PRINCE2 7 Project Management and Projects
PRINCE2 is a project management method comprising five integrated elements: principles, people, practices, processes, and the project context.
PRINCE2 7 is based on these five integrated elements:
PRINCE2 principles: the principles are the guiding obligations that determine whether the project is genuinely being managed using PRINCE2. There are seven principles, and unless they are applied, it is not a PRINCE2 project.
People: projects need people, mainly those working on the project and those affected by the project. An understanding of the needs, capabilities, and motivations of the people involved and the relationships between them is crucial to how the project is established and managed.
PRINCE2 practices: the practices describe essential aspects of project management that must be applied consistently and throughout the project lifecycle. The seven practices explain the specific treatment required of that aspect of project management for the PRINCE2 processes to be effective and why they are necessary.
PRINCE2 processes: the seven processes describe the entire project lifecycle, from activities before getting started through the stages of project delivery to the final act of project closure. Each process has checklists of recommended activities and related responsibilities.
The project context: the principles, practices, and processes are applied by the people involved to ensure that the method fits the project context.
The five integrated elements of the PRINCE2 method are designed to work together. The practices ensure that the principles are continually applied during the processes in a way that is specific to the project context and consider the relationships and requirements of people within the project team and those outside the project team.
What is a project?
A key challenge that organizations face is balancing two competing needs, which are:
maintaining current business operations, also known as business as usual (such as preserving profitability, service quality, customer relationships, brand loyalty, productivity, and market confidence), improving or transforming business operations to survive
compete in the future, also known as business change (for example, anticipating and deciding how change can be introduced to the most significant effect).
As the pace of change accelerates (whether technological, business, social, or regulatory) and the need to adapt becomes more evident, the focus of management attention is inevitably moving to achieve a balance between business as usual and business change.
Projects are a means by which we introduce change, and although many of the skills required are the same, there are some crucial differences between managing business as usual and managing project work
A project is defined as A temporary organization that is created to deliver one or more business products according to an agreed business case.
Project verses Business As Usual
There are five characteristics of a project that distinguish it from business as usual:
Change: projects are how we introduce change. Temporary: projects are temporary in nature. When the desired change has been implemented, business as usual resumes (in its new form), and the need for the project is removed.
As projects are temporary, they should, therefore, have a defined start and a defined end.
Cross-functional: a project involves a team of people with different skills working together temporarily to introduce a change that will impact others outside the team. Projects often work across the usual functional divisions and sometimes span various organizations. This frequently causes stresses and strains within and between organizations (for example, customers and suppliers). Each has a different perspective and motivation for getting involved in the project.
Unique: every project is unique. An organization may undertake many similar projects and establish a familiar, proven pattern of project activity, but each one will differ in a certain way. This can mean a different team, customer, supplier, product, location, or timeframe. All these factors combine to make every project unique.
Uncertainty: the characteristics already listed will introduce threats and opportunities over and above those typically encountered within business as usual. Projects are riskier than any operational aspects of an organization.
Projects vary greatly. For example, an organization might undertake an IT project to improve the systems required to manage its business. Another organization might undertake a clinical research project to bring a new drug to market, and another organization might be building a new facility.
Furthermore, the environment within which the project is being managed may influence how it is started, delivered, assured, and closed. There may be factors external to the project itself, such as organizational standards, the maturity of the organization, and regulatory frameworks and factors specific to the individual project, such as the industry sector and the geographical locations. PRINCE2 is designed to work for all types of projects in any project environment
What is project management?
Project management is the application of methods, tools, techniques, and competencies to enable the project to meet its objectives.
The five characteristics of a project can result in some typical challenges, such as:
ambiguity regarding who is responsible for what aspects of the project, leading to confusion and a lack of accountability
ambiguity or conflict regarding what the project will deliver, costs, and when unrealistic expectations regarding what the project will provide, costs, and when unavailability of resources or reassigning resources to business as usual activities over project work difficulty in estimating effort, durations, and costs for project work
uncontrolled change (sometimes called scope creep), difficulty keeping the project management team and stakeholders informed, engaged, and motivated during the project lifecycle.
The purpose of project management is to address these challenges by reducing and managing ambiguity.
This is achieved by uniting the involved parties to clarify objectives and working practices. The aim is to control the specialist work needed to create the products required for the project.
Project management involves the planning, delegating, monitoring, and controlling all aspects of the project and the motivation of those involved to achieve the project objectives within expected performance targets.
The project’s performance target sets the expected success level against which the project management will be judged. PRINCE2 includes performance targets for benefits, cost, time, quality, scope, sustainability, and risk
PRINCE2 includes seven aspects of project performance to be managed.
These are: benefits: those involved in the project need to be able to answer the question: why are we doing this, and who are we doing it for? The project management team must have a clear understanding of the purpose of the project and what needs to be achieved to justify its investment.
Costs: as the project develops, there will be many factors that can affect the cost budget available, or that may lead to (potential) underspending or overspending against the cost budget. The project has to be affordable.
Time: when will the project start, when will the essential products be delivered, and when will the project finish?
Quality: finishing on time and within budget is only a slight consolation if the project result is not as specified or does not work. What is delivered by the project must be fit for purpose.
Scope: what will the project deliver? There must be agreement on the project’s scope. Otherwise, the parties involved may make different assumptions about what is included or excluded. The project management team should not deliver beyond the scope, as this is a common source of delays, overspending, and uncontrolled change (sometimes called scope creep).
Sustainability: all projects impact their environment, and project management teams need to know the sustainability performance targets for the project work and the products required.
Risk: all projects involve risk. But exactly how much risk is the business prepared to take? Without a shared understanding of the business’ risk appetite, the project management team may be too risk-averse or take more risks than the business is prepared to accept
Priorities can be established by agreeing on the project’s performance targets. For example, an urgent project may place more importance on time than other performance targets, such as costs.
PRINCE2 helps set such priorities by allowing a range to be specified for each performance target in the form of tolerances. Some performance targets may have a narrow tolerance, yet others may have a broader tolerance. The agreement of performance targets and their tolerances is a prerequisite for exploring options and determining the project approach.
All seven project performance targets and their tolerances are used throughout the PRINCE2 method as the basis for control.
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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.
