BSS049-6 Project Management Practice

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction..............................................................................................................................2

2. Use of APM and PM Book of Knowledge and Bodies of Knowledge in Global

Contemporary Projects....................................................................................................................2

2.1 Use of APM and Bodies of Knowledge (BoK) in global contemporary projects.............2

2.2 Use of PMBOK in global contemporary projects.............................................................3

3. Challenges and Advantages of Project Management Methodologies and Bodies of

Knowledge.......................................................................................................................................4

4. Key Performance Indicators for Improving the Best Practices................................................5

5. Conclusion................................................................................................................................7

References........................................................................................................................................8
 1. Introduction
Project management methodology is defined as the set of processes, theories, and principles for
handling a project successfully. The choice towards the selection of a project management
methodology is important in defining the activities and communicating throughout the project. It
depends on the various factors including the type of project, type of project scope, and the team.
The project manager has the responsibility for the selection of the right methodology for project
management[ CITATION Fra11 \l 1033 ]. It is the first decision taken by him to have a
considerable impact continuous and profound impact on global projects. The whole team of a
project needs to understand the project management frameworks, methods, and methodologies
and their accurate usage. These are supportive in the smooth flow of projects irrespective of the
methodology being chosen for handling projects. These are always changing in several ways to
add success to projects. The project management practitioners have to use any of or combination
of different project management methodologies available to manage different projects. Project
management methodologies are of different types including the agile, scrum, waterfall, PMI
project management, Lean, Kanban, and six sigma[ CITATION Pro132 \l 1033 ]. The present
report focused on the critical evaluation, systematic understanding, and developing depth
knowledge on the two project management methodologies including the PMI PMBOK and
Association of Project Management Book of Knowledge (APMBOK). It discusses the APMBOK
and PMBOK and associated bodies of knowledge, challenges and advantages of project
management methodologies and bodies of knowledge, and key performance indicators for
improving the project management best practices.

2. Use of APM and PM Book of Knowledge and Bodies of Knowledge in Global

Contemporary Projects
2.1 Use of APM and Bodies of Knowledge (BoK) in global contemporary projects
APM BoK is the UK Association for project management. It is developed for the project
profession to explore more areas that are critical in handling a project, portfolios, and programs.
It provides knowledge of the basic concepts in project management. APM included overall 400
corporate members and 15000 individuals throughout the world. It encourages project
management entire the globe in various industries by establishing a strategy to concentrate on
several key areas including membership, professional development, knowledge, and international
administration and governance. It is the collection of the 52 knowledge areas in 7 sections such
as planning the strategy, executing the strategy, commercial and business, governance and
organization, the context of project management, techniques, and profession and people to
handle a project effectively.

APM includes four bodies of knowledge related to four areas including the people, context,
delivery, and interfaces. These are widely applied in the management of the latest and modern
global projects. The people section body of knowledge supports the individual managers in the
development of the interpersonal skills and development of the professionalism to develop an
approach for managing a project. The interpersonal skills required for the managers in handling
the global projects are described as communication skills, roles and responsibility delegation
skills, influencing skills, conflict management skills, teamwork skills, negotiation skills, and
leadership. These skills are important in the aspects of portfolio, project, and program. The
professionalism required to manage the context of global projects and accepting the standards in
the respective field of the project include ethics frameworks, development and leading,
competencies, and communities of practices. The context section focuses on the establishment of
the practices for governance in increasing the project success and frequency of delivery and
establishing a suitable environment for managing the global and complex projects. The practices
for program management, project management, portfolio management, knowledge management,
and sponsorship required. Setting the good conditions for the environment in which the project is
operating, strategic management, and operations management to accomplish the long-term goals
and objectives of a firm.

Another knowledge bodies of APM include delivery and interfaces. The delivery section
includes different knowledge management areas of a project essential in delivering the project
accurately. Those include scope management, integrative management, cost, and finance
management, risk management, resource management, and quality management. The integrative
management focuses on the association of risk, schedule, cost, quality, and resource
processes[ CITATION PWG06 \l 1033 ]. It involves performing key activities such as business
case development, controlling performance, and planning and organizing the activities. Scope
management processes include management of benefits, change control, configuration
management, requirement management, change management, and development of solutions.
Schedule management is to focus on time scheduling and resource scheduling. Cost management
and funding focus on the funding, cost and budget control, and investment appraisal. The
interface section includes key aspects such as laws, human resource management, sustainability,
security, accounting, and health and safety. These are useful in handling global projects
effectively.

2.2 Use of PMBOK in global contemporary projects

PMBOK is the book of standards developed by the Project Management Institute (PMI). It
provides guidelines for various global projects in different industries including construction,
engineering, software, and automotive. It has 10 knowledge areas and five process groups that
are essential to all kinds of projects. These are applied for programs, projects, and operations.
PMBOK is developed by including five process groups including initiation, planning, executing,
controlling and monitoring, and closing[ CITATION Ofe09 \l 1033 ]. These overlap with each
other to increase the interaction throughout every phase of a project. The five processes are
clearly described with the inputs, outputs, and techniques and tools.

Bodies of knowledge for global project management are an example of the development of
knowledge in three levels including the organizational level, individual team member level, and
global manager level. It has a lot of importance to PMBOK project management. Bodies of
knowledge are highly valuable and helpful in the facilitation of explicit standards into the
knowledge management areas including the cost, quality, scope, time, human resources,
communication, risk, integration, and procurement. These are useful in providing guidelines for
project management practitioners to perform their responsibilities effectively and influencing the
generation of knowledge into global projects[ CITATION Pau10 \l 1033 ]. The PMI bodies of
knowledge PMBOK comprised different processes such as project integration management,
project cost management, project quality management, project scope management, project
communication management, human resources management, procurement management, risk
management, and project time management.

The PMI bodies of knowledge have a crucial role in defining the project management
profession effectively and providing the guidelines for global contemporary projects. They have
a set of characteristics including meeting the entry and educational requirements among the
project members, code of ethics followed while handling a project, autonomy against the
conditions and terms, and commitment to providing service. PMBOK does not provide any
principles to manage the projects and but describes the techniques and tools required for meeting
the customer requirements. It playing a crucial role in global organizations executing the global
projects as global projects are complex in management in various aspects including issues in
communication management, planning and executing, risk management, change management,
and project governance and setting the right context to ensure success to business transformation
projects handling globally. PMBOK suggests the critical success factors and key factors
associated with the project initiation phase to the project closing phase.

While handling global projects, PMBOK supports project managers in focusing on

various key areas. In initiation, it helps in achieving synergy with the portfolio of projects of an
organization, dividing the complex and large projects into multiple iterations, and establishment
of success criteria. In the planning phase, the long-term risks associated are identified,
developing the standardized for meeting the global needs, and working with stakeholders to
adopt required changes[ CITATION Gop131 \l 1033 ]. PMBOK guides project managers in the
execution phase regarding the management of virtual teams, active management of the
stakeholder expectations, and performing regular quality checks. It also supports status reporting
and change control as well as the closing of the project with proper documentation of lessons
learned.

3. Challenges and Advantages of Project Management Methodologies and Bodies of

Knowledge
The challenges and advantages of project management methodologies are described as follows.

Challenges of APM Bok: The common challenge to APM BoK includes finding the project
team members that speak one common language. It is hard to manage the people belonged to
different cultures of different nations. While implementing APM into infrastructure projects in
UK, several challenges are faced by project managers including in the planning and
implementation phases[ CITATION Uni19 \l 1033 ]. There is no certain solution from APM to
handle the complex, uncertain, and highly changing projects and resolving the conflicts
occurring between the stakeholders in managing their priorities, needs, and objectives. It lacks a
structure defined for managing the organization, governance, and project requirements,
anticipation of schedule and cost, and assessment of the risks. These are demotivating the
organizations in adoption of the APM practices into global projects management.

Advantages of APM Bok: APM increases the special focus towards a project in enhancing
sustainability in various aspects. Those include economic, social, and environmental within the
defined, monitored, planned, executed, and delivered projects. It contributing a lot to achieving a
sustainable society. It helps in promoting the increasing the positive impact by minimizing the
negative impact on society and recognizing the worth of a global project to society[ CITATION
Sil131 \l 1033 ]. APM includes key knowledge areas of project management that are not covered
in Prince2 including investing in the business appraisal, planning the activities for quality
control, defining the roles and responsibilities, and risk management in business transformation
projects.

Challenges of PMBOK: PMBOK poses different challenges to project managers and business
organizations engage in global projects including having financial effect on business units and
business throughout the globe, issues with currencies exchanges between different countries and
legal jurisdictions, managing the team members speaking different languages and people located
in different time zones and geographical locations, and handling the operations between branches
and headquarters of an organization. Other challenges include issues in status reporting due to
improper management and ineffective planning and issues in project administration[ CITATION
Rit18 \l 1033 ]. PMBOK failures to consider issues in global software development including
coordination, communication, and control. These include risk management, estimation of efforts,
allocation of tasks, structuring the virtual teams, and management of knowledge. There is no
knowledge area responsible for resolving the problems of global projects. Hence, PMBOK
requires a framework for managing global projects like software development.

Advantages of PMBOK: The benefits offered by applying the PMBOK practices into the global
project include completion of the project on time, proper driving of a project to avoid out of
budget, and accomplishing the goals of a project. It minimizes the chances of failure of a project
and gaining the desired project outcomes and successful completion of projects within the
various constraints including time, scope, quality, cost, risk, and resources approved by senior
management and project management. Opportunities also facilitated to ventures to the
accomplishment of a set of strategic objectives and bringing new dimensions to measure
complex projects[ CITATION Ipe16 \l 1033 ]. Other benefits offered by PMBOK include the
development of the multi-cultural oriented processes for project management to facilitate a
common understanding of the things related to project progressing, promoting the widely
recognized and applied standards for global marketplace and project team and project
management practitioners and proper management of project infrastructure.

4. Key Performance Indicators for Improving the Best Practices

The critical success factors that are the key performance indicators for improving the best
practices are identified as strong leadership commitment and support, collective efforts and
commitment from the project team, practical project governance, implementing the
organizational change management proactively, and facilitation of 360 degree communication
effectively.

Strong leadership commitment and support: To ensure success in practicing the better
practices of PMBOK and APM, active leadership support and alignment is required. The projects
that have active sponsors will have more success rate than other projects. It is the success factor
used in measuring the project success in various ways including the meeting the limitations of
time and budget, reaching the project goals and objectives, and decrease in the scope creep for a
project[ CITATION Har17 \l 1033 ]. Engaging the project leaders will generate numerous
benefits to firms including improved support for project decisions, consistent response to vision
and business case, and motivating the project team to execution of project plans. It also supports
in analyzing the project impact in three aspects including organizational, technical, and business.

Collective efforts and commitment from the project team: In use of the practices of PMBOK
and APM, it needs to ensure the commitment from project managers and team. There are few
activities that bring success to project including the communication of core beliefs in delivering
high quality outcomes, selection of the best methodology that provides standard processes and
framework for handling the global projects. To build the commitment from team, it needs to
develop brand logo representing the project and facilitation of required training to
team[ CITATION Ray19 \l 1033 ]. The project managers needs to recognize the accomplishment
and completion of milestones to ensure same efforts from team throughout the project life cycle
phases and enhancing positive reinforcement.
Practical project governance: The efficiency of the project governance is key indicator for
performance of the best practices of different project management methodologies. It contributes
a lot to various elements including the risk management, resource management, issues
management, and scope management. In project governance team, different roles are included
such as project manager, project management office, steering committee, and executive sponsor.
Governance increases the attention from overall plans and strategy, strategic guidance, allocation
of finance and resources, managing risks, and support in meeting the deliverables and
milestones[ CITATION Ken15 \l 1033 ]. In achieving the project governance, different factors
play crucial role including control and review processes, governance principles, tools for status
and risk monitoring, and proactive management of stakeholder expectations.

Implementing the organizational change management proactively: The project managers

handling global projects, need to manage the changes related to projects to address the
challenges. Change commitment is the key indicator for project performance in driving the
stakeholder commitment towards the project vision. The change management strategy has to take
account of regional and cultural factors while adopting the APM and PMBOK into global
projects to manage the resistance of stakeholders towards project success. Change commitment
is the key indicator for determining how change is going to implement through different stages
including awareness, primary understanding, and personal understanding, ownership, and change
acceptance. During the stages, the stakeholder engagement is necessary to enhance the existing
processes and including them in making required changes.

Facilitation of 360 degree communication effectively: Communication is the key aspect of

project success in taking the strategic initiatives and execution of strategies. The high performing
organizations needs to facilitate good internal and external communication to provide
information about different areas including scope, budget, objectives, schedule, outcomes, and
project benefits. Facilitation of timely communication is good indicator for a project in use of the
suitable media for delivering message and facilitation of required information with
clarity[ CITATION Jac17 \l 1033 ]. While implementing the communication plan developed, it
needs to be kept mind about various things including increased frequency, facilitation of
feedback, and assessing the effectiveness of communication in different aspects. The global
project managers have to concentrate on this aspect to mitigate and remove the problems to
ensure the effective communication.

5. Conclusion
Project management methodologies have a lot of significance in the context of global
contemporary projects. These contributing a lot to the success of projects. The present report
focused on the evaluation and description of the two project management methodologies and
bodies of knowledge including PMBOK and APM. It covered different sections including the use
of APM and PMBOK in global contemporary projects, challenges and advantages of APM and
PMBOK, and key performance indicators improving the best practices of project management.
Uses of APM in global projects are identified with four sections including delivery, people,
interfaces, and context. Uses of PMBOK in global contemporary projects are identified into the
knowledge management areas including the cost, quality, scope, time, human resources,
communication, risk, integration, and procurement. Challenges and advantages of PMBOK and
APMBOK are identified within the context of global infrastructure projects. The key
performance indicators to improve best practices are identified as strong leadership commitment
and support, collective efforts and commitment from the project team, practical project
governance, implementing the organizational change management proactively, and facilitation of
360 degree communication effectively. These must be used by the organizations to ensure
success in projects.
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