description holds PM back. Of all the sections to spend time and effort on getting right this is one of teh most important in the whole book. If the customer’s criteria by which they judge “fit for purpose” are not well described then everything else we do is detached from the reality of sucesful delivery. With out a good PBS determining work with clarity is compromised and ability to define specification and then conform to spec damaged

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Several comments were received on lines 2909 through 2911. We have modified the sentences to best represent the intent of all comments. We believe that the following re-write addresses your comment: “Decomposition is a technique used for dividing and subdividing the project scope and project deliverables into smaller, more manageable parts. The work package is the work defined at the lowest level of the WBS for which cost and duration can be estimated and managed. The level of decomposition is often guided by the degree of control needed to effectively manage the project. The level of detail for work packages will vary…”.

OriginalText

3345 6.2 Define Activities

Your Recommendation

Move to Scope Management Someone needs to say teh emporer isn’t wearing any cloths – this is part of the expression of scope and its results – the activity list is the output of scope definition to be input into resource determination and dependency modelling

Your Justification

the technique of decomposition clearly elicits the composition IE Scope of something. Its use in two places clearly shows that scope has two dependant definitions – everything that must be deliver and everything that must be done. indeed much of configuration management, verification, validation and tracability deals with the link Placing the elicitation of activities, ie work, stuff to be done in time management is plain wrong

Our vote on your recommendation: Rejected

Our justification: Recommendation conflicts with other accepted material in the standard

OriginalText

3408 creating value instead of completing activities.

Your Recommendation

No project should EVER be about completing activity in isolation of value. Its a sad inditment of the “guidance” that someone could write this line Revise the line and teh other 10,000 to reflect that all projects everywhere MUST now and for ever focus on delivering value

Your Justification

Sorry – lost for words –

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Numerous comments were received on this section. It has been revised as follows: 6.2.2.2 Rolling Wave Planning Rolling wave planning is an iterative planning technique in which the work to be accomplished in the near term is planned in detail, while the work in the future is planned at a more general level. It is a form of progressive elaboration. Therefore, work can exist at various levels of detail depending on where it is in the project life cycle. During early strategic planning, when information is less defined, work packages may be decomposed to the known level of detail. As more is known about the upcoming events in the near term, work packages can be decomposed into activities.

OriginalText

3928 and the nature of risk events evolves. For example, in an agile project management

3929 environment, the project team utilizes the project schedule model to develop schedules in

3930 each development cycle (iteration).

Your Recommendation

delete the agile label

Your Justification

Every project does this – its impossible not to

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Several comments were received on lines 3921 through 3930. We have modified the sentences to best represent the intent of all comments: Developing an acceptable project schedule is often an iterative process. The schedule model is used to determine the planned start and finish dates for project activities and milestones based on the accuracy of the inputs. Schedule development can require the review and revision of duration estimates and resource estimates to create the project schedule model to establish an approved project schedule that can serve as a baseline to track progress. As work progresses revising and maintaining the project schedule model to sustain a realistic schedule continues throughout the duration of the project as described in section 6.7

OriginalText

3987 The critical path method, as shown in Figure 6-17, is a method used to estimate the

3988 minimum project duration and determine the amount of scheduling flexibility on the logical

Your Recommendation

Reword CPM doe not “estimate” it calculates from durations and dependencies

Your Justification

wrong as written

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Several comments were received on lines 3987 through 3997. We have modified the sentences to best represent the intent of all comments. We believe that the following re-write addresses your comment: The critical path method, which is a schedule network analysis technique, calculates the early start, early finish, late start, and late finish dates for all activities without regard for any resource limitations by performing a forward and backward pass analysis through the schedule network, as shown in Figure 6-17, In this example the longest path includes activities A, C, and D, and, hence, the sequence of A-C-D is the critical path. The critical path is the sequence of activities that represents the longest path through a project, which determines the shortest possible project duration. The resulting early and late start and finish dates are not necessarily the project schedule, rather they indicate the time periods within which the activity could be executed, given activity durations, logical relationships, leads, lags, and other known constraints. The critical path method is used to calculate the amount of scheduling flexibility on the logical network paths within the schedule model.

OriginalText

4000 the project finish date or violating a schedule constraint, and is termed “total float.”

4001 Critical paths have either a zero or negative total float, and any activity in the project

4002 schedule is called a critical path activity. Negative total float is caused when a

4003 constraint on the late dates is violated by duration and logic. A critical path is

4004 normally characterized by zero total float on the critical path, but could also be

4005 negative. Networks may have multiple near-critical paths. Many software packages allow the

4006 user to define “critical” activities. Adjustments to activity durations (if more resources

4007 or less scope can be arranged), logical relationships (if the relationships were

4008 discretionary to begin with), leads and lags, or other schedule constraints may be

4009 necessary to produce network paths with a zero or positive total float. Once the total

4010 float for a network path has been calculated, then the free float, the amount of time that

4011 a schedule activity can be delayed without delaying the early start date of any successor

Your Recommendation

Review validity for dependencies other tha F-S 4004 repeats 4001 without adding value

Your Justification

Adequate guidance requires more careful writing

Our vote on your recommendation: Accepted With Modification

Our justification: Several comments were received on lines 3998 through 4012. We have modified the sentences to best represent the intent of all comments. We believe that the following re-write addresses your comment: On any network path, the schedule flexibility is measured by the amount of time that a schedule activity can be delayed or extended from its early start date without delaying the project finish date or violating a schedule constraint, and is termed “total float.” A CPM critical path is normally characterized by zero total float on the critical path. As implemented with PDM sequencing critical paths may have positive, zero, or negative total float depending on constraints applied. Any activity on the critical path is called a critical path activity. Positive total float is caused when the backward pass is calculated from a schedule constraint that is later than the early finish date that has been calculated during forward pass calculation. Negative total float is caused when a constraint on the late dates is violated by duration and logic. Schedule networks may have multiple near-critical paths. Many software packages allow the user to define the parameters used to determine the critical path(s). Adjustments to activity durations (if more resources or less scope can be arranged), logical relationships (if the relationships were discretionary to begin with), leads and lags, or other schedule constraints may be necessary to produce network paths with a zero or positive total float. Once the total float for a network path has been calculated, then the free float, the amount of time that a schedule activity can be delayed without delaying the early start date of any successor or violating a schedule constraint, can also be determined. For example the free float for Activity B, in Figure 6-17, is 5 days.

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