Dynamic project management model based on the Project Management Body of
Knowledge (PMBOK 6) mindset and vocabulary
Luciano Sales*, Rodrigo Augusto**, Anténio Duarte*, Sanderson Barbalho*, Giselle Leite*
*Universidade de Brasilia
** University of Texas at Arlington
Keywords
System Dynamics, Project Management, PMBOK, stakeholder engagement
Extended Abstract
Project Management became a widespread accepted practice among professionals
and organizations from several domains at the same measure projects grew in popularity
and importance. Today, it is estimated that up to 30% of the world’s economy can be
traced back to projects, many of them being complex systems.
Unfortunately, despite their importance and relevance, projects that fail to meet
constraints such as cost and schedule, just to name a few, are commonplace across the
project management community. One of the contributing factors for this reality is an
almost exclusive reliance on traditional approaches employing inadequate or incomplete
mental models. These models are currently accepted as the de facto standard for Project
Management.
System Dynamics has a long history of being jointly applied with Project
Management, the former leading to the improvement of the latter through the adoption of
dynamic models in addition to the traditional models. Despite the improvement potential,
up to this point, SD failed to be properly diffused to the Project Management community.
The result of this failure is a lack of trust by said community on dynamic models
originated from SD. Besides the previously mentioned mental model barrier, another
barrier may be differences in vocabulary, which represents a further obstacle with regards
to the establishment a holistic and accessible dynamic model structure.
As such, the main purpose of this work is to propose an integration of the accepted
mental models as well as vocabulary from traditional Project Management to the dynamic
approach originating from SD. The model presented on the PMBoK guide 6"edition was
chosen as representative of the traditional management approaches due to its globally
accepted vocabulary.
We focus on PMBoK’s work package flow and its rework cycles. The study
methodology was inspired on the reserch by Luna-Reyes & Andersen (2003) and its four
steps, namely “Conceptualization”, or system modeling, “Models Integration” or
traditional and dynamic models overlay through development of slow and stocks
diagrams, “Testing” or simulations of the new model’s behavior and outcomes, and
finally, “Implementation”, through the application of a case study to validate the
simulation results.
The results coming from the application of said steps are encouraging, with project
management professionals related to the case study claiming to be able to well understand
the proposed model and also reporting that simulation results were very close to real-life
results. These professionals also reported that several issues that occurred throughout said
project would most-likely be avoided, if such model was in place while the project was
in execution.
Another reason for encouragement was the high level of interest by the
professionals in applying the proposed model. As a future work, the participation of more
professionals is desirable, as well as the use of more case-studies.
