What is PRINCE2® useful for?
PRINCE2® (P2) is a British project management methodology that has gained significant popularity far beyond the UK, on every continent, and in every project management domain. It is a generic method that can be applied to any project requiring a strong structure, clear accountabilities, a transparent set of processes and a high degree of control. PRINCE2® is also one of the most popular project management trainings. For some time now, however, P2 has been competing with other methodologies and approaches – especially agile ones. It is therefore worth answering the question of what PRINCE2® can be useful for.
The offerings of the PRINCE2 method can be seen at three levels at least:
- The individual level
- The framework level
- The organisational level
Let’s discuss these three levels.
An individual professional qualification
First, PRINCE2® is an individual professional qualification in project management. It is acquired through rather formalised trainings, offered by accredited training organisations. You can take part in P2 training at two levels: Foundation and Practitioner. The Practitioner level does not mean that extensive practical experience is required from the training participant. Rather, it is called so because the training offers more advanced knowledge related to practice.
The trainings at the Foundation level usually take three days and it is another two days for the Practitioner level. The Foundation training offers the most essential but complete knowledge of the method and it is strongly certification-oriented. The primary objective is to prepare the participants for the exam by developing sufficient understanding of the method and practicing the tests, to assure the highest possible success rate. This the first step. Of course many examples are given during the training, of possible project justifications, governances, the sequential or agile delivery approach, and techniques such the product breakdown structure or risk identification. But we do not plan a complete project from A to Z, there is not sufficient time and space for that during a training. Rather, P2 gives itself to a sequenced implementation process, where the knowledge of the method is acquired first and the implementation is considered next, in follow-up activities such as workshops, consultancy, maturity assessment, etc.
The exams are taken online and proctored, always a few days or weeks after the training. Both certificates can be obtained in a span of several weeks. However, it seems equally reasonable to spread both training courses over a longer period of time and to actually transfer the knowledge acquired during the training to practice, using the PRINCE2 tool-box and the guidelines offered by the manual. The Practitioner exam will complete then the process of learning and practicing.
With this, PRINCE2® offers the most accessible way of professionalisation of project management. However, what it takes is the possibility of taking it into practice. That possibility comes with organisations that build their project management environment using and adapting P2 as their framework method.
A project management framework method
There are different situations in P2 trainings. At open public trainings, there may be one or several participants from an organisation, first ever to be trained in the method. They will become P2 champions in their organisations. Or, they may be joining a group of others who followed the training before them. At private in-house trainings, a group of project managers gets trained together. In either case, this a good start to build a common project management framework for an organisation, led by a community of practitioners.
P2 gives us a coherent and complete architecture, integrating principles, aspects of project management previously called ‘themes’ and now called ‘practices’ (business case, organisation, planning, quality, risk, project change management, progress tracking), and logically running processes. Version 7 of the method put PEOPLE back at heart of the method. All of this together provides a complete framework for project management. This framework can be filled with appropriate planning techniques. Also, the major delivery approaches are now put at equal footing, for the project management team to choose from, according to the nature of the product: linear-sequential (as for the construction of a house), or iterative and incremental (i.e. agile, as for an information system, with a lot changes and on-going product discovery), and hybrid when the combination of the two is justified. There isn’t a conflict between these delivery philosophies and approaches, they are all available to project teams and the right choice of the delivery approach is a key challenge, away from any heated debate of the advantage of ‘agile’ towards ‘traditional’ methods.
A key benefit of PRINCE2® is that it offers a common vocabulary for the project management framework within an organisation as well as between organisations using it. That allows for a degree of standardisation. A standard is useful because of that commonality between different projects, or rather an interplay between adaptation to different projects and a common framework that helps the communication, comparison and exchange between projects.
However, there are pre-condition to that. First, it takes a conviction that PRINCE2 should the organisational framework for all or almost all projects within an organisation. PRINCE2 may be seen as one toolbox of many, to be used for some project and not for others. Or it may be seen as a framework method, within which all project happen, with different adaptations and choices of delivery approaches. The matter of commonality and standardisation would call for the latter approach.
Secondly, there are several aspects of PRINCE2 that make it or break it. One of these is the specific project organisation. It is specific for its composition (the Project Board with the Executive, Senior User(s), Senior Supplier(s), the PM, the Team Managers, the Project Assurance), but it’s also specific for its activities. Two key activities need to be emphasised: the stage authorisations for every stage (the green lights turned on – or not – by the Project Board for every project stage) and the management by exceptions, where an exception is a breach of a tolerance imposed on any aspect of project performance. There are now seven aspects of project performance: benefits, scope, quality, time, cost, risk and durability (Figure 1). When an exception occurs, it must escalated to a higher level of project authority. Together these two mechanisms give the strongest project controls there may be. But without these mechanisms, PRINCE2® is basically emptied.
A foundation to systemic project management
At even higher level, P2 functions in a family of methods for managing the project activities of organizations, under the logo of AXELOS/PEOPLECERT. Above PRINCE2 we find MSP®, for program management (groups of projects), and then MoP for portfolio management, i.e. processes of selection, prioritization and high-level planning of all projects and programs. To this we can add M_o_R® for risk management and MoV® for value management, both applicable to projects, programmes and portfolios. This set of methods is accompanied by P30 (Project, Programme, Portfolio Offices, helping us to establish the PMOs as support structures at any level. Lastly, there is a maturity model, P3M3®, letting us investigate the organisational maturity in project management. All of these methods and tool-boxes gives us potentially a complete system for managing project activities in organizations.
Identical training and certification paths are possible for all these methods, which gives professional development paths for interested project managers. At same time the organisation may build complete project environments and ecosystems, integrating all necessary elements at all levels, from individual projects, through programmes and portfolios, up to strategies.
To sum it up…
PRINCE2 can provide benefits at several levels, starting from individual qualifications, through a common framework and a standard for project management, to a complete system coordinating projects and programmes within portfolios, while considering the risks and the value at all levels. For this to happen, an appropriate organisational context, project awareness and “fertile” ground for systemic, methodical management of project activities are necessary. Without this, individual qualifications will remain, well, individual.
At the same time we want to stay away from any doctrine, where a method becomes a tool of oppression and an imposed reality. PRINCE2® is absolutely not useful always and everywhere. This methodology will most likely not be useful for very fast and dynamic software development, with huge variability of conditions and requirements. Then SCRUM, AgilePM comes into play, and when scale appears – SAFe, LeSS. Wherever we are dealing with a large variety of projects, combining methods and approaches is justified, and P2, together with other components of the project management system, can provide an appropriate methodological framework.