The 7th edition’s emphasis on people management as a core element confuses some users who are accustomed to process-driven methodologies. Questions arise about how to integrate human capital effectively.
This blog outlines the importance of people management in PRINCE2 7, provides practical steps for stakeholder engagement and team collaboration, and highlights how it aligns with project success.
Projects actively drive transformation. They shift how people, organizations, and systems function, transitioning from the current state to a future state that integrates the project’s outcomes.
Consequently, strong leadership spearheads this change, ensuring success. This shift underscores the importance of PRINCE2 people management, which guides organizations through this journey.
Projects require Change Management
Effective change management propels an organization from its existing state to a desired future state. Specifically, it involves defining routines, responsibilities, relationships, cultures, and capabilities that characterize both states.
By pinpointing which organizational areas the project impacts, teams clearly outline the change delivered. Moreover, some projects include interim states, which teams also define to smooth the transition. PRINCE2 people management establishes a structured change management approach, ensuring clarity and alignment throughout the project lifecycle.
Projects aim to deliver change, directly affecting people’s daily business-as-usual (BAU) activities, routines, and responsibilities.
Success hinges on the project team’s capabilities, the strength of their relationships, and the engagement of those impacted by the change.
PRINCE2 emphasizes ‘people’ as both those working on the project and those affected by it, fostering robust connections. As a result, projects thrive when teams build strong relationships within the organizational ecosystem, seamlessly integrating change.
Organizations operate as dynamic ecosystems with evolving relationships. Projects, whether intentionally or not, reshape these ecosystems. To succeed, teams must forge strong ties with supporting organizations and align with the broader organizational ecosystem.
Also, projects unite diverse groups—business, user, and supplier communities—for a temporary period.
Leadership at all levels cultivates a motivating project culture, driving success. Decisions, made where expertise lies, escalate only when broader impacts or political considerations arise, ensuring efficiency and focus.
Organizational ecosystem
This encompasses an organization’s internal elements—staff, board, owners, and stakeholders—alongside external relationships with customers, partners, suppliers, regulators, and competitors.
Project ecosystem
This includes business elements directly involved in or impacted by the project, plus associated users and suppliers. These ecosystems form the backbone of PRINCE2 people management, guiding effective collaboration.
Stakeholders
Projects actively engage stakeholders across the organizational ecosystem. Teams involve both formal project team members and key individuals critical to success, even if they lack formal roles. These stakeholders—spanning users, suppliers, and the business—may exist outside the project team or organization.
Consequently, understanding the interplay between the project and organizational ecosystems proves vital. Identifying key stakeholders at this interface drives successful change, aligning efforts with organizational goals.
By fostering these connections, PRINCE2 people management ensures stakeholders remain engaged and informed, paving the way for smooth project delivery.
Culture
Culture shapes a group’s shared attitudes, values, goals, and work practices. Projects often blend people from varied parts of the organizational ecosystem, each with distinct cultures. To succeed, teams may create a unique project culture that aligns with the broader organizational ecosystem.
Initially, the project brief captures a shared understanding, developed with key influencers. This understanding, combined with external legal, regulatory, and business commitments (like sustainability goals), guides multi-layered decision-making.
Moreover, teams establish ways of working to involve all impacted organizational areas, documented in the project’s management approaches. Early on, the project culture mirrors the organization’s culture. However, as the project evolves, a distinct culture often emerges.
Teams must adapt formal ways of working to reflect this shift while maintaining alignment with the organizational ecosystem. Regular checks—at each project stage or when key influencers change—ensure the shared understanding remains relevant, supporting the evolving culture.
Persistent non-compliance with project processes signals potential misalignment between agreed ways of working and the emerging project culture. Instead of assuming poor behavior, teams should explore underlying disconnects.
By evolving ways of working to align with the desired project culture and organizational ecosystem, PRINCE2 people management fosters a cohesive and adaptive environment, ensuring project success.
Leading Successful Teams
Collaboration: Teams from across the project ecosystem unite to achieve objectives.
Co-creation: Users and key influencers actively design products and ways of working, ensuring adoption across ecosystems.
Leadership: Leaders motivate teams through collaboration, persuasion, and co-creation, managing relationships and seeking feedback to align with objectives.
Management: Managers direct tasks per agreed ways of working, with co-creation boosting team compliance.
Projects rely on temporary teams, often spanning organizational boundaries. Team members may report to multiple entities, such as the allocating organization or a supplier providing specialized skills.
Some individuals juggle multiple projects or work part-time, creating complex reporting structures. PRINCE2 people management navigates these dynamics, ensuring clear roles and responsibilities to drive success. By fostering collaboration and co-creation, PRINCE2 empowers teams to align with project goals, enhancing efficiency and engagement.
Building Effective Teams
Effective teams require diverse capabilities, competencies, and perspectives tailored to the project’s needs. Ideally, organizations assign the best-fit individuals, but this isn’t always feasible.
Teams must assess members’ competencies, identify gaps, and implement mitigations like upskilling or task reassignment. Even with similar capabilities, individuals perform differently based on team dynamics. As temporary units, project teams must quickly learn to collaborate effectively.
Structured exercises build self-awareness, self-management, and understanding of others’ perspectives, fostering trust and compatible work practices.
Roles and responsibilities should reflect individuals’ capabilities, authority, and availability, with regular reviews to adapt to shifting relationships.
Psychological safety—where team members feel respected and free to express diverse views—is crucial. Teams need space to experiment, adapt, and self-organize, adjusting ways of working as needed.
PRINCE2 supports effective teams through:
Project plan: Clarifies goals, providing purpose and stakeholder clarity.
Team structure and role descriptions: Defines roles, responsibilities, and relationships, supporting development and identifying training needs (e.g., influencing or handling resistance).
Communication management approach: Outlines team engagement and relationship-building within the project ecosystem.
Project initiation documentation: Establishes agreed ways of working, empowering outcome-focused delivery.
Product-based planning: Secures agreement on user needs (product descriptions) and clarifies dependencies and sequencing. These elements, central to PRINCE2 people management, ensure teams are equipped to deliver change effectively.
Bringing the Team Together
Whether virtual, in-person, or hybrid, projects demand careful consideration of how people collaborate to optimize time and build social cohesion. Teams foster cohesion by:
- Holding regular, purposeful meetings to build trust across silos.
- Planning relationship development to ensure resilience during challenges.
- Co-locating office-based teams to encourage organic interactions (e.g., desk chats, communal area talks, or social events).
For virtual or hybrid teams, additional efforts enhance cohesion:
- Syncing co-location days for key team members to build relationships.
- Allowing time for informal online conversations.
- Organizing ‘away days’ for virtual teams.
- Using virtual collaboration tools to boost efficiency.
- Offering opportunities for face-to-face socializing.
By prioritizing social cohesion, PRINCE2 people management strengthens team dynamics, ensuring robust project delivery.
Communication
Projects, whether intentionally or not, create organizational change, attracting scrutiny and potential misconceptions. Without clear communication, resistance may emerge as people protect the status quo or fear negative impacts. PRINCE2 addresses this through a communication management approach, ensuring clarity and alignment.
Effective communication engages stakeholders, mitigates misconceptions, and supports change adoption, making it a cornerstone of PRINCE2 people management.
People Are Central to the Method
Leading successful change, building effective teams, and ensuring clear communication are interconnected activities that permeate project management. These elements lie at the heart of PRINCE2 people management.
PRINCE2 integrates five elements: principles, people, practices, processes, and project context. The following sections highlight how these elements address people management.
People and PRINCE2 Principles
PRINCE2 rests on seven principles, including the requirement to define roles, responsibilities, and relationships. This ensures people management remains a focus throughout the project lifecycle, fostering accountability and alignment.
People and PRINCE2 Practices
PRINCE2’s seven practices are essential, applied continuously throughout the project. The ‘organizing’ practice defines how people form a temporary project management team, ensuring representation of user, supplier, and business interests.
All practices incorporate people factors. For instance, developing the business case requires diverse perspectives from the organizational ecosystem, clarifying the project’s purpose and fostering a shared understanding.
People and PRINCE2 Processes
PRINCE2 processes span four layers: business, directing, managing, and delivering. People factors—behaviors, culture, and relationships—are embedded in these processes, guiding interactions between layers. This structure ensures PRINCE2 people management supports effective collaboration and change delivery.
By prioritizing people, PRINCE2 empowers projects to navigate complex ecosystems, foster collaboration, and deliver transformative change.
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The PRINCE2 Foundation examination assesses your knowledge and comprehension of the PRINCE2 project management methodology as detailed in the syllabus. The PRINCE2 Practitioner examination, on the other hand, gauges your ability to apply and tailor the PRINCE2 method. Candidates who pass the Practitioner exam should be able to start implementing the method on an actual project with some guidance. However, their effectiveness may differ based on their experience in project management, the complexity of the project, and the level of support they receive in their work environment.
