Analysis of possibility of application of the 7th edition of PMBOK Guide in IT

Technological advancement and, as a consequence, significant expansion in development and application of information technologies lead to the increase in a number of projects in that sphere. In addition, the complexity of the said projects is also increasing. Such circumstances require project managers to deal with numerous tasks, among which the main one being the choice of methodology, in accordance with that the management will be implemented. Publications analyses as shown the issue to be underdeveloped. To a greater extent it is true with regard to project management in context of increasing the economy digitalization and growing number of innovation projects. The present article attempts to draw attention to that point.An analysis of application practices of the IT project management methods at modern Russian enterprises allowed to identify the reasons for applying the 6th edition of the guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK guide). Thus, the reasons for the difficulties are often related to the need to provide a customer with a preliminary result in short timeframes, while the specificity of IT projects is that identified requirements are often defined in the process of their realization. For a long time, therefore, the general contradiction between the objectively arising needs of an organization and available opportunities to meet them based on existing regulatory documents was a significant challenge. Such issues are largely remedied by the novations of the 7th edition in that document. The paper presents results of comparative analysis of the said editions for such a set of rules, characterizes the changes brought with the new version and describes how they can be used by project managers and members of project teams. In addition to that, the article analyses general requirement for organization of project management processes and reveals possibilities for applying the new PMBOK methodology by project managers in IT.