PRINCE2 Tailoring and Embedding
Tailoring and Embedding the PRINCE2 Method
I’ve created a very useful schematic here which gives you the five key areas where tailoring will need to be applied.
First, you have the processes themselves which can be combined or adapted in some way, then you have the themes these can be tailored, by applying them using specific project techniques.
When it comes to the PRINCE2 roles these can be combined in some way or indeed roles could be split between one or more individuals.
PRINCE2 management products
These are those outlines, and templates contained within Appendix A of the Official PRINCE2 Manual.
These too, could be combined in some way or indeed split into one or more documents, and then of course, there’s the terminology and when tailoring PRINCE2 within, say, your organization it may well be that you will want to change this.
Having done so, it is important to make sure that once you’ve done that it’s applied consistently so these therefore are the five general areas that you would wish to tailor.
Now, in PRINCE2 principles however, are universal they will always apply and are never tailored, whereas using the word principle in its general sense PRINCE2 should be tailored for a project’s circumstances.
Tailoring PRINCE2
I’ve deliberately put these two together so you’re quite clear here we’re talking about the principles within PRINCE2 though, and here we’re talking about a general law if you will, and that is that PRINCE2 should always be tailored.
Key message, tailoring is defined as adapting a method or process to suit the situation in which it will be used.
The activities contained within each process must always be done or carried out. However, tailoring may cause the role responsibilities of each of these activities to change in some way.
Just to pick an activity at random here, let me see, controlling a stage, let me choose one of those, perhaps the activity called report highlights. If you’re in PRINCE2, you must always do that, however how it’s done and who does the reporting, is entirely down to tailoring.
Now you need to apply a level of project management, and here I’m talking about complexity.
I guess that does not overburden the project management team since as long as I’ve been teaching PRINCE2, folks who have not yet fully grasped the PRINCE2 Methodology are often heard to complain that PRINCE2 is bureaucratic.
Well of course, nothing is further than the truth. What you’ll know when they say that is simply that they haven’t thought through how you would need to tailor PRINCE2, to each individual project.
And this idea of overburdening it, can often happen when you try and make things too complex for the nature, context, and environment within which the project is taking place.
So that the steps rather than the sequence of course that you’d need to go through would be to adapt the PRINCE2 Themes in an appropriate way, to use specific terminology or language, referring to this point up here revise.
The management product descriptions as and when necessary to echo this point here to revise the role descriptions of PRINCE2 project roles as in here, and to adjust the seven processes to suit all the above.
Can you see that you don’t need to tailor the Themes – you merely apply them in a way that makes sense for your project and that in and of itself, becomes theme tailoring.
Adopting and Embedding PRINCE2
There’s two phrases here you need to differentiate between, one is tailoring, and the other is embedding.
Now what you’re trying to do here is to provide an appropriate level of governance and control given a project’s acceptable level of risk.
So, the phrase ‘embedding’ is the act of making something an integral part of a bigger whole.
You see, what an organization needs to do, is to adopt PRINCE2 as its corporate project management method and encourage its widespread use.
Can you see the difference between embedding described here versus general tailoring for a specific project?
And to reinforce this point that PRINCE2 principle should not be tailored and must always apply.
Because of course, tailoring can be applied to processes, themes, roles, management products and terminology.
Themes can be applied using techniques that are appropriate to each given project and processes may be combined or adapted by adding or combining activities.
One of the first examples that comes to me, is combining the starting up a project process with initiating a project and doing that for a small simple project.
Roles may be combined, you can split them providing that accountability is maintained, and no conflicts of interest can arise.
Management products may be combined or split into any number of documents or data sources and possibly are geared towards agile and scrum techniques.
Such products could be slides, or wall charts or data held on IT systems.
These are called generally information radiators within the agile world and are often highly coloured, and are large general displays of publicly available project information.
Sticky notes and whiteboards are often used here but coming away from agile, the management products could be information, for example, held on an intranet website.
Terminology may be changed to suit other standards or policies if it is applied consistency.
Yes, that’s a good point, I talked about terminologies as now about being the way an organization refers to it, but it may need to adhere to an internal or external standard
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