Topic to discuss about PMBOK 3rd edition:

What we liked

• This version is more readable than its predecessor and is more consistent in the manner of
presentation.
• Almost all section and subsection headings are defined in the Guide’s Glossary.
• The Glossary has been carefully edited for consistency of language and relevance to the text.
That is, it is specific to the Guide and its philosophy.

Downside

• The Guide takes a complex systems view of project management and includes a process flow
diagram for each knowledge area. Not everyone will be comfortable with this form of
presentation and the diagrams appear to be overly complex and do not necessarily reflect "most
projects most of the time".1
• The number of processes has been increased and several of them have been changed and/or
relabeled. Further, their content has been significantly revised from the previous version of the
Guide representing a wholesale change that may or may not be justified
• Of the knowledge areas, the distinction between the "Core Processes", i.e. scope, quality, time
and cost, and the "Facilitating Processes", i.e. risk, human resources, procurement and
communications, identified in the 2000 Guide, has been removed. This is regrettable because
these groups are two quite different types of essential project management activities.

Missed Opportunities

• The update teams and their leaders appear to have overlooked the fundamental importance of a
properly structured project life span (project life cycle) essential for executive corporate control.
• Instead, major focus has been placed on the newly defined Project Management Process Groups,
placing them in a separate Section described as "The Standard for Project Management of a
Project". Unfortunately the labeling of these Process Groups in previous editions of the Guide
has created great confusion in the market place, because they have been mistaken for the project
life span. We think that these project management process groups have much in common with
standard operational management control so that re-labeling could have gone a long way to
remove the misinterpretation.
• The subject of project scope management has been improved but still results in misunderstanding
and inconsistency in the Guide.
• The knowledge area chapters could have been reordered into their logical evolution in the project
life span, thus giving the subject of project quality management its proper structure and visibility
in the management of projects.