Areas of knowledge are certainly some kind of 'body', but the term always sounds to me like something you just keep adding more stuff onto the outside as you go, like a big snowball of ideas. And knowledge can become defunct, irrelevant, or disproven over time.
And there's something about the way it tries to sound almost authoritative, without claiming to be scientific.
People in the industry refer to the PMBOK ("Pimbock") pretty frequently. There are lots of people in big-time project management that disdain aspects of the PMI (including and especially the PMP certification, which is often re-named as "pretty much pointless"), but the PMBOK is a valuable document -- ESPECIALLY for people new to the field.
We could do worse, in software, than to emulate that particular success.
Perhaps, but couldn't we could do better instead?
There's already more than enough project management in software teams. Do we also have to emulate the all the turgid rules and mindless checklists that PM's use?
I suspect this is yet another attempt at forcing software engineering workflows into something that's more compatible with PM mentality. Or possibly to commoditize the practice of software engineering. IMHO, it's just a different kind of crack for some management consultants to offer to their c-suite clients.
Given how poorly most software teams are run, I do not think this is demonstrably true.
"Do we also have to emulate the all the turgid rules and mindless checklists that PM's use?"
Programmers have a terrible reputation for refusing to entertain anything outside the process of programming. This kind of comment is emblematic of that mindset.
OK, but one does not "fix" organizational problems by adding more layers of PM.
But I also have an immediate reaction to the term "body of knowledge" in the context of PM, which is to reinterpret it as "cargo cult." Hopefully they have something different in mind here, but that's often what it ends up as in practice.
While that's not impossible, it must be noted other STEM organizations that predate the PMI have their own "body of knowledge" definitions, for example:
- https://www.nspe.org/resources/licensure/resources/professio...
I look forward to seeing the SWEBOK also improve over time.
Also, I'm not sure why some of the comments fail to acknowledge the benefit of having a collection of best practices intended to be tailored for each individual use case. That's what the PMBOK is and how it is used when used properly.
https://www.pmi.org/pmbok-guide-standards/foundational/pmbok
True, but at the same time, old software is still around; if you can look up the terms and practices from 'back when' using an overview like this, or at the very least have enough broad knowledge to recognize what it is, you're already ahead.
I've only skimmed it (the PDF is linked elsewhere), but it looks like just the resource for a professor of software engineering and -design to have and become acquainted with - know a little about a lot of things, then go from there.