RESEARCH FOR THE STANDARD FOR PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Prior to updating The Standard for Project Management, significant research and review were conducted, including:

• International project management standards or standards-like documents along with lean, agile, and design thinking principles and some of the mostly commonly used frameworks. This research helped to identify common practice areas and themes that served as inputs into developing the principles in the The Standard for Project Management.
• PMI research, such as Pulse of the Profession®, which indicated that more organizations and practitioners are embracing agile and hybrid models along with new ways of working (i.e., tools, frameworks, technologies, etc.).
• Review of published white papers, thought leadership articles, and related documents to elicit underlying principles.
• Focus groups and workshops to gather stakeholder input for improving the usability of The Standard for Project Management.

Analysis of the research led to the conclusion that more organizations are embracing a variety of project management approaches. Some organizations are moving toward a hybrid approach which mixes predictive and adaptive practices. Organizations and project teams are tailoring their approaches to the needs of the industry, organization, and project. These findings indicated that the PMI standard needed to reflect a more holistic and inclusive view of project management applicable to predictive, hybrid, and adaptive approaches.

All of this information contributed insights to the development process for exploring:

• A shift from a process- to a principle-based focus that would reflect the full spectrum of the various ways that projects are managed.
• Potential new content areas for inclusion, such as benefits realization management, organizational change management, and complexity, in alignment with the practice guides in those areas.
• Moving any “how to” content to a more interactive and adaptive medium and adapting that content to better reflect a range of considerations based on industry, type of project, and other important characteristics.
• Broadening the focus of the standard to be inclusive of all projects and placing more emphasis on the desired outcomes from the project.