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Introduction
PRINCE2 is an acronym standing for PRojects, IN Controlled Environments. It is a method that is used by project managers in managing projects. This method is commonly used by the UK government, although it is also used in other countries. It covers both the organization and management of a project. PRINCE2 can be defined as a method used by project managers to manage projects.
It helps them to decide who should be concerned with certain projects and what is expected of them, that is, the project team and its responsibilities. PRINCE2 gives a set of processes that should be adopted in a project and explains the kind of information that should be incorporated in a given project. Nonetheless, it is important to understand that the method does not perform any task and will never give an assurance of a project success.
It just gives a guideline of what should or should not be involved in a project and leaves the project managers to make their own decisions. A triumphant project, that is, one that delivers quality results within the set budget and on time depends on the eminence of people who are concerned in its execution.
This includes project board and the project team which does most of the work. Today, projects engross different groups of people including but not limited to the clients, contractors, and the users. The most important objective behind the use of PRINCE2 is to make sure that there is a universal language amongst the concerned parties.
Customers and suppliers are brought together by contracts, whereas the project team and the project board are brought together by the responsibilities expected of them by the customers and or the users of the project. By using PRINCE2 project managers have been able to manage projects more easily and this ensures that the products that are delivered from the project are of the right quality.
This paper looks at the history of PRINCE2 as a project management method, its relationship with project management and programme management, some of the advantages of using this method to the project managers, and the disadvantages. It also looks at the processes, components and techniques of PRINCE2.
Brief History of PRINCE2
PRINCE2 was derived from PROMPTII and PRINCE project management method that was discovered in 1989 by the government of UK. It was discovered in 1996 as a more efficient management method than PROMP TII and since then, it has become a popular method and it is increasingly being used for managing project in the UK (Haughey 1).
It has now become a common method used by project managers, not only in the UK but in 50 other countries. The most recent version of PRINCE2 was released in 2009 by OGC, although the name did not change to PRINCE3 as it would have been expected, was an indication that the method is still faithful to its ideologies.
However, it had been going through a series of revisions since 1996 in order to be compatible to the present global business environment. The major dissimilarity between PRINCE2:2009 and the previous version is that, the 2009 version entails the use of two instruction manuals; one for the management victorious projects and the other for directing projects.
Pass mark has been increased to 55 per cent (for the practitioner assessment) but that of foundation examination stays. Further, the practitioner exam will not take 3 hours as it used to but 2 and a half hours (Haughey 5)
Project Management
The work of a project manager is to organize and control a project within an organization. To do this, he selects human resources who are competent enough to work on the project and it is his responsibility to supervise their work to ensure that it done timely and according to laid down standards. The project administrator proposes the project arrangements that spell out the task of the project as well as its duration.
A client pays for the project whilst the user is the individual who employs the results of the project or rather one who the product impacts on. However, in some cases, the consumer and the client can be the same person and the person whose proficiency is being used on the project is known as a consultant. For the project to deliver the expected results, these people have to co-ordinate with each other.
They have to ensure that, the project does to exceed the set budget, it is of the right quality and it is delivered on time. Each PRINCE2 must have a project panel composed of the client, the user (or his delegate), and the consultant or purveyor (Anon. “PRINCE2 methodology overview” 4). In PRINCE2, these people are known as the client, senior consumer, and the superior contractor.
It remains the duty of the project manager to report to the project panel on the development of the project and any foreseeable challenges or predicaments. In return, the project board provides the project manager with appropriate decisions on how to handle the project and how to overcome any challenges that comes his way.
PRINCE2 is a knowledge-based approach that covers a wide area in project management. It provides a process model composed of eight processes that act as a guide to a project manager in planning and managing projects. PRINCE2 project management method can be applied to a vast number of projects and in a wide range of intricacy.
Moreover, the PRINCE2 instruction manual on the management of unbeaten projects gives a number of mechanisms that help a project manager in using the process model.
One advantage of PRINCE2 is that, it helps to standardize the activities in an organization while allowing project managers to adopt a range of products using the same processes and terminology. The major constraint is that, it limits the level of creativity in the methods applied by managers in managing projects (Anon. “PRINCE2 methodology overview” 5).
Programme Management
Programme management involves managing groups of projects for a desired benefit. It involves structuring and controlling projects in a group so that they give effective results. Large and complex projects are normally broken down into small and inter-related projects for easy management. In doing this, one has to take into consideration, the time and the budget allocated to the specific projects.
The importance of using PRINCE2 in programme management is that, it helps in grouping of projects according to their purpose and urgency.
Just like in project management, PRINCE2 assist programme managers in setting a procedure that has to be followed in seeing that all projects yield the expected results. It helps them to set the roles and responsibilities of the different people involved in programming and also give a guideline to be followed in supervising projects.
Advantages of using PRINCE2 to both project managers and programme managers
Risk Management
Many people take about risk management but rarely do they do anything in connection to it. The major problem is that many people do not know whose responsibility it is to manage risk. PRINCE2 provides a solution to this since it defines the method of handling risk. The latest version PRINCE2:2009 which was released in June 2009 provides a strategy for managing risk.
This involves identification of risks, evaluation, and how to deal with identified risk within a project. It also gives an idea of who is accountable for carrying out the diverse roles implicated in risk management. It sets out the number and types of risks that an organization can be able to bear within a project.
The first step in risk management is to identify the risks in a project; this can be done by following the approaches given in the new manual (Hinde, “Better Risk management with PRINCE2” 1). Some of these approaches are: reviewing critical issues from previous projects, conducting a risk brainstorming session, and establishing a structure for breaking down risks.
A risk structure is a diagram that resembles an organization chart but it is divided into different ways, for instance by the use of the PESTEL analysis. Risks can also be identified by reviewing the different aspects of a project, such as percentage of approvals, issues raised regarding the project, defects captured in the projects, just to name but a few.
After identifying the possible risks in a project, the next step is to assess the risk exposure. In this progression, each threat is measured in terms of percentage and the pecuniary impact it can generate in case it happen to occur. The fraction of incidence is multiplied by the pecuniary impact to arrive at the supposed value in case the risk takes place.
By adding up the expected values of the all the expected risks, we get a monetary value that represent the risk exposure of the project in question. PRINCE2 recommends that, each risk should be recorded when they are expected to occur in order to give the proximity of the risk. It also suggests that the possibility and the impact of a risk ought to be put into consideration to establish whether this show a discrepancy over time.
Apart from just considering when a risk may or may not occur, PRINCE2 considers the causes of risks. This gives a deeper analysis in identifying and assessing risks thereby providing a better approach to the process of risk management. Not all risks results in negative impacts; some risks are opportunities.
According to PRINCE2, there are three approaches to an opportunity: exploitation of the opportunity by ensuring that it occurs, increasing its probability of occurrence, or rejecting the opportunity (Hinde, “Better Risk management with PRINCE2” 5).
The responsibility of a project manager entails searching for more prospects that would make a project better, by making this a component of the process of managing risks; the project manager are in a position to recognize more risks
Project Assurance
Normally, the work of project assurance is to provide independent views on the progress of the project. In PRINCE2, the scrutiny of project reassurance is divided into three; client, organization, and the specialist. Project assurance is all about checking the progress of the project to ensure that it remains within the budget and that it is cost effective, this is referred to as business assurance.
User assurance entails examining whether the consumer’s requirements are being offered whilst specialist reassurance involves inspecting whether the project is offering the anticipated solution.
In the majority projects, assurance is carried out by a self-regulating panel (referred to as the “project assurance team”), although in other assignments, it is the panel in the project board that carries out the assurance (Anon. “PRINCE2 methodology overview” 3).
Project Support
Projects involve a lot of administrative work, everyone has to be informed about the progress, meetings have to be arranged, plans have to be updated, and files have to be kept properly, among other activities. In small projects, the project managers do most of this work, but if the project is big, they delegate some of these duties to members of the project team.
PRINCE2 recommends that a project support office should be set up to help the project manager carry out his duties effectively and also gives a guideline of how some of the responsibilities should be delegated to the project team members.
Controlling Change
PRINCE2 involves more than just describing and analyzing the responsibilities required of each member. It also explains how risk can be managed, how to achieve quality results, and how to control the project. Management of risk involves forecasting on the future and determining the problems that can be encountered in the process of the project and designing appropriate mechanisms to tackle such challenges.
On the other hand, the management (quality) is all about probing the value of the work done through appraising or re-examining it (Office of Government Commerce 342).
During the project’s life-cycle, many alterations take place, for instance, members from the team may well change their mind, the client or user possibly will change some of the given instructions, or other things may perhaps take place, which may possibly affect the value of the project.
PRINCE2 has a unique technique that enables project managers to control the changes that may take place in the execution of a project in order to ensure that such changes do not impact the project negatively.
Disadvantages
At times, PRINCE2 is regarded as unsuitable and unproductive for small projects, because of the work implicated in preserving and generating documents, and lists. This time and again results in a misinterpretation of which parts of PRINCE2 should be useful. PRINCE2 does not take into consideration the size of the projects but assume all projects are the same and that they should follow the same procedure.
However, this may be quite ineffective for small projects which have a smaller budget. Creating and maintaining some of the documents and lists is an expensive process which can not be done by the project manager alone. He has to hire an additional employee which may not be possible according to the budget.
PRINCE2 provides many ideas for the management of projects. However, the quality approach can sometimes be entirely inappropriate because it redefines the original meaning of quality. According to the dictionary, the word quality means standard of excellence.
On the other hand, PRINCE2 defines quality as something fit for the purpose, which it can be designed without taking into consideration the standards of excellence. This re-definition of quality creates a lot of controversies in the application of PRINCE2 to many project managers (Hinde, “Why PRINCE2’s approach to quality is flawed” 2).
At the start of PRINCE2 project, the project manager agrees with the customer about the attributes to be created from the project, in other terms known as the acceptance criteria. After the products have been delivered to the customer, he will only sigh against them if they fulfil the acceptance criteria. However, this is under the assumption that, the customer understands what they want, but in most cases, the do not.
This is a problem in PRINCE2 projects which assumes that users know the quality of the products that they want. PRINCE2 defines a project according to its uniqueness and the more unique a project is, the harder it becomes to specify what is required of the end product.
PRINCE2 Processes
PRINCE2 process that was revised in 2009 takes place in almost 40 separate activities which are organized further into seven processes. This can be summarized in following chart.
Starting Up a Project
The first process is the start up of a new project. A project team is appointed in this process, and the purpose of the project including the expected outcome is prepared. It is in this process that decisions regarding the approach to be adopted are made and the next process is discussed and planned for. After doing this, the project board authorizes the stage that follows, that is, the initiation of the project.
Key activities in the start up process include but not limited to selection of the project manager and a supervisory member, management panel selection, project brief preparation among others (Anon. “PRINCE2 processes, components, and techniques” 2).
Initiation Stage
Main activities involved in this stage include planning for a quality approach, planning for the project, redefining project brief into business case, creating project files, creating project controls, and bringing together a project instigation document. This process continues with the work instigated in the start-up stage and augments the brief into a business case.
The executive, project manager, and project management team work together to define an approach for testing quality of the project with a general objective of controlling the entire project. This stage involves the creation of project files which act as a general plan for the entire project. The next stage is also created and all information resulting from this stage is forwarded to the project board for the purpose of authorization.
Directing a Project
The main activities in this stage include but not limited to authorization of project initiation, authorization of projects, authorization of a stage plan, giving of direction, and project closure conformation. In this process, the roles and responsibilities of the project board are stipulated; the main role of this board is to control the entire project.
As seen earlier, it is the work of the project board to authorize the initiation stage as well as the project itself. The directing stage stipulates how the project board is supposed to approve a stage plan, and other plans that are designed to replace the stage plan due to unforeseen conditions (Murray 2).
This stage also gives an overview of how the project board is expected to direct the project including the activities involved in closing down a project.
Controlling a Stage
According to PRINCE2, projects should be divided into processes and sub-processes dictating how each phase ought to be monitored and controlled. This includes the method of authorizing and receiving work packages. It also explains how the progress of a project ought to be monitored and how major outcomes of the project ought to be reported to the board.
The controlling stage also puts forward the technique to be espoused in capturing and gauging issues interrelated to the project and how counteractive action should be implemented. It suggests the method to be adopted in delivering project issues to the project board.
The key activities in this stage include authorization of work packages, reviewing progress, investigating project issues, assessing the stage of the project, report major events to the board, taking remedial action, and rising project issues.
Managing Stage Boundaries
As seen above, the controlling process suggests what must be done in a given stage. On the other hand, the managing stage boundaries suggest what have to to be prepared when a stage is near completion. This phase also states what ought to be done if a stage is going through difficulties or of it has gone ahead of those levels that can be tolerated, and how the finishing point of the project have to be reported to the panel.
The core actions in this phase include: bringing up to date the plan for a project, business case, and the risk record, setting up a stage, reporting the end of a project, and creation of elimination plan.
Managing Product Delivery
The purpose of this stage is to ensure that, there is co—ordination between the project team and the project manager. Main objectives are;
- To make certain that the project manager consents to the work of the group and that it is decided upon by the panel members
- To certify that the panel members, the project administrator, and suppliers comprehend the anticipated result, and that they are able to work within the set time limit, and cost to produce outstanding results (Watling 2)
- To ensure delivery of every products as per the project’s arrangement and within the financial plan
- To make sure that the project director is provided with truthful information on a habitual basis as regards to the development of the venture in order to deal with the expectations satisfactorily
In summary, the core activities involved in this phase include: recognition, implementation, and work-package delivery.
Closing a Project
This comprises of the actions that have to be completed just before the end of a project. In this stage, the project is officially de-commissioned and resources distributed to other activities. Then the project is evaluated and follows on actions identified. The key activities in this stage include: project decommissioning, project evaluation, and identification of the follow-on actions (Watling 4).
PRINCE2 techniques
Quality Review
The purpose of this technique is to ensure that, the products resulting from a project are of good standard, that is, they meet the quality criteria. More often than not, this is done in a quality reassess meeting in which inaccuracies in products are recognized.
It is worth noting that the quality review meeting is not under any obligation to resolve the errors identified in products, its work is to bring the interested people together and to help the project team in addressing the identified issues (Anon. “PRINCE2 processes, components, and techniques” 3).
Product Based Planning
This technique defines a project according to the output and not its activities. Before a project is initiated, the project managers have to understand the products required by the users. This helps them in planning for the activities that should be incorporated in the project but it is not the activities that determine the end product (Murray 4).
Change Control
This technique gives a procedure on how to log and assess the impacts of a project, how to escalate issues to the board, and how to manage changes.
PRINCE2 Components
The components of PRINCE2 are given in the outer part of the chart below
PRINCE2 has eight main components, these are:
- Business case- This is a justification for a project
- Organization- This gives an overview of the roles and responsibilities of all the people involved in a project, this includes project managers, project team, and the project board.
- Plans- This gives a definition of products expected from a project, how work is shared and carried out among the parties involved. This includes; timescale of the project, budget, and when to make frequent reports to the project board (Anon. “Managing and Directing Successful Projects with PRINCE2” 3).
- Controls- This component gives an overview of the procedure to be followed by project managers and the board in controlling the activities of a project
- Management of risk- Every undertaking involves taking risks; this component explains the approach to be adopted in managing risks in a project.
- Quality in a project Environment- This explains how quality products are ensured within a project and how such products are delivered
- Configuration management- This gives an explanation how to identify and track the products of a project
- Change control- It is common for changes to occur in the process of execution of a project. Change control explains how such changes should to be managed to ensure that, the quality of the end products are not compromised.
Conclusion
PRINCE2 has made Project management easy since it contains well defined framework. It provides a clear procedure on how to coordinate activities and the project team members, how to plan for the project, how to supervise it, and how to handle the challenges that comes along the execution of the project.
PRINCE2 defines all the processes involved in a project with specifications on key inputs, output, goals, and activities to be undertaken. This helps project managers to control any deviations that may occur in the plan. It also ensures that all available resources are controlled efficiently, projects are carried out in an organized manner and they are easily monitored in an organized way.
PRINCE2 is a well structured method that is widely acknowledged and understood by many project managers who have done either the foundation or practitioner examinations. It provides a basis for communication where all participants are able to communicate in a common language.
Major tasks and duties concerned in the managing of a project are illustrated without a doubt and are well-matched to the proficiency of a firm and the complexity of the project.
PRINCE2 also helps project managers in indentifying risks, evaluating the risk exposures and how to exploit risks into opportunities. Many people just talk about risks but hardly do anything to mitigate them. Others think that it is not their responsibilities to manage risks and just sit down and watch things go out of hand.
According PRINCE2, it is the work of the project manager to manage risks although he can delegate the same to a member of the project team who he feels is in a position to do the work. This management method provides a guideline on how to indentify risks, assess them, or even turn them into opportunities.
Management of risk involves forecasting on the future and determining the problems that can be encountered in the process of the project and designing appropriate mechanisms to tackle such challenges.
Some of the major shortcomings of PRINCE2 are: it assumes all projects to be the same and does not give a separate procedure for smaller projects and also it re-defines the meaning of quality by assuming that users are knowledgeable of the quality of the products they are requesting for.
PRINCE2 method involves different processes, components and techniques. The processes include: start-up of project, initiation stage, directing a project, and controlling a project. Some of the components are: plans, organization, controls, business case, and change control. It has only three techniques; quality control, product-based planning, and change control
Works Cited
Anon. “Managing and Directing Successful Projects with PRINCE2.” Press release, 2009. Web.
Anon. “PRINCE2 methodology overview.” ILX Group plc, 2010. Web.
Anon. “PRINCE2 Processes, Components, and Techniques.” Aipm, 2010. Web.
Haughey, Duncan. “The History of PRINCE2.” Project Smart, 2010. Web.
Hinde, David. “Better Risk Management with PRINCE2.” Project Smart, 2010. Web.
Hinde, David. “Why PRINCE2’s Approach to Quality is flawed.” Project Smart, 2010. Web.
Murray, Andy. “Best Management Practice for Project, Programme, and Risk Management.” White paper, 2007. Web.
Office of Government Commerce. Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2 (5th ed.). The Stationery Office, 2009. Web.
Watling, Shaun. “A Procedural Worksheet on PRINCE2 Project Management.” Project Smart, 2010. Web.
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