Assignment law

Introduction

Project management is a discipline of planning, organising, motivating and controlling to achieve specific goals (Nokes, 2007). According to Project Management Institute (PMI) project management is a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product, service or result (Project Management Institute Inc., 2015).

Project Management Functions Comparison

The Project Management Institute (PMI) has highlighted 10 Knowledge Areas in its PMBOK Guide, so does the other international PM bodies or institute. For an instance, the International Standard Organisation (ISO) has emphasized the project management Subject Groups. The listings of the two bodies are compared in the table as below.

Table 1 : Project Management Functions Comparison

PMBOK (Project Management Institute, US) (Project Management Institute Inc., 2015)

ISO 21500 (International Standard Organisation) (Zandhuis & Stellingwerf, 2013)

Discussion

From the PMBoK Knowledge Area and ISO 21500 Subject Groups, the project management functions are almost similar. However, there are some differences in the ‘Resource’ and ‘Risk’ topic.

Resource

In the ISO 21500 the ‘Resource’ Subject Groups is used to cover various types of resources. The other resources are includes the human, equipment, materials and any other project resources. This is to assure that required resources are available to the project (Zandhuis & Stellingwerf, 2013). Compared to the Knowledge Area in the PMBoK Guide HR Management, the PMBoK only discussed about the human resources (Labriet, 2015).

The ISO 21500 did not separate the process for resource planning. Defining project organisation in ISO 21500 is performed after establishing the project team. The establishment of project team process describes only single roles characteristic are needed for obtaining human resources. However, the PMBoK Guide, the roles and project organization is defined first in Plan Human Resource Management after the skilled labour was hired.

Risk

Two analytical PMBoK Guide processes have been merged into one Assess Risks process of ISO 21500 but it is not clear if quantitative risk management is required by ISO 21500 (Labriet, 2015).

However, there are no risk management in planning stage stated in the ISO 21500. The ISO 21500 Treat Risk process could be treated as equivalent to the Plan Risk Responses in the PMBoK Guide. 

Conclusion

Project management practice is widely used in various industries. Not only limited to the construction industry the project management could benefit the other project based system. To assist managers in the project management process, there are some guidelines from various project management bodies which could be used. For example the PMBoK Guidelines 10th edition from the Project Management Institute has highlighted 10 Knowledge Areas.

The other project management bodies have listed similar listings including the International Standard Organisations. However there are some differences in the listings between the two bodies even though most of the listing is almost the equivalent.

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