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UPDATING THE PROJECT MANAGEMENT BODIES OF KNOWLEDGE

Peter W.G. Morris
Centre for Research in the Management of Projects, UMIST

Summary

Project management Bodies of Knowledge (BoKs) have been published by the

professional project management associations now for ten to fifteen years. They are
enormously influential. Not only do they provide standards against which the
associations’ certification programmes are run, they are used by many practitioners and
companies as Best Practice guides to what the discipline comprises. Yet there are two or
three different BoKs, and all need updating. This paper reviews the status of BoKs and
reports on research on what topics should be included in the BoK (1) conducted at CRMP
using data from 117 companies and (2) through on-going work sponsored by NASA.

Introduction

Project management has grown from the early initiatives in the US defence/aerospace
sectors in the late 1950s/60s into a core competency that is widely recognised across most
industry sectors.

Initial formulations of project management – largely by the US Department of Defense

and NASA – consisted of internally promulgated policies, procedures and practices.
Later, books, articles, seminars and training programmes explored and expanded project
management practice. Much of this centred around the use of tools and techniques – such
as network scheduling and performance measurement – and organisational issues –
particularly middle management ones such as conflict management and teamwork [1].

From the late 60s to early 70s project management societies began to provide
professional forums for communication on the discipline, basically through journals,
conferences and seminars. This continued until the mid 1980s when first PMI, the US
based Project Management Institute, and later APM, the UK based Association for
Project Management, embarked on programmes to test whether people met their
standards of project management professionalism.

To be tested requires that there be a curriculum or similar reference work that can be used
as the basis of the test. PMI, as first in the field with this initiative [2], established its first
Project Management “Body of Knowledge” (BoK) in 1976 but it was not until the mid
1980s that PMI’s BoK became the basis of its standards and certification programme. As
shall be seen shortly, PMI’s BoK was revised several times during the 1980s and 90s.

Other professional bodies followed with their own BoKs in the late 80s and early 90s.
Several followed PMI, either using the PMI BoK as the knowledge element of their
competency assessment, as in the case of the Australian Institute of Project Management,

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or, as many have done, taking PMI’s package in toto as the basis of their project
management standards. (These associations generally in fact being Chapters of PMI.)

APM on the other hand, when it launched its certification programme in the early 90s,
felt that the then PMI BoK did not adequately reflect the knowledge base that project
management professionals needed. Hence APM developed its own BoK which differs
markedly from PMI’s.

APM’s certification programme was then adopted, and the APM BoK translated and
adapted, by several European countries. Austria, France, Germany, Switzerland, and The
Netherlands all had their own BoKs by the mid 1990s, largely reflecting the APM model.
In 1998 IPMA, the International Project Management Association, produced an amalgam
of these national BoKs – not including PMI’s however since it is not a member of IPMA
– with versions in French, English and German, together with proposals for harmonising
the various national project management qualifications [3].

The aim of all this activity on defining BoKs has thus, in short, been for the professional
associations to define what a project management practitioner ought to be knowledgeable
in, and through this, to provide a professional qualification in the discipline. (And as
such, incidentally, they also provide the project management component of many
enterprise-wide competency schemes.)

But in fact they do more than this. For in effect the Body of Knowledge should reflect the
purpose and provide the set of topics, relationships and definitions of project
management.

However, the fact that there are at least two (or three) quite different versions of the BoK
– PMI’s and APM’s (IPMA’s) – implies confusion at the highest level on what the
philosophy and content of the profession is. Basically the two (three) models reflect
different views of the discipline. PMI’s is basically focussed on the generic processes
required to accomplish a project “on time, in budget, to scope”. APM’s reflects a wider
view of the discipline, addressing both the context of project management and the
technological, commercial and general management issues which it believes are
important to successfully accomplishing projects.

Not only are there fundamentally differing models of the project management Body of
Knowledge, both PMI and APM have admitted that their BoKs are in need of updating
and do not fully reflect current perceptions of project management practice.

The situation, in short, is somewhere between being intellectually and professionally

inadequate and, at best, being in need of urgent revision! This paper reports on recent
work to address this state of affairs. It:

• reviews the status of the PMI, APM and IPMA Bodies of Knowledge;

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• then describes a major research programme conducted by the Centre for Research in
the Management of Projects at UMIST to investigate industry’s, academia’s, and UK
government’s view of the Body of Knowledge;
• then discusses work recently begun under the auspices of NASA to try and develop
an “expert” view of a global BoK;
• and finally discusses the relevance of all this work to efforts to define and develop
Best Practice in project management.

1. The PMI, APM, and IPMA Bodies of Knowledge

PMI’s PMBOK™

PMI established its first Project Management BoK in 1976 on the premise that there were
many management practices that were common to all projects and that codification of this
"Body of Knowledge" would be helpful not just to practising project management staff
but to teachers and certifiers of project management professionalism. It was not until
1981, however, that PMI’s Ethics, Standards and Accreditation Committee submitted its
recommendations for a BoK to the PMI Board of Directors. These were published in the
August 1983 issue of the Project Management Quarterly, and this subsequently formed
the basis for PMI’s initial accreditation and certification programmes. A revised
document was published in the August 1986 issue of the Project Management Journal
and approved by the PMI board in August 1987 as the “Project Management Body of
Knowledge”. Further work by PMI’s Standards Committee resulted in a revised
document titled “A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge”. This was
done to emphasise that even though the document defines the PMBoK as all those topics,
subject areas, and intellectual processes which are involved in the application of sound
management principles to projects – a claim which this paper will question – it will never
be able to contain the entire PMBoK which is out there in the universe of project
management. A further revised and updated version was published in 1996.
Trademarking of the term PMBoK was recently sought by PMI.

Currently, the structure of the PMI’s PMBOK™ document consists of “generally

accepted project management practices” represented by 37 component processes (Figure
1). It also includes a description of what the PMI defines as the “project management
framework”: definitions of key terms, a description of pertinent general management
skills, and an introduction to the concept of a project management process model.

APM’s BoK

In 1986 discussions in the UK led to the then Professional Standards Group (PSG) of
APM, the Association of Project Managers (now the Association for Project
Management,) developing an outline of what was to become the APM’s Body of
Knowledge. At this time, there was considerable debate both nationally and
internationally about whether "certification" of project managers should be based on
examination of knowledge or assessment of competence. The APM BoK was initially
developed specifically for candidates to assess their level of project management

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Project
Management

Project Integration Project Scope Management Project Time Management

Management
• Project Plan Development
•Project Plan Execution
•Overall Change Control
Project Cost
Management
•Resource Management
•Cost Estimating
•Cost Budgeting
•Cost Control
Project Communications
Management
•Communications Planning
•Information Distribution
•Performance Reporting
•Administrative Closure
•Initiation •Activity Definition
•Scope Planning •Activity Sequencing
•Scope Definition •Activity Duration Estimating
•Scope Verification •Schedule Development
•Scope Change Control •Schedule Control
Project Quality Project Human Resource
Management
Management
•OrganiztionalPlanning
•Quality Management
•Staff Acquisition
•Quality Assurance
•Team Development
•Quality Control
Project Procurement
Management
Project Risk Management
•Procurement Planning
•Risk Identification
•Solicitation Planning
•Risk Quantification
•Solicitation
•Risk Response Development
•Source Selection
•Risk Response Control
•Contract Administration
•Contract Close-out

Figure 1: PMI PMBoK Structure

knowledge for the Certificated Project Manager (CPM) qualification then being
introduced by APM. The initial version of the APM’s BoK was published in April 1992.
(We shall turn to the question of why APM did not just adopt the PMI BoK in a moment.)
It was first. It was revised in July 1993, and then reviewed by the APM Education,
Training and Research Committee for a 1994 update. The current issue was revised in
January 1995.

The structure of the current APM Body of Knowledge is organised into four “key
competencies”: project management, organisation and people, processes and procedures,
and general management (Figure 2). Each of these competencies, in turn, is composed of
six to thirteen competency topics, there being 40 in all. Under each of the competency
topics, a “definition” can be found, examples of “knowledge” and “experience” levels,
and a list of or references.

European BoKs

Following its launch in the UK, several European countries became interested in
providing their own versions of APM’s CPM qualification. One of the first was the Dutch

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Project Management Organisation & People Techniques & Procedures General Management

—Systems Management —Organisation Design —Work Definition —Operational/Technical

Management
—Programme Management —Control & Co-ordination —Planning
—Project Management —Marketing & Sales
—Communication —Scheduling
—Project Life Cycle —Finance
—Leadership —Estimating
—Project Environment
—Information Technology
—Project Strategy —Delegation —Cost Control
—Law
—Project Appraisal —Team Builduing —Performance Measurement
—Project Success / —Procurement
Failure Criteria —Conflict Management —Risk Management
—Quality
—Integration —Negotiation —Value Management
—Systems & Procedures —Safety
—Management Development —Change Control
—Close Out —Industrial Relations
—Mobilisation
—Post Project Appraisal

Figure 2: APM Body of Knowledge Structure, revised 3rd Version'

association, PMI. (Confusingly, no relation to the US PMI.) The Swiss project

management association, SPM, and the German project management association, GPM,
also looked at the CPM and in doing so the APM BoK. This they translated, making
some changes as they did, though retaining the basic structure of the APM model. The
French society, AFITEP, translated an abbreviated version of the BoK.

By the mid 1990s, the International Project Management Association (IPMA), the
federation of national project management associations to which all these European
societies, as well as many others – but not PMI – belong, felt that it should attempt some
kind of coordination of the various national BoKs, not least so that those national
associations that had not yet their own version might have something to use.
Accordingly, work began in 1996 on producing a coordinated set of definitions. This was
published in English, French and German in 1998.

The IPMA BoK structure is shown in Figure 3. It adopted the term, “The Sunflower”, to
describe its structure. The sunflower structure was adopted specifically in recognition of
the major issue which bedevils all attempts to produce a BoK: the structuring of the BoK
elements. (People have not too much difficulty agreeing the topics to be put in the BoK
but they have enormous difficulty in dealing with the way these topics are structured -
strange, because one would think it the less important of the two issues, but in reality
reflecting the very great importance people put on the way they address a subject.) The
great advantage of the sunflower is that the regular and symmetrical arrangements of the
BoK elements minimises the difficulty of finding a structure that is acceptable to a wide
range of different national societies.

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Figure 3: "Sunflower" Structure of IPMA Competence Baseline (Version 1)

But why didn’t APM use the PMI BoK models?

If project management is genuinely a professional activity, underpinned by an accepted

body of knowledge, why did APM not use PMI’s Body of Knowledge?

APM’s model was strongly influenced by research then being carried out into the issue of
what it takes to deliver successful projects [4]. The question being asked was, what
factors have to be managed if a project is to be delivered successfully? This is an
important, and difficult, question. It is important because it addresses the question of
what the professional ethos is of project management. Put simply, is it to deliver projects
“on time, in budget, to scope”, as the traditional view has had it [5] or is it to deliver
projects successfully to the project customer/sponsor? In essence it has to be the latter,
because if it is not, project management is a useless profession that in the long-term no
one is going to get very excited about.

Yet all the research evidence [6] shows that in order to deliver successful projects,
managing scope, time, cost, resources, quality, risk, procurement, etc. – the PMI BoK
factors – alone is not enough. Just as important – sometimes more important – are issues
of technology and design management, environmental and external issues, people
matters, business and commercial issues, and so on. Further, the research shows that
defining the project is absolutely central to achieving project success. The job of
managing projects begins early in the project, at the time the project definition is
beginning to be explored and developed, not just after the scope, schedule, budget and
other factors have been defined.

PMI’s BoK dealt insufficiently, it was felt, with these matters. APM thus looked for a
structure which gave more recognition to them.

2. Research updating the APM BoK

While the APM model has worked well over the decade since its formulation, it currently
contains several areas in need of revision. (As, PMI recognises, its BoK does too). Hence
work was initiated in mid 1997 by UMIST’s Centre for Research in the Management of
Projects1 to conduct research aimed at providing empirical data upon which APM could
decide how it wished to update its BoK. The research lasted 14 months and was financed
both by APM and by industry2.

1
CRMP is a leading academic group in project management. Offering three full-time M.Sc.s, it currently
has over a dozen faculty, 50-60 postgraduate students (including about a dozen on research programmes)
and over £1.5million in contracted research
2
The research was funded by APM, AMEC, BNFL, Duhig Berry, GEC (Dunchurch), Unilever, and
Unisys, with additional support from Bechtel.

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The aim of the CRMP work was to:
• identify the topics that project management professionals consider need to be known
and understood by anyone claiming to be competent in project management;
• define what is meant by those topics at a generically useful level;
• update the body of literature that supports these topic areas;
• develop a BoK structure that best represents the revised BoK.

The research findings were based on interviews and data collection in over 117
companies. The findings provide a valuable insight into what practitioners and academics
believe project management professionals ought to be knowledgeable in. It is, we believe,
the only empirical evidence available that does this.

What we found.

Respondents showed considerable agreement on most of the topics that they felt project
management professionals ought to be knowledgeable about. A particularly important
finding is that the survey endorses the breadth of topics in the APM BoK: in fact the
survey results argue for an even broader scope of topics than the original BoK.
Specifically, we found:

• 100% agreed on the need for Leadership, Legal Awareness, Procurement to be

included,
• 99% on Safety Health and Environment,
• 98% on Life Cycles,
• 96% on Purchasing,
• 95% on Risk Management,
• 94% on Financial Management,
• 93% on Industrial Relations and on Scheduling,
• 89% on the Business Case, Project Organisation, and on Testing, Commissioning &
Hand-over,
• 87% on the Project Context,
• 86% on Close-out,
• 85% on Programme Management,
• 84% on Quality Management and on Teamwork,
• 81% on Project Management Plan,
• 80% on (Post-) Project Evaluation Review,
• 79% on Contract Planning and Administration and on Project Management as a
general topic,
• 78% on Monitoring & Control,
• 77% on Resources Management and on Project Launch,
• 75% on Configuration Management and Change Control.

There were a number of topics however that they felt were not necessary, some of which
are surprising and possibly reflect an under-appreciation of the relationship of project
management with the business basis of the project.

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• 28% only agreed on Goals, Objectives and Strategies (surprising considering how
important these are),
• 32% on Requirements Management (ditto),
• 33% on Integrative Management (not surprising: it is covered by Project
Management),
• 36% on Systems Management (not surprising: this has long caused difficulty),
• 42% on Success Criteria (relatively surprising),
• 44% on Performance Measurement – i.e. Earned Value (this is very interesting
considering how central to project management theory and “Best Practice” it is
considered by writers and experts),
• 46% on Information Management.

When the data was split by industry sectors there were some further revealing findings.

• Construction and Information Systems (IS) rated Marketing and Sales 40%, and
Goals, Objectives and Strategies only 20%. This may be a reflection simply of the
jobs/life experience of those who responded. It has a wry correlation however with
the reputation of those industries to concentrate on implementation and less on how to
relate the project to the customer’s real needs.

• Similarly IS rated Requirements Management only 22% - incredible considering (a)

the generally high rate of IS project failures, often associated with poor Requirements
Management and Front-End Definition [7] (b) that the term is particularly associated
with systems projects. (The 32% for Requirements Management in Construction is
more understandable since the term is not well known in Construction.)

• Performance Measurement (Earned Value) scored only 29% in IS too (and 21% in
Facilities Management – high everywhere else): again an interesting comment on the
information systems sector.

The research also compared BoK topics with coverage in The International Journal of
Project Management and the Project Management Journal and with the IPMA and PMI
conference proceedings [8]. In the journals we found that:
• academic writing on the BoK is not even in coverage: there are some topics that have
a huge amount written about them; some have next to nothing. Technical and
commercial issues in particular receive little coverage compared with the traditional
areas of planning and monitoring – i.e. control, organisation, leadership, teamwork,
etc.;
• US coverage of marketing & sales, integrative management, resources, and cost
management is higher than European; European coverage of the early stages of
project formation, the project context, project management plan, project launch and
risk is higher than American.
Coverage in the conferences was broader though still tending to reflect a traditional
implementation orientation.

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The CRMP BoK

Figure 4 shows the final version of the CRMP BoK model

The topics are grouped into seven sections.

• The first section deals with a number of General and introductory items.
The remaining six sections deal with topics to do with managing:
• the project’s Strategic framework, including its basic objectives;
• the Control issues that should be employed;
• the definition of the project’s Technical characteristics;
• the Commercial features of its proposed implementation;
• the Organisation structure that should fit the above;
• issues to do with managing the People that will work on the project.

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FIGURE 4: THE CRMP BODY OF KNOWLEDGE

Note: This in of course only the BoK structure. The BoK is really this plus the definitions of the topics, together with appropriate references. The BoK can be
obtained from CRMP [0161 200 4590; www.UMIST.ac.UK/CRMP. The CRMP BoK is meant as a research BoK only and is not meant to replace the APM
BoK unless or until APM so decides.

General
1.0 Project Management 3.0 Project Context
2.0 Programme Management

Strategic
4.0 Project Success Criteria 7.0 Risk Management
5.0 Strategy/ Project Management Plan 8.0 Quality Management
6.0 Value Management 9.0 Safety, Health & Environment

Control Technical Commercial Organisational People

10.0 Work Content & 17.0 Design, Production 23.0 Business Case 28.0 Life Cycle Design & 31.0 Communication
Scope Management & Hand -Over 24.0 Marketing & Sales Management 32.0 Teamwork
11.0 Time Scheduling/ Management 25.0 Financial 28.1 Opportunity 33.0 Leadership
Phasing 18.0 Requirements Management 28.2 Design & 34.0 Conflict
12.0 Resource Management 26.0 Procurement Development Management
Management 19.0 Technology 27.0 Legal Awareness 28.3 Production 35.0 Negotiation
13.0 Budgeting & Management 28.4 Hand-over 36.0 Personnel
Cost Management 20.0 Value Engineering 28.5 (Post) Project Management
14.0 Change Control 21.0 Modelling & Evaluation Review
15.0 Earned Value Testing [O&M/ILS]
Management 22.0 Configuration 29.0 Organisation
16.0 Information Management Structure
Management 30.0 Organisational
Roles
Opportunity Design & Production Hand-over Post-Project
Identification Development Evaluation

Design, Test, Operation & Maintenance /

Concept/ Feasibility/ Modelling Make, Build Commission, Integrated Logistics;
Marketing Bid & Procurement & Test Start-up Project Reviews/ Learning
From Experience

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Areas of significant difference compared with previous versions of the APM BoK [9]
include the following.
• Tighter definition of Success Criteria.
• Value Management split from Value Engineering (because VM is Strategic and
VE is basically Technical/configuration/engineering).
• New emphasis on Technical with several new topics – Design, Production &
Hand-over; Requirements Management; Technology Management; Modelling &
Testing.
• Better description of Procurement.
• Better description of Life Cycle Design and Management.
• Organisational Roles in addition to Organisation Structure.

How valid are the findings?

An important finding of the research is that the breadth of topics was so strongly
endorsed by the empirical data. Though this may comfort the original authors of the
APM BoK, and indeed does fit with the research data on success and failure etc., there
is an obvious word of caution. Since most of those providing data (though not all)
were APM members, they would be biased to accepting the APM BoK view of
project management. A more interesting result would be to find what topics a cross
section of project management professionals thought should be included. Work has
begun on extending the research to incorporate this.

For a long time CRMP resisted proposing any structure at all. For the reasons already
noted, we felt that the important thing was the list of topics to be included and their
textual definition. (And references.) Nevertheless as the research got towards its final
stages, it became clear that most people needed a clear structure by which they could
clearly apprehend the logic of the discipline – its ontology. (Max Wideman reminded
us of the work of the psychologist, Miller, who found in the 1950s that most people
respond best to a numerical structuring scheme of 7, plus or minus 2 [10].)

There are some features underlying the structure of the CRMP BoK that are
particularly important:
• there is a process basis;
• the structure is meant to be as simple and cogent as possible;
• too much should not be read into the actual position of a topic under a heading –
many topics could arguably be put under other headings3.

There was great discussion about whether there should be a “Technical” heading.
Indeed the debate about how much technical knowledge a project manager has to have
is a very old one. We were persuaded of its importance not least by the weight of
research data that shows that technical matters and their management can be major
sources of projects failing to meet their planned requirements.

3
Many Control topics in the CRMP model for example are arguably Strategic; Configuration
Management could have gone under Control, as could Testing. people’s minds). Similarly Value
Management is, in the CRMP BoK, strategic while Value Engineering is technical.

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The heart of the BoK is in fact the text that describes each of the topics. Use of plain
English has been the objective, both because this is sensible and because this is what
our research showed people very much want. It is not as easy a challenge as it might
sound. Surprisingly, in many ways, there are very few models on which to base such
short, general and yet useful definitions. (Copies of the BoK can be obtained from
CRMP – www.UMIST.ac.co/CRMP – meanwhile APM has agreed to use the CRMP
BoK as the basis for its new BoK which should be released in 2000.)

3. The NASA sponsored enquiry into a Global BoK

Stimulated by the unsatisfactory situation of the project management profession

having two or more different models of the project management Body of Knowledge,
a small group of experts met in Los Angeles in 1998 and agreed that a larger group of
internationally recognised experts should be invited to a workshop to define:
• first, what topics should be included in a project management BoK,
• second, what structure might be employed to represent these topics.
NASA generously agreed to sponsor the experts’ meeting which took place in June
1999 at Norfolk Beach, Virginia.

The exercise was not easy. In a two-day workshop the 33 experts critically reviewed a
list of 703 project management terms that had been culled from the project
management literature and that could form the elements of the BoK. Invitations were
then made for further potential candidate words and the list expanded to 1,000.

Two groups then assembled the lists into two possible BoK structures. One group’s
major headings comprised the following (listed in no particular order):

• Type of Project
• Context
• Client
• Requirements Management
• Strategy
• Project Management Integration
• Planning
• Life Cycle
• Risk
• People
• Procurement
• Control
• Organisation
• Vocabulary

As an illustration of the range and breadth of topics, the following items were
included in “Planning”.

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Ladder, Lagging, Link, Start to finish SF, Subnet, Late start, Late Finish, Hangar,
Hammock, Early effort, Loop, Node, Calendar, Module, Free float, Re-schedule,
Collapsing, Forecast, Evaluate, PERT activity, CPM Critical path, Float, Latest
Finish, Successor, Flow, Graphical, MOG time, Early start, Start splitting, Arrow
(activity on arrow), Barchart, Biogramming, Split relationship, Finish to start, Work
breakdown structure, Product breakdown structure, Deliverable breakdown structure,
Master schedule, Charter, Network diagram, Strategic Systems Plan (SSP), Synergy,
Methodology, Perimeters, The Value Management, Bills and Methods Matrix,
Crashing, Dangle, Lag, Sub-task, Responsibility Assignment Matrix, Predecessor
Risk Analysis, Quality Assurance, Work Package, Project Plan, Project Planning,
Rolling Wave, Project Execution Plan, Project Implementation Plan, Organisation
Breakdown Structure, Linear Responsibility Chart, Plan, Planning, Manufacturing
Resource Planning (MRP), Dummy, Finish to Finish, Bragnet, Fuzzy Front End,
Dependency Management, Dependency, Total Float, IJ, Start to Start, Levelling, Half
Critical, Duration, Task, Scheduled, Scheduling, Time, Slack, Stage, Phase, M
Milestone, Success, Deliverables Management, Haste, Facts, Assumptions,
Boundaries, Limitations, Cycle time, Staffing, Safety and Health, Quality Control,
Budgeting, Budget, Suppliers, Integrated Supply Chain, Fast Tracking, Estimating,
Problem Solving, Cause and Effect, Date, Lifecycle Costing, Elements, Linear, List,
Network, Breadboarding, GERT, GANTT, Line of Balance ,Tree, Instruction, Chart,
Cost-Benefit, Timing , Tools, Technique, Curve, Rapid Implementation, Decision
making, Decision, Debating , Replanning, Approach, Action, Management Reserve,
Certainty equivalent estimates, Pessimistic, Transition, Sub-project Working, Total,
Manual, Engineer, Informal, Continuous.

The other group’s list was as follows.

Cluster 1 General Management Project Success

Legal Aspects Organisation
Environment Taxonomy
General Terms Program Management
Context
Cluster 2 Start-Up Implementation
Procurement Completion

Cluster 3 Structuring Quality

Scope Modelling
Timing And Schedule Cost
Estimating Risk
Cluster 4 Operations Productions/Operations/
Manufacturing
Cluster 5 Forecast Life Cycle
Project Control Monitoring
Tracking
Cluster 6 Human Aspects Learning
Leadership Teams
Conflict Management
Cluster 7 Technique Documentation
Technology Application Area

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Note that it was a condition of the exercise that the listing had to be inclusive – if
someone felt that a word was relevant this was to be a potential candidate. And in the
case of the first group, words/topics could appear under more than one heading.

The crucial point, in terms of the history and general work in the development of
BoKs as undertaken so far, and as described above, is the breadth of topics that the
experts considered should be covered in any BoK. As can be seen, the breadth is more
similar to that of the APM, IPMA, CRMP models than the existing PMI BoK. Hence
the PMIBOK™ clearly does not summarise “all those topics etc...that summarise the
application of sound management principles to the management of projects”.

The other important observation to be drawn from the NASA sponsored meeting is
the difficulty everybody still experiences in agreeing a BoK structure. No real attempt
was made at Virginia Beach to begin serious work on a structure but subsequent e-
mail discussions have illustrated clearly the difficulty people have in rationalising a
valid basis for one structure (model/map) over another. One suggestion has been to
perform surveys and computer analyses of “affinities” between topics/words. Whether
such a bottom-up, textual approach would be any more satisfactory than a top-down
structuring based on experience is questionable, but in any event is certainly an
interesting and wholly valid research topic.

The NASA work is continuing, with both virtual team working and a further
workshop planned for 1Q 2000.

4. Benchmarking and the BoKs

Benchmarking is a discipline that enables an organisation continuously to improve –

to continuously identify, understand and creatively evolve superior products, services,
processes and practices. It comprises the activities of:
• identifying items to be benchmarked
• identifying best practices
• understanding the processes behind these
• redesigning and improving the above.
It is widely seen as a critical activity to generating improved performance. It should
be as relevant to the profession of project management as to the companies that
manage projects.

Clearly one of the items that the profession of project management ought to be
comparing, in an attempt to find best models, is that of the Body of Knowledge. The
work described in this paper – past, recent, and current – is important in this regard.
However, given the centrality of the PMI, APM and IPMA BoKs, and their
widespread usage by practitioners, one cannot but wish that such work were
accelerated and given greater support. The importance of the linkage between such
work and standards bodies such as ISO and the various national standards
organisations should also be emphasised. The NASA sponsored work could prove
particularly important, especially if it generates some acceptance at the global level of
professional association coordination.

Peter Morris Page 14 1999

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What we should really be benchmarking in the BoKs are the topics; the issue of
structure is much less important. The focus should be on getting agreement on what
the principal topics in the BoK should be, and that the descriptions of these are robust,
accurate and conform to accepted good practice. The 1000 topics identified by the
NASA experts are probably at too detailed a level: interesting in the sense of a
dictionary of terms but too specific for guiding the general reader to the topics with
which a project management practitioner ought, at a minimum, be familiar.

Judging by previous experience, there is a danger that the discussion will dwell too
much on the BoK structure. This cannot be right. Texts on law, say, or medicine or
engineering and similar professions do not insist on there being an agreed ordering of
chapter headings. We are, afterall, talking about a social science construct: there is no
objective, external structure that can be “mapped”. What we are looking for are the
key concepts, techniques, practices and tools, with descriptions/definitions and
guidance to further information (references etc.). The way these topics are combined
is basically what works best for comprehension. Such models will fit different groups’
minds in different ways: arguing over which is best is secondary – almost a luxury.
What is key is ensuring we have the right scope of contents and the right
understanding and guide to knowledge for the topic elements.

The BoK is often thought of as providing guidance to the topics that Best Practice
benchmarking studies should concentrate on. This is not necessarily the case, although
they should be aligned. The BoK topics are those that a project management
practitioner should be knowledgeable in; the benchmarking items are more likely to
be those that lead to improved performance. There is a linkage, not least through the
application of BoK topics as practice areas, but the benchmarking topics will often be
more practice orientated and specific. Ultimately, though, project management as a
profession is going to have show, in much better ways than we are currently able to,
how competency in the formal practices of project management really affect and
improve project performance.

Summary

This paper has reviewed recent and on-going research aimed at identifying what
topics should be included in the project management Body of Knowledge. There
seems to be wide agreement that the scope of topics should be broader than those
currently incorporated in the PMBOK™. The work at CRMP was specifically
focussed on updating the APM BoK. Ongoing work sponsored by NASA is
concerned with the topics to be included in a global BoK. It is suggested that in
general the emphasis should be on defining appropriate topics rather than worrying
overly with the BoK structure.

References

1. Morris, P W G, The Management of Projects, Thomas Telford, 1998.

2. Cook, D L, “Certification of Project Managers – Fantasy or reality?” Project
Management Quarterly 8(2) pp.32-34, 1977
3. Caupin, G, Knopfel, H, Morris, P W G, Motzel, E, Pannenbacker, O, ICB IPMA
Competence Baseline, International Project Management Association, Zurich,
1998

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4. Morris, P W G, and Hough, G H, The Anatomy of Major Projects, Wiley, 1987;

PMI, Measuring Success, Proceedings of the 1986 Project Management Institute
Seminar/Symposium, Montreal; Pinto, J K and Slevin D P, “Project success:
definitions and measurement techniques” Project Management Journal 19(1) pp.
67- 75, 1989. See also Lim, C S, and Mohamed, M Z, “Criteria of project success:
an exploratory re-examination” International Journal of Project Management
16(4), 1998, pp. 243-248.
5. See for example Archibald, R, Managing High-Technology Programs and
Projects, Wiley, 1997; Meredith, J R, and Mantel, S J, Project Management: A
Managerial Approach” Wiley, 1995; etc.
6. Baker N R, Green S G and Bean A S, “Why R&D projects succeed or fail”
Research Management Nov-Dec 1986 pp. 29-34; Baker N R, Murphy, D C, and
Fisher, D, Determinants of Project Success, National Technical Information
Services N-74-30392, 1974 – see also “Factors affecting Project Success” in
Project Management Handbook Cleland, D I and King, W R, Van Nostrand
Reinhold 1988; Cooper, R G, Winning at New Products, Addison Wesley, 1993;
General Accounting Office: various reports on US defence projects’ performance;
Morris, P W G, op.cit.; National Audit Office: various reports on UK defence
projects’ performance; World Bank Operations Evaluation Department: various
reports on World Bank project performance.
7. Standish Group: see www.standishgroup.com
8. Themistocleous, G, and Wearne, S H., “Project management topic coverage n
journals”, International Journal of Project Management, in publication; Zobel, A
M, and Wearne, S H, “Project management topic coverage in recent conferences”,
paper submitted for publication. (Both available from CRMP.)
9. Morris, P W G, Wearne, S H, and Patel, M.: a series of four articles on the CRMP
BoK in Project, April – July, 1999
10. Miller, G A M, Processing Information, Psychological Review, 63(1), pp. 81-97,
1956
11. Morris, P W G, “Project Management in the Twenty-First Century – Trends
across the Millennium.” Keynote speech, IPMA/Sovnet Congress, Moscow,
September 1999.

Peter Morris Page 16 1999