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The PMBOK is a very good source for your vocabulary searches. But, especially for people new to the field, it's an incredibly harmful document. And the harm is entirely caused by the "it misleadingly looks authoritative while it's not and really shouldn't be" issue the GP stated.

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I'm going to guess you haven't spent much time in the PM world if you think the PMBOK is harmful to new people instead of educational.

If nothing else, the PMBOK is valuable for PMs purely as a reference to the poisonous bullshit that is contained within it? Somewhat like the value of knowing about flat earth hypotheses and believers.

Oh, yes, I've spent enough time in the PM world to get tired of people justifying their procedures by claiming the PMBOK says it's the correct set of them (the PMBOK explicitly says it's not prescriptive, but it misleads people new people into thinking it is).

Got an example where PMBOK led someone astray?

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