A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, Third Edition (PMBOK Guides)

Anyone who thinks they will learn how to manage projects reading the PMBOK doesn't understand what this book is about--it's a reference, not an instruction guide. I contstantly pick up this guide to remind myself of the details it contains: What are the best practices for each stage of a project. What are the best inputs and outputs for PM deliverables? Having said that, it is badly written! Its focus on process overlooks the value of good communications and people skills in project management. The PMBOK is particularly weak in the up front analysis that belongs to project initiation. While it admits that there is a need for building a business case for a project, it offers little or no assistance in this matter. It picks up, instead, at the moment a charter needs to be published. Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel that the needs assessment and ROI analysis are key skills for any project manager and I miss these tools in the PMBOK. Another weakness is in stakeholder analysis. Not enough guidance is provided in this area. In short, the PMBOK is great on process and best practices, but weak on communications, stakeholder management, and making business cases before projects are launched.

PMBOK Review

PMBOK to me is worth more than what its weight in uranium or plutonium can destroy through nuclear fission and/or fusion.

PMBOK appears to have been developed through valuable contribution of practicing project managers and its usefulness is beyond my challenge.

I recommend PMI to send a complimentary copy of PMBOK to the trustees of Norway's Svalbard Global Seed Doomsday Vault that stores seed samples from around the globe to shield them from man-made and natural disasters for the use of future generations if almost all or majority of the mankind is destroyed due to man-made and/or natural disasters.

This would help the future generations to avoid wastages of resources to the maximum possible extent that the past and current project managers have incurred so far to learn lessons as provided in PMBOK.

PMBOK carries an American National Standard logo ANSI/PMI 99-001-2004, however, is not without notable flaws. It could easily attract criticism, especially from the academicians like me.

While PMBOK is useful in learning how to manage a project more effectively and more efficiently, it contains errors. PMBOK could be made much more readable and user friendly by subjecting it to a good editing, especially by some editor who may have edited reputed project management or management textbooks.

My major dissatisfaction emanates from the use of same or similar terms in the definitions of the terms they are defining. A definition of "definition" if defined as "definition" is perfect in one sense but is improper because it fails to define the term "definition" because the reader unsure of the term definition remains so even after reading such definition. The definition of "definition" would be useful if the definition avoids the use of terms like: definition or defining.

I would like a good editor to edit PMBOK and review definitions of all the terms from this point of view.

PMBOK is a 5-star book from the point of view of usefulness, 4-star from the point of view of editing, yet a 5-star book to me from overall point of view.

Dr. Sunil G Samanta, PMP

This PMBOK guide is very well structured and the content is exposed neat and organized to cover all tasks and actions to be performed for project management in any field, ranging from Aerospace to civil engineering, and it is helpful as an entrance knowledge to be utilize to delve in other resources for expertness in the matter.

You'd think that a guide to project management would have a better organized structure than this. Project management in itself is not rocket science - it's about planning, structuring, timing, adjusting, controlling, which are all synonyms for the same thing: being organized. Yet I've read rocket science texts that are infinitely more readable and understandable than this book. Tax codes are easier to read than this. My phone bill is easier to read than this.

I have a feeling that the PMBOK Guide was not meant to be a learning text in the first place. Rather, it was probably meant to be a reference for project managers who are designing projects of various complexity and need something to guide them on how to manage the levels and eschelons of their project. It's written from a high-level format, each chapter breaking down the levels further and further to each nugget of information - as if each subchapter is one phase of a work breakdown structure. Logical, yes, but utterly dry, and filled with redundancy ad nauseum. Each blurb of text detail is written in a vague and fill-in-the-blank format, as if they were objects in a computer program. Obviously this was not designed with efficiency in mind.

If you have to get this book, I'd get it alongside Gary Heerken's Project Management. It's not great either, but at least it puts a face on the aspects of project that this book is trying to convey.

This book is really good and although it is a slightly different structure to other project management material, like Dennis Lock's book, it is an amazing resource.

Filled with documentation, definitions and best practice - definitely more suited for people studying Project Management rather than for those who simply want to know how to manage a project or who are starting to learn the basics of the profession.