PMBOK 4th Edition vs Prince 2: Comparison (Part 1)

I am a PMP and I live the UK the birthplace of Prince2, I therefore feel the need to understand Prince2 although I don’t really want to pursue Prince2 accreditation, so I set out to read the Prince2 ‘book’ (Managing Succesful Projects with Prince2) and check how it compares to PMBOK.

In this first article I introduce PMBOK v4 and Prince2 to give a general overview, then I will then attempt to make a link between both standards organisation.

In the subsequent articles I will go into more details about comparing the two standards.

PMBOK v4 overview

PMI positions PMBOK as a standard for project management (PMBOK p3). This means that it documents the norms, processes, practices and methods that are most likely to be used in project management.

The core of PMBOK is the description of 42 project management processes with their inputs, outputs and tools and techniques used. Each process belongs to a Knowledge area and a Process group – this is a way of organising the processes together.

Process Groups are:

• Initiating: define a new project (or phase). Obtain the authorisation to start.
• Planning: establish the scope of the project, define the plan of approach for the project
• Executing: do the work
• Monitoring and Control: track project progress and check performances, identify required changes and initiate them

• Closing: close the project (or phase).

The process groups represent a sequence in which processes are used. It all start with Initiating, leading on to Planning then Executing and Monitoring and Control interacts with each others, finally the project completes with the Closing processes.

If the project has several phases then for each of the phases there is a specific instantiation of the Process Groups. (PMBOK p21).

Knowledge areas groups processes addressing the same overall topic:

• Project Integration Management
• Project Scope Management
• Project Time Management
• Project Cost Management
• Project Quality Management
• Project Human Resource Management
• Project Communications Management
• Project Risk Management

• Project Procurement Management

The Project Integration Management Knowledge area is the one that link the other areas together. A good example of that is about the Project Management Plan development: it is part of the Project Integration but is made up of all plans developed in the other knowledge areas.

The PMBOK v4 is essentially organised around the knowledge areas. One can study areas per areas, more or less independently from the others.

PMBOK v4 has a large introduction section addressing a number of topics in relation to project management:

• Program and Portfolio management
• Project Management Office
• Operations management
• Stakeholders
• Project Lifecycle vs. Product Lifecycle

• Organisation influences on Project Management (matrix, functional, projectized)

Prince2 overview

Prince2 is the “standard method for project management” – according to the forewords (Prince2 p.V).
Prince2 give a very strong focus on the Business Case as the driver during the project lifecycle.

Prince2 is a “process-based approach to project management” (Prince2 p11). Activities in processes uses Components and Techniques.
Importantly Prince2 leaves the manager to choose the Techniques of his choices depending on the project and/or organisation context, therefore Prince2 refers to only 3 techniques.
Components are subject areas that affect project management processes.

So in summary the main parts of Prince2 are:

• Processes, themselves made of activities with inputs and outputs. A total of 8 processes, 45 activities or sub-processes.
• Components
• Techniques

• Appendices

Processes are:

• Starting up a project
• Initiating a project
• Planning
• Managing stage boundaries
• Controlling a stage
• Directing a project
• Managing product delivery

• Closing a project

Components are:

• Business case
• Organisation
• Plans
• Controls
• Management of Risks
• Quality in a Project Environment
• Configuration Management

• Change Control

All components are mapped to the processes.

Techniques are:

• Product-based planning
• Change control

• Quality reviews

Comparing the organisation of the standards

The two standards are organised differently but it is possible to link both standards to ease comparison, figure 1 is a data model of both standards built to show the following links:

What is a Process in PMBOK is a Sub-process in Prince 2.

What is a Process Group in PMBOK is a Process in Prince 2. In both standards they represent the classical Plan-Do-Check-Act model, with the addition Initiation and Closing.

Prince2 considers project phases as specific processes (Stages), PMBOK however considers that for a phase based project the Process Groups are instantiated for each of the phases, in addition to the Process Groups instance for the project itself. In a way it is a plus point for Prince2 as this makes it more readable, however I personally like the PMBOK approach to phases even though it requires a bit more ‘brain’ activities.

One outcome of this is that Prince 2 forces you to have a stage approach whereas PMBOK does not. For very simple projects one can wonder about the values of having stages.

Linking Components (Prince2) to Knowledge Areas (PMBOK) is not really possible. PMBOK’s building elements are the processes, each of them belongs to a Process Group and to a Knowledge Area. Everything is build around processes, this makes it a unique entry point.

For Prince2 the processes and components are really two separate concepts and although most components refers to specific processes it is not as trivial as in PMBOK. Components such the Business Case is actually a document and not a process.

However it is easy to link some of them:
Management of Risks <-> Project Risk Management
Quality in a Project Environment <-> Project Quality Management

Overall I prefer the organisation of the PMBOK as the model is simpler to grasp.

In the other articles I will go into analysing differences in the content of the standards.