PRINCE2® is an extremely adaptable and powerful project management method that can help you plan and control projects better, faster and more easily. But many people misunderstand it and make criticisms that appear justified unless you know how PRINCE really should work and can work.

Absolutely not. It doesn’t have to use much paper at all. The amount of formality can be adjusted and many of the controls and communications can be very informal if required. For example, PRINCE has a number of reports, but of course reports can be verbal.

The method includes a Communication Plan in the Project Initiation Document (the main plans for the project) and in the Communication Plan it is said how each particular communication will be made. This may be formal with a letter or memo, or by a meeting, or by email, or by putting information on a project web site, or by phone call, or by carrier pigeon if you like!

Actually it isn’t. It is amazing just how small PRINCE will ‘zip down’ if you need it to. For example, what do you think the minimum number of people is on a "full" PRINCE project – including team members? In fact it is just 2 people and even then only part time. Part of the skill in using the method is to know how to apply it appropriately to each individual project.

Oh yes you do! You always have time to project manage, and in fact it is usually the case that the less time you have, the more management and control you need. If it doesn’t matter when you finish the project, you needn’t control it too much. If it matters very much when you finish the project you need good controls.

Let’s think about this, using a financial example. Who has to plan the use of their money more carefully, someone with money to spare or someone on the ‘bread line’. Obviously, the person on the bread line; they must plan carefully for even the smallest expenditure. The less you have of something, the more careful you have to be, not the less careful.

But it is not just a matter of project management principles, there is significant misunderstanding behind the "we don’t have time on our projects" statement. That misunderstanding is that PRINCE is a method that cannot be used in a simple or rapid way. That is just not true. There are a number of ways to make things move very rapidly indeed. Sometimes that is accompanied by risk, but then fast moving projects with a fixed end date are usually high risk anyway. Perhaps you need some good risk management then … and guess what PRINCE includes!

Wrong again. Now you have to be careful in a project because changes cost money; sometimes a great deal of money. We can’t have people doing anything they like or costs will run out of control and the project may never be finished (scope creep). But if someone has a good, creative, idea that is worth doing, PRINCE2 has the mechanism for that idea to be considered and then resourced.

So, far from stopping creativity, it resources it! In fact it is better at doing this than informal project approaches. Where there is no proper control, projects often end up imposing a ‘change freeze’. When that happens, nothing can get added no matter how creative and worthwhile it is.

That is a rather like a carpenter saying "I have got enough to do building this table without using chisels and a mallet as well!". PRINCE2 is a bit like a toolkit and helps you do the job. You don’t manage the project as well as having to do PRINCE, you manage the project using PRINCE. It is a superb, best practice, method and used properly will be a real help with the job of planning and controlling a project.

Well it does take some time. At Practitioner level it takes 5 days on the Inspirandum course if you include time for the Practitioner exams. But how much time do you lose in a year when you don’t have a good approach and good tools to manage the project? Probably much more than 5 days. In his "7 habits of Highly Effective People", Steven Covey has as the 7th habit, "Sharpening the saw". By this he means that we all need to be developing new skills to make our job easier.

He uses the illustration of someone working away like mad with a saw to cut down a tree. The saw is blunt so it is very hard work, and someone asks why the person doesn’t stop to sharpen the saw and so do the job more quickly and with less effort. The person replies that they don’t have time, they are too busy sawing down the tree. Sharpen your saw – learn PRINCE which is a highly effective, best practice, proven method.

For immediate information to get going with PRINCE2, and in a highly readable and practical format, why not get hold of a copy of 'PRINCE2 for Dummies'?

PRINCE definitely is flexible and extraordinarily so. There is just about nothing in the method that you cannot adjust, so you can fine tune it to the exact needs of the project. This is true of projects where even the manual itself hints that you can’t use PRINCE. You can if you understand how to apply it well, and that begins with getting training from an experienced PRINCE user from a training company with an objective to teach how to get the power out of PRINCE, not merely to pass exams and recite what is in the official manual!