What differentiates a Framework from a Body of Knowledge?
There are many bodies of knowledge, approaches, standards, and, more recently, frameworks available for project, program, and portfolio (P3M) management. But what do these identifying details practice classifications mean?
The short answer is that none of these publications can be completely explained, although certain general principles apply:
Body of Knowledge:
A body of knowledge (BoK) often only covers one of those three and explains the components that make up the disciplines of project, program, and portfolio management. Functions include things like stakeholder management, risk management, planning, and scope management. It is acknowledged that the profession, which consists of academics and practitioners, holds the entire corpus of knowledge. Publications on the body of knowledge are just introductions to that wealth of information and a place to start understanding its depth and breadth. A methodology must be used to apply the different functions described in a body of knowledge.
Examples include those created by the Project Management Institute and the Association for Project Management (APM) (PMI).
Methodology:
A methodology controls the creation, execution, and completion of a project or program. It is process-based and nearly always based on a lifecycle. The organizational roles that direct the processes and the supporting documentation are often defined in these publications. To put a methodology into practice, you must be able to comprehend the content within a body of knowledge.
Examples come from the Agile Business Consortium and Axelos, respectively, and are PRINCE2 and Agile Project Management.
Standards:
There are some different ways that standards can be produced by organizations like the International Standards Organization (ISO). They may include some of the methods and body of knowledge, but they are usually far less in-depth than those publications. Although it is tempting to believe that “standards”—such as ISO 9000 for quality or ISO 14000 for environmental management—can be used to evaluate or even accredit an organization, P3M has not yet done so. Something becomes a standard not because of its use or content, but because it is published by a standards organization (or occasionally by a government).
Examples are BS6079 from the British Standards Institute and ISO21500 from the ISO (BSI). Additionally, the American National Standards Institution (ANSI) has classified a chapter of the PMI’s body of knowledge as a standard. GovS002 is the “standard” for P3M used by the UK government.
Frameworks:
The concept of a framework is probably the most difficult of the four to define. The PMI BoK v6 was widely referred to as a framework as is the Scrum Guide, despite these being two completely distinct texts. The definition of a framework according to the dictionary is “a basic structure underpinning a system, concept, or text.”
With the Praxis Framework, they wanted to create a fundamental framework for managing projects, programs, and portfolios that would allow the addition of ever-more-useful content for people and organizations looking to enhance P3M delivery.
To manage projects, programs, and portfolios holistically, they first identified four key areas: knowledge, method, competence, and capability maturity. We introduced the fifth section, the Encyclopaedia because these four areas constantly refer to tools, approaches, and models that are typically not covered in the BoKs, procedures, or standards.
The next step was to develop a content management system that could reflect the integration of these domains and was flexible enough to add new parts as needed. The addition of Team Praxis (which illustrates how different personality types interpret all other instructions), Praxis 360 (the 360-degree capability maturity assessment tool), and the translation into eight different languages all quickly came into play.
Praxis is a Framework as a result of this. It is a framework for keeping track of and communicating a body of content that is expanding and changing for everyone involved in a project, program, and portfolio management. It has evolved into a “one-stop-shop” for the kind of content that, in the past, required you to compile many publications and then figure out how to combine their disparate terminologies and structures.
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