Developments in the project management field are ongoing. This professional field
continuously broadens and becomes profounder. Therefore, IPMA has extended its
attention from project management to program management, portfolio management and
project support (PMO).

This has made manifest the need for a reference model in which the various functions and
corresponding competences and the relations between them are presented. Not only for HR
managers, but also for project and program managers and PMO heads.

In the first edition of this book, attention was given to the regular functions in the project
management field, as they are applied in the IPMA 4-level system. With the publication of
this second edition, the wish has been realized to make a complete function building for the
project management field available.

The second edition of this book does justice to PMO professionals' needs for recognition
and appreciation of their added value for projects, programs and portfolios.

This is a publication of IPMA-NL.