We had another well received webcast yesterday titled,“Project Management with the PMI’s PMBOK^®Guide Fourth Edition and SharePoint – where else?!!”.  The webcast was delivered by Brent E. Ohman, MBA, PMP and by our very worn Fintan Manning of BrightWork. The webcast had 580+ registrants last time I checked and I know they were still coming in. As we do, we had a survey at the start of the webcast, the results from which you might find interesting:

Before-Webcast-Survey Question ... "Do you use the PMI’s PMBOK to guide your projects?"

• No – and we have no such plans (12%)
• No – but we have been considering it (22%)
• Kind of – some limited applications but not fully successful (42%)
• Yes – with success we are happy with (23%)

Brent gave a great overview of what the the PMBOK is and is not or to give it the proper title, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge.  Brent explained the very interesting history outline to the PMBOK - going back to 1969.  Brent also explained the key differences in the 2008 4th edition over the 2004 3rd edition. His explanation of Process Groups, Knowledge Areas, Processes versus Project Phases was very insightful for folks.  Many people miss that subtlety.  As you would expect Brent finished by giving lots of references including of course to the PMI itself, where you can purchase the PMBOK.

Brent then handed to Fintan who explain that most folks implicitly build support for models and guides like PMBOK right into SharePoint sites and templates.  He went on to explain that some groups want a more explicit mapping and a more explicit mechanism to track PMBOK adherence / compliance.  Fintan demo'ed how this might be done in SharePoint and explained the components that needed to be built - and this was very well received.  See two screen shots from Fintan's demo below.

You can view this and other recorded webcasts on the BrightWork Recorded Webcasts Page.