Tailoring PRINCE2 7 to ensure a lightness of touch
One of the questions are often gets asked is how far can I go when scaling PRINCE2 7? Starting with the tailoring PRINCE2 7 section of the Manual can be a first start but because there are many variables suggested in that chapter, you may need to apply some or several of the ideas that are presented there.
Only you can tell which of those approaches is the best one for your particular project. Another question that needs to be answered is whether you actually have a genuine project to apply the tailoring PRINCE2 7 ideas to rather than a complex assignment.
If all you have is an assignment, then frankly just using the relevant aspects from a work package along with at least one product description and quality criteria may be all that you need in order to extract the relevant value from using the PRINCE2 method.
The absolute bare bones of applying the tailoring PRINCE2 7 method must therefore be the use of the product description – even if you discard everything else. As soon as you are presented with what appears to be a simple assignment, then sit down and try to write a full and detailed product description of the final product for such an assignment.
Tailoring PRINCE2 7 – Assignment Attributes
The value of this is that it starts you thinking about the various aspects of the assignment:
- The purpose and appearance of the product
- Who is to use the product and in which environment
- What information sources does it need
- What is the level of quality required for the product and what metrics will be used to test and it accept that level
- What tasks only did to create a product, to review it, and ultimately to approve the product
- What knowledge skills and experience are needed to produce, review and approve the product
In carrying out the above activities you will find out exactly what is needed about the job to be carried out, and this could form the basis of a simple plan for your assignment.
But let us suppose that your assignment is a real project, and therefore a more precise tailoring of PRINCE2 is needed.
I will remind you here of the definition of a PRINCE2 7 project:
“A project is a temporary organization that is created for the purpose of delivering one or more business products according to an agreed business case”
Following on from this, project management is defined as the planning, delegation, monitoring and control of all aspects of the project, and the motivation of those involved to achieve the project objectives within the expected performance targets for time, cost, quality, scope, benefits and risks.
With these two key definitions, along with the fact that projects are the means by which a business change is introduced while acknowledging that the project entails a higher degree of risk than other normal business activities, it follows that implementing a secure, consistent, well-proven approach to project management is a valuable business investment.
Tailoring PRINCE2 is a formal proprietary method and has emerged worldwide as one of the most widely accepted methods for managing projects. It can be applied to any project regardless of the project scale, type, organization, geography or culture, and if you chase this by selecting the management aspects of project work from the specialist work such as design, construction, test, and so on.
This is at the heart of PRINCE2 and is the main reason why it is so easy to tailor and integrate the specialist aspects of any project and hence provide a secure overall framework for the project work.
Tailoring PRINCE2 7 Minimum PRINCE2 7
Drilling down to the bare bones of a PRINCE2 project must include the following aspects:
- A business case
- A project organization, at its minimum describing who is responsible for what aspect of the project
- At a minimum at least one plan (for a small project with only one delivery stage, the project plan contains exactly the same information as the stage plan for that single delivery stage.
- A method for handling risk management
- A method for managing change control
- A clear definition of quality expectations and acceptance criteria for the end-product
- How the appropriate level of quality will be built into the products to be created during the project and how such quality will be tested (this will be achieved via the above mentioned product descriptions)
- A set of project controls that are appropriate for the size, risk, and complexity of the project
If more than one individual is working on the project, or more than one version of any product, then you will also need some form of configuration management.
All of the above elements should be scaled about the size and complexity of the project. Let common sense be your guide, and by where of setting up a rigid structure of controls along with handfuls of documents and a complex communication structure.
Tailoring of PRINCE2 7
The secret of tailoring or modifying the PRINCE2 method, is being aware of what can be tailored and which areas must be left alone. In this short article I shall explain not just what can be tailored but also how they should be carried out.
The PRINCE2 7 Principles.
It starts right here by saying that you must use all of the principles and none of them should be modified in any way. You see, these are the core concepts and the solid foundations is that run right through the entire method.
It does not matter what type of project you are considering, and it doesn’t matter what environment the project initiative will be operating within, all of the PRINCE2 principles must be applied.
Modifying and adapting PRINCE2 7 Practices
In general, when you wish to tailor the practices, it is done by creating the appropriate nine management approaches
These management approaches show how the project team will manage risks and quality, how they will assess and authorise proposed changes to the project, how they will tracked the products of the project, and how they will communicate effectively with all of the project’s stakeholders.
In addition to adapting the approaches, you will want to adapt the project controls so that they are suitable for the particular project situation. Here are a few ideas have had to go about this:
If your organization uses a particular risk identification technique that has evolved to focus on identifying common threats and opportunities within your industry, then you would want to apply its use to your project. Here you would edit the risk management strategy under the tools and techniques section to include the use of that particular tool on this project.
Your organization may have particular planning standards and approaches when creating any form of plan. These planning standards would want to be described in the project control section of the project initiation documentation showing how the project will be monitored and controlled.
This may be that your project forms part of a programme and that therefore all of the benefit reviews are the responsibility of the programme management team and not of the executive role. You would want to edit the executive job description within the project initiation documentation showing clearly that such benefit reviews are not their specific responsibility. By the same token, you would want to ensure that the programme team are aware of benefit reviews that are their responsibility.
PRINCE2 7 terminology
The use of appropriate terminology is key for effective communication, and it may be that your organization has its own terms and phrases that a particular to your industry. This is particularly true for the PRINCE2 7 management products.
For example, the project initiation documentation may be called the definition plan, project charter, or even terms of reference.
A good way of ensuring this is to create a project glossary with a brief description of what each term applies to.
Keeping on the topic of PRINCE2 7 management products, your particular project may wish to either combine two or more of them or conversely split one of the management products into two or more products.
An example here might be the use of the registers and logs used for risks, issues and changes. These products could be combined under one register.
For a small project, it may not be necessary to produce a product description for each product, and this is particularly the case if such products are regularly used by your organization and it projects. In this case, one higher-level product description may be sufficient for planning and quality control purposes.
If your project is part of a programme, there may be no need to have the project-level business case since this will be created at the programme level.
At the other end of the scale, some management products may be communicated verbally rather than being documented. However you choose to adapt the management products, it is important to ensure that everyone is still clear on the purpose and composition of each new product.
Tailoring PRINCE2 7 roles and responsibilities.
The normal PRINCE2 7 approach here is to make sure that all those carrying out the necessary directing, managing, and delivering roles within a project have clear role and responsibility descriptions.
Normally, every role described within the PRINCE2 7 method should be used, but the individuals involved with the project may take on more than one role.
There must be taken to ensure that as a minimum there should be a single responsibility for project accountability, this is the executive, a single responsibility for coordination and communication within the project, this is the project manager, and a broad range of perspectives fully represented to make key project decisions, this is the project board.
On a smaller project, one person could carry out the project manager, team manager, and project support roles.
Make sure that any role combinations do not create a conflict of interest, in particular, ensure the anyone taking on the project assurance role checks on the effectiveness of the project manager. For this reason, project assurance and project manager roles should be taken on by separate individuals.
The most obvious way to tailor PRINCE2 7 roles and responsibilities is to amend the responsibilities for each of the roles, and as an example above, I have already given the example of benefit realization being the responsibility of a programme and not the project-level executive role.
Tailoring the PRINCE2 7 processes
All of the activities within each PRINCE2 process must be carried out on any project.
So, to adapt these processes, you will want to vary which roles are responsible for carrying out a particular activity and which management products are to be used.
Using a program as an example, then any project within that programme, may not need to use the ‘starting up a project’ process as it will be done by the program itself.
It follows, therefore, that the program manager will create sufficient information to determine whether the project is worth including and then design and appoint the project management team. The newly appointed project manager would then be responsible for the ‘initiating a project’ process as their first responsibility.
Another example might be that in a smaller project, that the first process ‘starting up a project’, would be done in a very informal manner.
A workshop or meeting could be used for example to agree verbally on the information that would be contained within a project brief from the perspective of the business, user and supplier, and have decided to go ahead and give authorisation for the initiation stage.
Continuing with that example, the plan for the initiation stage may also be a discussion that agrees on the initiation stage budget and duration, and that sufficient resources are available. Despite all of the above being discussed, as a minimum, such a meeting or workshop should produce a set of minutes which would document the information and agreement.
Tailoring PRINCE2 7 for smaller projects
I have boardly mentioned that for small projects the roles could be combined and shared by one particular individual, this is particularly true for the business, user, and supplier roles within the project board. They may also wish to do their own project assurance rather than delegating it elsewhere.
The business case may simply state the justification for the project and outline the expected benefits without any need for a detailed investment analysis.
Combining the three plans could also occur on a small project. So the project plan could be created and be sufficient for tracking and monitoring the work without the need for stage or team plans.
If you think about it, the minimum number of stages that the PRINCE2 7 method mandates, is two, the initiation stage and one delivery stage, so that in effect, the project plan and the single delivery stage plan would be the same document.
The level of quality may only need to be documented within the acceptance criteria of the project product description, removing the need for individual product descriptions with their quality criteria. It may be that the quality criteria for all of the products within a given project would need the same criteria in which case this only needs to be stated once.
The PRINCE2 7 minimum management product set.
A small project could maximize the number of combined management products so that it could be run with just four sets of documents:
- Project initiation documentation containing the usual sections along with the benefits management approach
- The highlight report
- The daily log which is used to combine all of the information for the other logs, registers and the configuration item records
- The end project report
If there is just one delivery stage then not only the stage plan but also at the end stage report will not be needed. If the project manager is also taking on the role of team manager and therefore managing the team directly, there will be no need for checkpoint reports and work packages.
As I mentioned above, for a small, internal, low risk and cost project, all of the management products may be discussed and agreed verbally without the need for any document creation.
The PRINCE2 7 minimalist approach
If I may taken liberty with the definition of a project, and describe it merely as an undertaking delivering some form of change with a start and a finish point, then the smallest possible PRINCE2 7 project could be nothing more than a task.
The project board may be filled by one individual who could be the project manager’s line manager. In this case, the project manager would do all of the work of the project themselves. In such a case all that is needed is a work package product, any associated product descriptions, plus the logs and registers and highlight reports.
The other aspect that may be tailored is the customer or supplier environment. If a third party is involved then the work packages would be contained within a legal contract.
In such a case the ‘starting up a project’ process would occur before the contract is signed, and both the customer and supplier will have their own different business cases since the customer will have their own benefits, while the supplier may see the benefit as making a reasonable profit margin.
In this case, the project brief could be seen as a proposal for the work from a supplier to the customer.
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