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business as usual and business change.
The pace of change (technology, business, social, regulatory, etc) accelerates and the penalties of failing to adapt to change are becoming more evident. Projects are the means by which we introduce change. Implementing a secure, consistent, well-proven approach to project management is a valuable business investment.
Last week, we focused on elaborating the PMBOK methodology of project management for project management practitioners in Zimbabwe. Today we will elaborate on the PRINCE2 (Projects in a Controlled Environment) methodology, as the second most popular formal project management standard.
PRINCE2, developed by the UK Office of Government Commerce (OGC) is a best practice guide aimed at helping organisations and individuals manage their projects, programmes and services consistently and effectively.
The framework is composed of seven principles, seven themes, seven processes and the project environment.
Seven Principles
Whether one is buying a car, building a house, organising a party, constructing a shopping mall or upgrading a banking system there are some principles which should be acknowledged and held to be true before, during and after the life of the project.
PRINCE2 defines seven principles and these are:
l Continued business justification
l Learn from experience
l Defined roles and responsibilities
l Manage by stages
l Manage by exception
l Focus on products
l Tailor to suit the project environment.
Unless all of these principles are applied on a project it is not a PRINCE2 project.
Seven Themes
Themes provide guidance on aspects of project work that should be addressed continually and in parallel throughout the project.
They explain the specific treatment required by PRINCE2 for various project management disciplines and why they are necessary.
The themes are: Business Case, Organisation, Quality, Plans, Risk, Change and Progress.
Below is an explanation of three of the themes.
Business Case – It documents the continued business justification of the project. Some studies have revealed that the business case is seen by most organisations as a financial document or a grab of cash.
In fact, it is very much the focal point of the project, a strategic document showing how you are implementing strategy and the returns you will receive for the funds invested.
More mature organisations are marked by their willingness to cancel projects that are unviable, no longer relevant or no longer a priority. In some organisations projects are “condemned to completion” – once approved, a project is never stopped regardless of how much ambiguity may develop about its business value.
Quality – centralised on the “product focus” principle, the quality theme provides an explicit common understanding of what the project will create (the scope) and the criteria against which the project’s products will be assessed (the quality).
Without this understanding, the project would be exposed to major risks (such as acceptable disputes, rework, uncontrolled change, and user dissatisfaction) that could weaken or invalidate the business case.
The quality theme also covers the implementation of continuous improvement – looking for ways to introduce more efficiency and effectiveness into the management of the project and the project’s products.
Plans – PRINCE2 requires a product-based approach to planning. The products required are identified first through product breakdown structure, product descriptions and product flow diagram, and only then are the activities, dependencies and resources required delivering those products identified. Benefits of product-based planning include:
l Clarifying the scope boundary, thus avoiding uncontrolled change or “scope creep”
l Reducing the risk of important scope aspects being neglected or overlooked
l Removing any ambiguity over expectations
l Increasing user buy-in and reducing approval disputes
l Improving communication
Seven processes
The PRINCE2 processes address the chronological flow of the project with actions relating to different themes mixed together. The processes are:
Starting up a project – initiated by corporate or programme management. This includes the activities required to start the project on a strong, viable and worthwhile footing.
Directing a project – owned by the Project Board (group of decision-makers representing the customer, supplier and the business interests in the project). The board manages by exception, monitors via reports and controls the project at key decision points, delegating the “day-to-day” project management to the Project Manager.
Initiating a project – involves the definition and planning of the project. The key product of this process is the Project Initiation Documentation which defines the what, why, where, who, how, when, and how much
Managing stage boundaries – based on the size and risk of a project and commitment to resources, a PRINCE2 project is broken down into a suitable number of stages, initiation and one or more management stages. The Project Manager produces the information on which the Project Board will take any decisions, including whether to continue the project or not
Controlling a stage – set of activities which enables the Project Manager to execute day-to-day management and control of each of the management stages of the project in order to keep them within tolerance
Managing product delivery – executed by the teams to create and deliver the planned products
Closing a project – exists to bring about a professional and controlled close to any project, whether the natural end or as a result of a premature closure.
Tailoring PRINCE2 to the project environment.
One of the great strengths of PRINCE2 is that it is truly generic, applicable to any project regardless of the scale, type, nature of organisation, culture or geographical location. It is not a “one size fit all” solution.
What PRINCE2 does not provide.
The following topic categories are deliberately considered to be outside the scope of PRINCE2:
Specialist aspects such as industry-specific or type-specific activity are excluded.
Detailed techniques, examples are critical path analysis and earned value analysis.
l Jemitias Rodze is a PRINCE2 practitioner and a professional member of the Project Management Institute of Zimbabwe (PMIZ). Send your views and comments via email; [email protected] or [email protected], website www.pmiz.org.zw