The release of the PMBOK Guide 7th edition introduces a new principle-driven approach to managing projects as opposed to the process-driven approach championed by PMBOK 6. As a project manager, you need to understand these fundamental principles that will guide project management going forward.
In this article, we’ll provide an in-depth look at the 12 project management principles. You’ll learn the meaning behind each principle and how to apply it to lead projects more effectively. Whether using predictive, Agile, or hybrid approaches, these principles can inform your overall project management methodology.
By the end of this article, you’ll have a solid understanding of principle-driven project management and how to leverage these principles to deliver successful project outcomes.
PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct
First off, let’s look at the PMI’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct which you must comply with as a project management professional. This code provides guidelines for responsible and ethical decision-making and outlines your obligations to your organization, team members, and stakeholders.
The code covers areas like honesty, responsibility, respect, fairness, and stewardship. It encourages you to make decisions that are in the best interest of society, the environment, and your project. Following the code builds trust with stakeholders and maintains the integrity of the profession.
As a principle-driven project manager, you should read and understand PMI’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct to ensure you are meeting your ethical obligations.
What is Principle-Driven Project Management?
As earlier pointed out, the latest edition of the PMBOK guide has shifted to a principle-driven approach to managing projects. But what exactly does this mean
Principle-driven project management focuses more on objectives and desired outcomes rather than pre-defined processes. It provides a set of core concepts to guide project delivery in any scenario, regardless of methodology.
This approach gives project managers more flexibility to use judgment and adapt processes to fit each unique project context. Rather than follow a rigid set of steps, you as the project manager can leverage the principles as a framework while exercising discretion in how they are applied.
For example, you might emphasize stakeholder engagement for a project with many diverse stakeholders. Or focus more on managing complexity for a large, multi-year project. Principle-driven project management recognizes that every project is different.
This allows you to focus on delivering value and desired outcomes by drawing from relevant principles and using supporting processes as needed. The principles transcend specific methodologies and provide wisdom to inform your decisions as a project manager.
What are the Principles of Project Management?
The PMBOK guide outlines 12 principles of project management that transcend specific methodologies. These principles provide guidelines and objectives to inform decisions throughout the project lifecycle.
Being familiar with these principles will help you lead projects successfully. The principles cover essential topics like leadership, team, stakeholders, value, complexity, risk, and change management. They emphasize outcomes over rigid processes.
When you understand these core principles, you can leverage them to exercise judgment in delivering projects that maximize value and meet objectives. Whether you use predictive, Agile, or hybrid approaches, these 12 principles can guide your project management methodology.
The 12 Principles of Project Management
The PMBOK guide outlines 12 core principles of project management:
- Stewardship
- Team
- Stakeholders
- Value
- Systems thinking
- Leadership
- Tailoring
- Quality
- Complexity
- Risk
- Adaptability and resiliency
- Change management
These 12 principles transcend any particular methodology and provide guidance for leading projects successfully.
The PMBOK Project Management Principles Explained
Now let’s take an in-depth look at each of the previously outlined principles:
1. Stewardship
The principle of stewardship focuses on your responsibility as a project manager to act with care, integrity, and in the best interest of the project. It encourages you to be a diligent, respectful, and caring steward of project resources and outcomes.
As a steward, you must demonstrate strong ethics and make decisions that align with delivering maximum value. Stewardship means taking ownership of the project’s success and being accountable for how resources are utilized.
To practice stewardship, exhibit values like honesty, responsibility, respect, fairness, and environmental awareness. Take a holistic view when evaluating decisions, considering financial, social, technical, and sustainable impacts. Build trust with stakeholders by being transparent about trade-offs and impacts, and champion integrity through your words and actions.
Stewardship also involves upholding compliance obligations for your organization and the profession as a whole. This builds confidence among stakeholders in the project management process.
Overall, embrace the principle of stewardship by focusing on delivering value in an ethical manner. Make objective decisions that serve the best interests of your project and organization. Lead by example with integrity, trustworthiness, and respect to bring out those qualities in your team.
2. Team
The team principle emphasizes the importance of collaboration, accountability, and a positive culture to achieve project success. As a project manager, you must foster an environment where team members work cohesively to meet objectives.
Promote open communication, engaged collaboration, and constructive conflict resolution within the team. Clearly define roles and responsibilities to align each member’s contributions. Facilitate productive interactions between team members by establishing ground rules and modeling desired behaviors.
Shared goals and accountability boost team performance. Ensure the team has visibility into project objectives, progress, and success metrics. Hold regular standups or status updates for visibility and course correction. Recognize and reward contributions to incentivize results.
You play a key role in cultivating team culture. Demonstrate integrity, respect, transparency, and care for the team. Make time for bonding and team-building activities. Embrace healthy debate but do not tolerate disrespectful or unethical behavior.
An engaged, accountable team is a powerful asset for you as a project manager. Develop this strength by promoting collaboration, defining expectations, and fostering a positive, results-driven culture. The team principle is critical to unlocking the productivity and creativity needed to achieve project objectives successfully.
3. Stakeholders
The stakeholder principle focuses on proactively engaging all individuals and groups who have an interest in the project’s outcome. As a project manager, you must identify key stakeholders and employ appropriate strategies to meet their needs and gain their buy-in.
Effective stakeholder engagement entails clear and consistent two-way communication. Identify preferred channels and cadences for updates based on stakeholder needs. Facilitate active collaboration through meetings, workshops, and working groups. Acknowledge and address concerns promptly.
Gain stakeholder alignment by illustrating how the project aims to deliver value for each party. Clearly articulate objectives, outcomes, roles, and impact of decisions. Manage expectations through transparent planning and scheduling.
Foster stakeholder collaboration by appealing to shared goals and desired impacts. Address conflicts directly using empathy, active listening, and negotiation. Build trust by encouraging stakeholder participation and following through on commitments.
By proactively engaging stakeholders, you gain valuable input to shape project activities while building understanding and advocacy. Make stakeholder engagement central to your project management approach for increased buy-in, reduced risk, and successful project outcomes.
4. Value
The value principle highlights the importance of ensuring your project delivers outcomes that align with stakeholder expectations and organizational goals. As a project manager, you are responsible for maximizing the value created by the project’s activities and outputs.
Start by clearly defining what constitutes value from the stakeholders’ perspective. Engage them to understand their needs, priorities, and expected benefits. Convert these into measurable value criteria that can be tracked throughout the project lifecycle.
Continuously evaluate project decisions and activities through the lens of value delivery. Question whether work is contributing towards desired outcomes or simply adding unnecessary complexity. Prioritize high-value features and capabilities over lower-value items.
Foster an ethos of value-driven thinking within your team. Ensure they understand how their efforts link to overall value creation. Celebrate achievements that unlock substantial value, not just task completion.
Maintain transparency by reporting on value metrics in project communications. If value projections change, promptly communicate the reasons and impacts to stakeholders. Seek their input on how to maximize value.
By adhering to the value principle, you can ensure your project investments yield optimal returns and benefits for the organization and stakeholders. Keep value at the forefront to drive outcomes that matter most.
5. Systems Thinking
The principle of systems thinking encourages you to view projects holistically, recognizing interdependencies and interactions between elements. By understanding your project as part of a larger system, you can make more informed plans and decisions.
Take time to map out key components of your project system, including teams, stakeholders, processes, technology, and external organizations. Identify critical interfaces and dependencies between these elements, and define information flows and feedback loops that connect activities.
Assess how changes in one area ripple across the whole system, and anticipate downstream impacts of decisions before acting. Monitor system-level metrics that indicate overall project health.
When issues arise, avoid isolating a single factor as the root cause. Instead, perform analysis that accounts for dynamic system behaviors. Identify where adjustments can be made to address downstream effects.
You can promote systems thinking in your team through open communication, boundary-spanning roles, and encouraging big-picture thinking. Develop system models and visualizations to build shared understanding.
Systems thinking allows you to plan and manage projects more effectively by recognizing interconnections. Adopt this principle to see beyond isolated tasks and make smart decisions that help optimize outcomes across your project.
6. Leadership
Effective leadership is essential for project success but looks different than hierarchical leadership seen in line management roles. As a project manager, you lead by influence rather than formal authority. You must align, motivate, and inspire your team to come together to achieve shared goals.
Demonstrate integrity, vision, innovation, and empathy in your words and actions. Clarify project objectives and how each member contributes to delivering value. Encourage new ideas and address any resistance to change. Coach and mentor team members, providing support to develop skills.
Adapt your leadership style to the needs of the team and project. Direct the team during times of uncertainty, providing clarity on the next steps. Foster collaboration when independent work is required by empowering team members to manage tasks and plans.
Project leadership requires understanding individual motivations and team dynamics. Create an engaging, collaborative environment where all voices are heard. Acknowledge efforts and celebrate wins to drive engagement. By exemplifying desired behaviors, you can bring out the best in your team.
Leverage the leadership principle to provide purpose, motivation, and guidance that ultimately realizes project success.
7. Tailoring
The tailoring principle recognizes that every project is unique, so you must adapt your approach to fit the context. Rather than force-fit a predefined methodology, you should customize processes and activities based on project characteristics and objectives.
Consider factors like team culture, organizational norms, project scope, and timeline when determining the appropriate level of tailoring. For example, a short-term project with a small scope may only need lightweight processes, while a complex multi-year initiative requires more rigorous governance.
Work with your team and stakeholders to tailor the approach. Provide templates and processes as a starting point, rather than mandated requirements. Align on “just enough” processes to support desired outcomes while maximizing efficiency.
Plan time upfront to tailor the approach, but also evaluate continuously and adjust as needed. Look for opportunities to streamline and remove waste. Be willing to iterate quickly based on feedback and lessons learned.
Tailoring allows you to right-size project management to meet the needs of each project. Leverage this principle to take a context-driven approach, rather than one-size-fits-all. Your ability to customize processes and deliver the right level of governance will enable project success.
8. Quality
The principle of quality focuses on meeting stakeholder requirements and ensuring project processes are fit for purpose. As project manager, you are responsible for overseeing quality across project activities and deliverables.
Establish clear, measurable standards for quality upfront based on acceptance criteria defined with stakeholders. Conduct quality planning to determine appropriate reviews, testing, and audits throughout the project lifecycle. Measure quality continuously, not just at completion, to identify defects early.
Promote a culture of quality within your team. Ensure adequate resources and time are allocated for quality checks. Provide mentoring and training as needed to close skill gaps. Recognize and reward efforts to uphold quality standards.
Monitor process quality as well as product quality. Seek regular feedback on the effectiveness of project management processes and make improvements to processes that fail to enable quality outcomes.
By applying the quality principle, you assure stakeholders that products and services will meet expectations. This builds confidence, satisfaction, and value.
9. Complexity
The complexity principle recognizes projects operate in complex environments with many interdependent components. As a project manager, you must be able to manage ambiguity and drive progress in the face of complexity.
For complex projects, focus on defining the end goal and key results rather than detailed requirements upfront. Take an iterative approach to elaborate scope through incremental delivery, and anticipate the need for course corrections.
Continuously identify components and interfaces within the project to detect emerging complexity. Look for patterns and root causes behind issues to simplify. Avoid getting overwhelmed in complexity by breaking work into smaller pieces that can be coordinated.
Leverage tools like modeling, simulations, and visualizations to analyze impacts and interactions. Simplify communication of complex information for shared understanding.
Embrace complexity as an inevitable challenge rather than seeking to eliminate it. Put in place project management processes that are adaptable, flexible, and responsive. With the right approach, you can navigate complexity successfully.
The complexity principle highlights the need to lead projects in a way that recognizes ever-changing conditions full of uncertainties. Learning to manage complexity is critical for project management success.
10. Risk
The risk principle involves identifying, analyzing, and preparing mitigation approaches for events that may impact your project. As a project manager, you must implement a solid risk management process to minimize surprises and issues.
Begin by facilitating sessions to identify risks with your team. Define the scope and timeline for risk assessment. Gather input on financial, schedule, resource, quality, and other risks. Document the likelihood, impacts, triggers, and signs for each risk.
Prioritize risks using a risk rating matrix. Focus analysis on high-priority items first. Detail specific response strategies such as mitigation, contingency plans, or acceptance, then assign risk owners.
Continue risk identification throughout the project lifecycle as new information emerges. Monitor early warning signs, and revisit likelihood and impacts periodically to identify new priority risks.
Communicate the status of top risks in team meetings and project reporting. Execute response plans as defined. Evaluate effectiveness and document lessons learned.
Proactively managing risks is essential for project success. The risk principle highlights the importance of continuous identification, assessment, and mitigation to minimize surprises that threaten project objectives.
11. Adaptability and Resiliency
The principle of adaptability focuses on being flexible and responsive to change throughout a project. As a project manager, you must lead your team in a way that embraces uncertainty and rapidly evolving circumstances.
Set the direction and vision for the project, but don’t become attached to detailed plans. Allow requirements and activities to adapt as more is learned. Empower your team to adjust their work methods and deliverables to meet objectives.
Promote iterative approaches to incrementally elaborate scope. Conduct regular retrospectives to identify needed changes. Streamline approval processes so changes can be rapidly incorporated.
Monitor leading indicators that signal when adjustments may be required. Revisit project plans frequently rather than at fixed intervals. Update projections and forecasts regularly.
Build an adaptable team culture by encouraging experimentation and rewarding those who respond well to change. Foster collective ownership for identifying needed adaptations.
Adaptability enables you to steer projects effectively even with ambiguity and shifting conditions. Develop this agility in yourself and your team to drive success.
12. Change
The change principle recognizes that change is inevitable in projects. As the project manager, you must implement robust change management processes to control changes and minimize their impact.
Define a streamlined change control and approval workflow for change requests. Document requested changes with rationale and assess the impact on scope, schedule, budget, and risk. Maintain thorough change logs.
Keep changes small and incremental, and involve stakeholders in evaluating change. You can bundle related requests for efficiency.
Communicate changes transparently once approved, outlining why the change is happening and what it means for the team and stakeholders. Update project documents and artifacts to reflect approved changes.
Anticipate the need for change when estimating work effort and schedules. Build in contingency buffers at both the task and project level. Identify tasks that are most likely to change and isolate them.
With proactive change control, you can maintain alignment and minimize disruption from changes. Enable feedback loops and provide tools for stakeholders to easily submit change requests. By planning for the inevitability of change, you can reduce surprises and keep your project on track.
Final Thoughts on the Project Management Principles
The PMBOK principles provide invaluable guidance for project managers of all experience levels. Keep these principles top of mind as you plan and execute projects.
Leverage them to make sound decisions that drive success, even in complex or ambiguous situations. Adopt principle-driven project management to stay focused on outcomes rather than processes.
With this wisdom to inform your leadership, you will be equipped to effectively tailor your approach and deliver value for any project challenge you encounter. Internalize these 12 project Management principles to excel as a principled project manager.
