2.3 PMBOK Knowledge Areas and Maturity Profile

The Project Management Institute (PMI) has published its standard for project management practice in a document entitled A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge [3]. The current standard was published in 2000. PMBOK defines the project management life cycle in terms of five phases, or process groups, to use their terminology. They are initiating processes, planning processes, executing processes, controlling processes, and closing processes. Spread across these five process groups are 39 process areas grouped into nine knowledge areas (Figure 2.1), as described in the following sections. For each process there is a capsule description of the characteristics of that process at each maturity level. These descriptions will become the foundation of a survey instrument to assess the actual maturity level of the process and the maturity level of the practice of the process. The survey instrument is discussed in Chapter 3 and an example of an actual survey that was developed for a large retail client is given in the Appendix.