What Happened with the Communication Domain in the PMBOK® Guide 8th Edition?

In this episode, Ricardo discusses a key change in the PMBOK® Guide 8th edition: the relationship between stakeholders and communication. In previous editions, communication was a separate knowledge area, but now it is considered part of stakeholder management. This shift is significant because communication only exists when there are stakeholders with different needs. If a project had no stakeholders besides yourself, communication would be unnecessary. Therefore, communication is a tool to support stakeholder engagement. In the new PMBOK® structure, stakeholders remain a performance domain that includes planning, execution, and control activities. Ricardo encourages PMI members to download the PMBOK® Guide PDF and explore these updates to improve project value and delivery.

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Episode transcript

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Hi everyone. Here is Ricardo Vargas, and this is the 5 Minutes podcast. And today I would like to continue the discussion about the PMBoK guide, eighth edition. And this time I want to talk about one specific aspect that caught my attention a lot. And this is the stakeholder and the communication process. I'm saying this because if we go back to the previous editions of the PMBoK guide, we used to have only communications as a knowledge area at that time. And then stakeholders came in. And now communication is like stakeholders used to be part of communications. Now communication is a part of the stakeholders. And this sounds like a very simple change. But it's not because conceptually it changes everything. You only communicate because you have different stakeholders, and these different stakeholders. They have different communication needs, and you need to handle this communication differently for each stakeholder. And why I'm saying this is because if for any reason your project does not have stakeholders, let's suppose you are developing a project for yourself, by yourself, with yourself. You are the supplier, the client, the resource and everything else. What happens? Would you need communication? The answer is no. You will not need communications because you only generate a report. You only make a phone call because there is a different person on the other side with a different set of needs.

If it's you with yourself, communication is not needed. So communication is a basic tool that supports you in improving your stakeholder engagement. And when you see it that way, you will understand why stakeholders continue to be a performance domain. Remember performance domain is now the name we are using, which was called in the sixth edition and before the knowledge areas. And on the process side. It's interesting because if you go on the planning, if you go on the execution and control, you will see both stakeholders and communications as part of the performance domain stakeholders. So think always about that conceptually because you don't communicate by itself. You communicate because you need to manage and engage your stakeholders. Think about that. Next week, I will continue with some other quick tips of the PMBoK and my advice to all of you. If you are a member of PMI, just download the PMBoK guide in the PDF version and take a look, because it can help you a lot in your endeavors to deliver better projects with more value to them. Okay, I hope you enjoy and see you next week with another 5 Minutes Podcast.

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What Happened with the Communication Domain in the PMBOK® Guide 8th Edition?

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