PMBOK is a “body of knowledge that identifies the scope of project management activities” so as to foster comprehensiveness and consistency. Its aim is to be applicable to all types of projects and, therefore, it can tend to contain the lowest common denominator resulting in specialized needs (eg organizational change management) are not included.

It is primarily a guide to project management approaches (rather than a full-scale project delivery methodology) and is organized into nine primary areas. Value Delivery Management (VDM) impacts five of these areas.

VDM represents an overlay to PMBOK and adds a new emphasis on value management.

Alignment and adaptations

VDM adds and expands to the following five PMBOK areas:

1. Communications
   Enhanced communications and stakeholder management approaches to more specifically target, manage and leverage stakeholders to ensure the success of the project and the realization of its value.
2. Risk
   Simplified and enhanced risk management processes to better tailor effort to the nature of the risk and the agreed risk appetites, while also simplifying and incorporating how the risks are managed into the project management mainstream. Also we add new emphasis on risks to benefits realization.
3. Cost
   Repositioning of cost management within an overall project ‘profit and loss’ approach to value management so as to enable the generation of the maximum nett profit/value from the project.
4. Scope
   Expansion of scope management approaches to include both opportunity and solution scopes.

   Refocusing of requirements definitions onto process and information needs to enable a simple, straight-line alignment between organizational strategy, processes and systems.

5. Integration
   Expansion of Project Charter documentation to be a living master control document for the whole project, incorporating project approach, resources, costs, sign-offs, etc. and being the base for the business case and its realization — thereby building the value proposition into the of the core project..

Additions

In addition VDM adds a range of overlay processes including

• investment governance – the roles, responsibilities and activities required of investment committees
• portfolio management – the processes and PPMO roles in relation to project selection, prioritisation and portfolio analysis and tracking
• project governance – the roles, responsibilities and activities required of sponsors and governance teams
• benefits management – the end-to-end processes for benefits identification, quantification and delivery management — the raison d’etre of projects

and much, much more

PMBOK Practitioners

PMBOK practitioners will find our Value Delivery Management approaches build on their base project management knowledge and skill set, but now adding a new (value) lens and new dimensions in some key areas that all increase the business value delivered from their projects.

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© Jed Simms, Australia, 2009