Where Project Management comes from

Where do Best Practices come from?

Project Manager Best Practices come from four sources:

• Project Management Standards Organizations. For example, OPM3 identifies 600 Best Practices related to project, program, and portfolio management.
• Industry standards organizations. Every industry has its own Best Practices for its technical work, and also for management of that work. These meet or exceed industry standards.
• Other companies. Best Practices are often proprietary, but are sometimes also shared from one company to another.
• One's own company. A highly capable company has innovative employees solving problems and developing Best Practices. A PMO should seek to document, evaluate, and compare these. If a practice is better than the PMO's process for that method, and better than other processes in use, the PMO should bring that Best Practice into project management methodologies and encourage its use.