foreword

Foreword

The Project Management Institute (PMI®) has published the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) as its standard of reference for project management practice. This PMI® guide is written to document the various areas of project management functional knowledge, but the descriptive content is structured according to classic systems theory using the basic and simple Input-Process-Output model. This approach involves describing a considerable number of processes that are encountered in the management of a project and which tend to be repeated for each knowledge area. It also results in describing an even larger number of inputs and outputs.

Understanding all of this in detail is a considerable challenge for any reader but especially for those studying the PMI® guide with a view to adapting the Guide to a practical project. Of course the Guide is not intended as a project management methodology, but only a statement of the things that a competent project manager should know about. However, many people do try to apply the Guide to their projects in effect as a methodology.

Now, author Muhamed Abdomerovic has undertaken the tremendous task of analyzing the complete Guide to trace all those inputs and outputs and present them here as logical sets and chronological sequences of content. These sets he presents from several different view points and adds comments, suggestions and advice. In the course of his analysis he has also not surprisingly found some disconnects and anomalies that hopefully the Institute will correct in the next update of the PMBOK® Guide.

As Abdomerovic explains, in order for a project manager to plan, execute and control any project according to the PMBOK® Guide, it is essential to understand the inherent sequencing of inputs and outputs. According to Abdomerovic, lack of this information to date represents a knowledge gap between the theoretical concepts of a document that has experienced a spectacular circulation and the far more modest application of these ideas to practical project management. This book clearly fills that gap.

The author is to be congratulated on his diligent study of the PMBOK® Guide and for providing a comprehensive analysis and description that anyone should be able to follow by applying a little time and effort to its content. This is a technical book that should prove invaluable to project management educators professing to understand and teach the PMBOK® Guide, researchers and developers of competency frameworks, as well as others developing Guide-based project management practices in their companies.

R. Max Wideman
Fellow, PMI

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