Project Management: Foundations to Practice · Modern Project Management Standards and Frameworks
ISO 21502 and International Standards
For organizations juggling multiple methodologies across regions, ISO 21502 offers a neutral common vocabulary. This chapter covers what it does and, importantly, does not do.
ISO 21502:2020, titled Project, Programme and Portfolio Management: Guidance on Project Management, was published by the International Organization for Standardization in December 2020, developed with input from project management experts across more than 30 countries [11]. It replaced the guidance previously found in ISO 21500:2012, with ISO 21500:2021 now serving as the umbrella vocabulary and context document for the broader standards family [12].
Key Takeaways
- ISO 21502:2020 provides project management guidance developed with input from experts across more than 30 countries.
- It is explicitly non-prescriptive and advisory, not intended to certify individual projects, unlike PMP or PRINCE2 Practitioner.
- Its key value is vendor-neutral benchmarking, letting organizations compare and govern PMI, PRINCE2, and Agile practices consistently.
- This lets a multinational organization govern multiple regional methodologies consistently without forcing a single standardized framework everywhere.