Project management knowledge areas and their relevance to today's project managers

Many project management professionals would have read the Project Management Institute's A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide). As a huge knowledge repository for project management processes, techniques, good practices, etc., it is a standard guide that project managers regularly refer to for pointers on meeting project performance objectives. Now in its 5th edition, the PMBOK Guide has been revised at regular intervals of about 4 years since its 1st edition in 1996 so as to keep it up to date with the latest developments in project management. The current PMBOK Guide prescribes that there are ten knowledge areas for project management. As the PMBOK Guide is currently being revised for its 6th edition, which is scheduled to be released in Q3 2017, it is timely to ask the question: Are the ten knowledge areas still relevant to today’s project managers? This study attempted to provide some insight into this question by analyzing 222 Singapore online job advertisements that were specifically looking for a project manager. The results showed that the ten knowledge areas would still quite closely reflect the job responsibilities of today's project managers