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PRINCE2® as Transitioning Adolescent?

 

PRINCE2 has been around since ’96 making it just about 23 years old. In all that time it has been mis-sold, and mostly we’ve had an uncomfortable suspicion something was amiss.

Adolescence is the transition to adulthood rather than a specific age. The end of adolescence marks maturity claimed and acknowledged, to hold responsibilities.

For much of its growth to date, P2 has not filled out its given name; it’s carried a nickname like a bullied child. Instead of fulfilling its calling it’s struggled all along with that nickname; PINO – PRINCE in Name Only. It’s been a truer fit.

The given name (now) stands for PRojects IN a Controlled Environment and the world around its use is rapidly filling with Control Environments for projects; they are called PMO*. They are everywhere now but only recently. They, too, are struggling to grow up.

*As an aside, I think we should take ‘PMO’ as a name like SCUBA and RADAR. and not try to ascribe the P and M to expand as the M could be ‘support’ and the P has multiple expansions too.

PRINCE2 always has been a misfit for project managers.

As a PM in industry – rather than a textbook, my role is a quasi-technical one informed by the knowledge of how to create products that someone else can use to enable benefits. My customer, or employer, demands of me that I can corral a group into being a team and shepherd them and their efforts to create the required products in balance with cost and schedule pressures.

Almost all the tool-sets I need to fulfil my PM role are OMITTED by P2! As project manager, P2 doesn’t provide what I need. Agile and PMBoK-Guide® do, to some degree.

When we look at what P2 does provide, we find it specifies ‘Roles’ with duties performed. Those roles are appropriately positioned in the organisation’s governance hierarchy to help a PMO aid in project support. P2 tells us the processes within which the roles operate and the information flows between those roles/ processes. The flows are described from their triggers and timing, the content required through to the quality attributes that are appropriate – but again P2 omits ‘how to’ guidance a PM needs to create the content.

If we now volte-face

As a PMO analyst or PMO manager, what I need to know to perform my role is EXACTLY what PRINCE2® contains – and mostly I don’t care how the supplier (SM* or PM and teams) creates it. They can be agile or predictive, just so long as they ‘plug-in’ to the governance structure (roles) above product delivery duties and provide timely content for my PMO information flows. (*SM – Scrum Master)

The correct selling and use of P2 will be when it is to and by the PMO community NOT the project management community (See the footnote).

What the PM/ SM and team need are the techniques to select the product development life cycle suited to the business’ pressures and the product development team’s and customer’s skills and stability, certainty, simplicity and clarity. In short the means to fix the independent variables (Cost or Time or Scope or Quality or Reputation or Safety or Innovative differentiation or …), and then calculate the dependant variables (for example – “…with this team and this sprint pattern, then how much backlog we can deliver will be…”) and, “Here is the current burn-chart and velocity/Earned Value curve and SPI.”

The correct selling and use of P2 will be when it is to and by the PMO community NOT the project management community (See the footnote).

What the PM/ SM and team need are the techniques to select the product development life cycle suited to the business’ pressures and the product development team’s and customer’s skills and stability, certainty, simplicity and clarity. In short the means to fix the independent variables (Cost or Time or Scope or Quality or Reputation or Safety or Innovative differentiation or …), and then calculate the dependant variables (for example – “…with this team and this sprint pattern, then how much backlog we can deliver will be…”) and, “Here is the current burn-chart and velocity/Earned Value curve and SPI.”

As a PMO analyst or manager,
what I need to know to perform
my role is EXACTLY what
PRINCE2® contains – and mostly
I don’t care how the supplier
(SM* or PM and teams) creates it.
They can be agile or predictive,
just so long as they ‘plug-in’ to the
governance structure (roles) and
provide timely content for my
PMO information flows. (*SM – Scrum Master)

The correct selling and use of P2 will be when it is to and by the PMO community NOT the project management community.

What the PM/ SM and team need are the techniques to select the product development life cycle suited to the product development team’s and customer’s skills and stability, clarity, simplicity or complexity. Fix the independent variables (Cost or Time or Scope or Quality or Reputation or Safety or Innovative differentiation or …), and then calculate the dependant variables (for example – “…with this team and this sprint pattern, how much backlog we can deliver will be…”) and, “Here is a burn-chart and velocity/Earned Value curve and SPI.”

You can drive a screw with a hammer but it has consequences.

As a farmer, you could make sense of the world as, ‘the Sun orbits the Earth’, but global navigation was a struggle until the relationship was properly understood.

You can use P2 to train project managers and safe progress is a struggle but you’d be better off training them in what they need to navigate their role – PRINCE2agile is a good choice – BUT train the PMO in PRINCE2 and then train the leadership in…; ah, that’s a different post. None of Agile, PMBoK-G, or P2, covers that correctly.

~~~”~~~

For PMOs, our  2017 PRINCE2 certification course is available for free (without the exam booking) with reference and revision aids available in our ‘access everything for a fiver a month‘ bundle – https://bit.ly/sooptonuts

For PMs, we only offer PRINCE2agile credential training for project managers – why would you take a certificate that half covers what you need to know? For the same effort invested in P2Agile you’ll also get more tools to do your actual job and certification in generic agile practices. A boost to the CV and a counter-balance for P2’s reason for being used as PINO “in name only” for two decades!

 

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