PRINCE2 Implementation survey

Always keen to help out with PRINCE2 related activities we have been helping contribute to an interesting piece of research being undertaken by students at Northumbria University school of Informatics into the implementation of PRINCE2 in the UK.

The study is looking at how easy organisations have found it to implement PRINCE2, what organisations would like to see improved and where (and how) the method might continue to grow in future years.

If you want to take part you can access their on-line questionnaire at the link below but be quick the research closes mid May.....

http://FreeOnlineSurveys.com/rendersurvey.asp?sid=jmtpw5lnd25a0yg184725

Scaling the heights

Don't get me wrong I think PRINCE2 is great it has brought consistency and clarity to the delivery of projects in many organisations. It has given the project manager the ability to ensure requirements are well understood and documented up front and with 'management by exception' the licence to deliver the project without constant second guessing from above. For this it is rightly hailed as a success.

But what comes next? As organisations become familiar with PRINCE2 they want to internalise it, create their own flavour more suited to the nuances of their business and environment and quite rightly so. Tailoring PRINCE2 the excellent OGC manual on this subject is a great and highly accessible aid in this process but for me doesn't go quite far enough....

If every project in an organisation is tailored by each individual project manager soon consistency, one of the key advantages of PRINCE2, becomes lost as each individual applies their own preferences and the method scatters. Now almost all the organisations we see on a commercial basis are investigating 'scaling' PRINCE2, that is to say providing two or three clear starting points for different types or classes of projects to narrow the scope for dispersion and reintroduce some consistency. Of course these starting points should still be tailored but this becomes a less significant exercise.

This also has a number of spin off benefits including providing a great learning curve for PMs rather than dropping them into full PRINCE2 on their first project. Feedback from lessons learned can refine these starting points and make sure that new projects have a process helping hand from the successes and failures of previous projects. One final point well worth picking out is that this approach makes the new project manager look hard at the context of his project to understand which point he should start from and which of the methods suits his project best. Instilling a formal assessment of this type at the beginning of a project reinforces one of the fundamental benefits of PRINCE2 and brings us back full circle to the top of this piece.

Of course all isn't rosy in the garden as almost all the PRINCE2 software available on the market has been developed from an academic 'follow the manual religiously' perspective and has been coded to full PRINCE2 or contains complex enforced workflow which significantly restricts the ability to scale and leaves the results too heavy for the many small projects PRINCE2 is now being applied to.

When looking to develop PROJECT in a box we started out from this practical understanding of how organisations need to tailor and scale their project management methodologies to match context (at least if they want to be successful) and we know this because we have been delivering practical projects in many companies, countries, sectors etc for many years.

We would recommend you to take a look at www.projectinabox.org.uk and www.p2abc.org.uk to find out more.

Tailoring PRINCE2 can be purchased at most good book shops (and some bad ones too).

International PRINCE2 and other trends

PRINCE2 just used in English speaking countries? We don't think so.

It is quite fitting that the download of our free Community Edition today by a user in Peru sees two milestones reached; the 7,000th user of the product and the 30th country in which it is used.

We were always confident that the Community Edition would be popular, after all it is free, it doesn't have any restrictions or limitations so people can actually use it (unlike the myriad of 'trial' or 'crippleware' versions of other products that are out there) and it is packed with some great, helpful and above all easy to use features to support delivery of projects....

What has surprised us is the diverse usage. We expected thousands of users from the UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, South Africa and the other usual PRINCE2 suspects but 30 countries has really delighted us. Probably the most surprising has been the number of US and Canadian downloads and the recent increasing download rate from France. In fact we have now been asked to translate Community Edition into French, Polish, Dutch and Mandarin.

The other really pleasing trend in our registrations and downloads is that more and more users are leaving comments to say how much they like the tool and how it has been recommended to them by colleagues or friends. This is backed up by the number of users who download latest versions or patches when these are released.

Since we launched the Data Tool which enables projects created in Community Edition to be transferred directly into Professional we have also noticed a step change in the number of users upgrading to Professional who realise that they can take their projects with them and gain significant additional functionality for just £50.........

Project Challenge thoughts

A few thoughts to report following the excellent Project Challenge exhibition last week in Birmingham.

We were very pleased by the response from delegates to the event both in terms of quality and quantity of people expressing an interest in the PROJECT in a box products. In fact we had a first, somebody who didn't know us before the show and after a demo wanted to buy the product there and then and in fact when straight back to the office and bought from our on-line store!

Probably the most striking thing though was the number of people who seemed well tuned into our ethos of wanting simple accessible and flexible project tools but who hadn't been able to find them elsewhere at the show. All the major project management software vendors were represented but many of the visitors reported that the systems they offered provided lots of benefits analysis and other corporate oversight capabilities but didn't provide the day to day tools required for effective project delivery.

Our pragmatic and certainly less sexy tool set seemed to hit the mark in this department, in particular the P2ABC lighter PRINCE2 methods which had almost universal attraction. We also had a good few of the visitors asking if we could provide a methodology pack to enable them to use their in-house project and programme approaches within our system. They were delighted when we said we could and then amazed when we said that this was user configurable and they could save even more money by doing it themselves if they wanted.

We saw ninty visitors over the two days and got great feedback on the product, definately a couple of days well spent.

You can have it in any colour you want, as long as it is black

Several of my contacts and associates have recently reported disappointing trials of PRINCE2 software products (the names are removed to protect the guilty), saying that they had a rigid, defined/fixed PRINCE2 process that you had to follow to progress your project.

It seems incredible to me that with the popularity of PRINCE2, the great work that goes into teaching the methodology and regulating whole accreditation process and the technology options that are available for building flexible templated management systems products, that people are still churning our prescriptive, over constrained form based applications wholly unsuited to the real world requirement.

To check I wasn't going mad I opened the tome that is the PRINCE2 manual (2nd Imp 2005) and after 10 seconds with the index I found the entry for scalability page 22.....

"3.2.4 Scalability
Any project run under PRINCE2 will need to address each of the processes in some form. However, the key to successful use of PRINCE2 is its tailoring. Each process must be approached with the question; 'How extensively should this process be applied to this project?' For each of the main PRINCE2 processes, there is a section describing the factors to consider when tailoring the process to fit the needs of the project."

There we go then, it should be pretty clear to anybody involved in PRINCE2 that developing software with a rigid defined process structure and workflow is only going to achieve one thing, that is to fan the flames of those who say it is bureaucratic, heavy and cumbersome. Oh and drive poor project team members to an early grave!

I think it is time to repeat my often quoted statement phrase - If you are thinking of buying a project management system make sure it is more flexible than you think you might need.

In the real world projects have a nasty habit of being more dynamic and even chaotic than we would like them to be and how ever good your planning and risk management, circumstance and environment will always hold some surprises you will have to deal with. When this happens, believe you me, you will be cursing if you have to fight your management system to let you do what is required to keep the project on track!

I'm glad to say not all systems suffer from this Achilles heal and there are some PRINCE2 software providers who it seems have grasped the fundamentals of what PRINCE2 is about in the real world.

p.s. I would be delighted to hear from somebody who has been successful in repeating many projects to exactly the same template without deviation, delay or distraction......... I have several pints and the booker prize for fiction awaiting you!

Interest in scaled PRINCE2

Well this is easy isn't it!

Following lots of questions by users on the 'heavy' nature of PRINCE2 and questions as to wher they could get PRINCE2 methods with a lighter touch we at PROJECT in a box decided it was time to write some of our own.

Always a difficut thing to do with a methodology that is so widely used, everyone seems to have their own opinions on what works and doesn't but with good experiences of developing scaled project management methodologies previously we thought it was worth the effort.

And I'm glad to say this has been very well recieved with lots of press and 'expert' interest and many users buying (the demand test) and saying they find it useful (the acid test)!

The question is how far can you go with this?

A brief first post and if the interest is anything to go by, more to follow on this subject for sure.....