PMBOK® Guide 6th Edition - Update

As you may know, PMI® are in the process of revising the Project Management Standard which is due for release in 2017. They have updated us with the news that we are all waiting for …. what is new in the 6^th Edition of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®) Guide? As a Registered Education Provider (REP®) with PMI®, we are delighted to share this.

So let’s summarise the upcoming changes / additions to the PMBOK® Guide:

1. Agile practices are to be incorporated into the PMBOK® Guide
2. There will be expanded coverage of agile and other adaptive and iterative practices. This will align proven, foundational project management concepts with the evolving state of the profession today.
3. Introductory sections and agile appendix are to be added to the standard
4. Addition of three introductory sections for each Knowledge Area, Key Concepts, Trends and Emerging Practices and Tailoring Consideration.
5. More emphasis on strategic and business knowledge and the PMI Talent Triangle™

Furthermore, PMI® also plan to publish a companion practice guide focused on agile. This is tentatively planned for the third quarter of 2017.

So what are the key dates to take into account?

• The Exposure Draft (Guide Section) will be available for comment from 8:00 a.m. EDT, 26 June 2016 to 5:00 p.m. EDT, 26 July 2016

Reference: - www.pmi.org/pmbok-guide-exposure-draft.

• The initial draft English Version will be available (in pdf) in first quarter of 2017.
• The published version of the PMBOK® will be available during the 3^rd quarter of 2017 in English and 10 other languages.
• The PMP® exam certification updates are expected to occur during the 1^st quarter of 2018 as a result of the PMBOK® changes.

It will be exciting to see the revised Guide and how Agile is incorporated in and then to examine Agile focused practice guide. Read more details here at www.pmi.org/pmbok-guide-standards/foundational-standards-exposure-draft

Tips to Managing Multiple Projects

How many of us have stood in the privacy of our office space, meeting room or personal environment and become anxious about the number of projects that we are asked to manage. Thinking to yourself, all along, that this throughput is not sustainable for your health and then we walk away thinking, ‘why did I ever say yes to project management’? At any one time, the average statistic is that you can be managing up to eight concurrent projects. This is certainly a high number and compounded by the fact that over 60% of these projects can be large and high-profile initiatives.

The reality of today’s market is that it is not realistic to expect project managers to manage one project at a time. Naturally, this is the ideal scenario and the advantage of being able to give the project full attention is very evident. However, the rate of change in projects, shows that project managers should be happy to run concurrent projects and get the job done. This to me is the reality that, in business today, project managers have to manage several projects at one time.

So accepting this, ask yourself the question, ‘how many projects can you manage’? Three, four, fifteen? This is our own personal choice (or directed by the business) and is dependent by the environment, capability and the project scale. It's not an easy question to answer but the more a project manager multi-tasks between projects, the more likely we are to forget where we are and what we are doing.

So what are some of the tips to managing multiple projects? This is simple stuff and not associated with the complexity of governance or culture but more associated with the mind-set of the project manager: 

• Tip 1: - Be pragmatic to understand what you can and cannot do. Learn to say no and recognise when enough is enough. It is important to stand your ground and focus on the need of the project and what you can contribute.
• Tip 2: - Every project needs to be managed and sometime shortcuts can be taken when time is limited Avoid taking shortcuts to take on more projects.
• Tip 3: - Be open to delegating part of your projects to others. You may not always agree with how they do it but better to get it done rather than be a perfectionist
• Tip 4: - Don’t forget the roadmap that shows the delivery date and dependencies. Without this, focus may not be maintained and clutter can be built up
• Tip 5: - Take time out and destress. Take up yoga, go for a jog or do whatever it is to remove the clutter from your mind.

So be careful not to become overloaded, overwhelmed and under-achieve. It can happen very easily, as project managers we have to react to the business priorities but at the same time we have to understand what is realistic and not.


At Turlon & Associates (www.turlon.com) we help companies develop project management competencies to meet their business needs.

Steps to Becoming an Agile Certified Practitioner (ACP®)

Turlon & Associates (www.turlon.com) next ACP® Preparation Course is being held in Dublin, Ireland on 5^th to 6^th September 2016. Our course outline can be viewed here. You can register for the course here 

Step 1: - Complete the Exam Application. All information and content in on http://www.pmi.org/Certification/New-PMI-Agile-Certification.aspx. The requirements are:  

1	General Project Experience	2,000 hours working on project teams These hours must be earned within the last 5 years Active PMP® experience will satisfy this requirement
2	Agile Project Experience	1500 hours working on agile project teams or with agile methodologies These hours are in addition to the 2,000 hours required in “general project experience” These hours must be earned within the last 3 years
3	Training in Agile Practices	21 contact hours (The PMI-ACP® Preparation Course will suffice here)

The cost of the exam €365 as a member of PMI® (€415 for non-members). For each agile project you must summarise this project to demonstrate how this project exemplified agile principles. This includes a description of the agile methodologies used and the process in which you delivered incremental results. The description is between 300 and 1100 characters. 

Step 2: - Start reading as PMI® have issued a long list of supplementary reading which is not all necessary. As part of Turlon’s ACP® Course, we provide a course manual with sample exam question. Here are some of the key texts: 

• Agile Project Management with Scrum Ken Schwaber ISBN #073561993X
• Lean-Agile Software Development: Achieving Enterprise Agility Alan Shalloway, Guy Beaver, James R. Trott ISBN #0321532899
• Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great Esther Derby, Diana Larsen, Ken Schwaber ISBN #0977616649
• Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game – 2nd Edition Alistair Cockburn ISBN #0321482751
• The Software Project Manager’s Bridge to Agility Michele Sliger, Stacia Broderick ISBN #0321502752
• Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products – 2nd Edition Jim Highsmith ISBN #0321658396
• Agile Estimating and Planning Mike Cohn ISBN #0131479415

Step 3: - Complete the preparation course and start to practice ACP® specific exam questions