The PRINCE2 project method is an extremely adaptable and powerful project management method that can help you plan and control projects better, faster and more easily.  But don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be that way.  By following these ten steps you can make it frustrating, paper heavy, job intensive (important if the ‘empire’ being built is your empire), expensive and ineffective.  But you may not need to follow these steps at all if you find that someone in your organisation has already implemented them.

1.      Put the Project Support Office in control.  Don’t worry that they are called ‘support’ because if you shorten the title to PSO or change the name to ‘Project Management Office’ (one multinational company recently) people tend to forget the support bit anyway.  This is especially so when those people are being threatened because their weekly reports have not been sent in by the midday Tuesday deadline, in the correct format with three copies or on the correctly coloured paper (a public sector organisation, yes, including the paper colour).  In this step it is vital to remember that the PSO is the centre of the universe and projects are merely things to provide data.  The PSO cannot produce extensive management reports with coloured pie charts and RAG indicators (red, amber, green) unless there is some raw data to work on - so projects do have their uses after all.  By the way, you may have noticed that a good PSO reports the project status directly to organisational managers and doesn’t let the project managers get involved.  If the PMs did it, they would be bound to mess things up with non-standard information (like what is really happening on the project).  And it would never be presented in a properly uniform format, like a PM wanting to use a spreadsheet for some data so it could be sorted in different ways instead of our required standard word processor table (project support in another multinational).

2.      Go one step further and make the PSO responsible for standards.  This confusion between support and assurance (assurance is an ‘audit’ function) is very important to increase the power base of the PSO and to keep project managers in their place (proper PSOs that is – don’t confuse them with the misguided ones which focus on providing an excellent support service to projects).  Don’t repeat the mistakes of the financial world.  In finance they think it is important that those auditing the accounts are not the same people as those who wrote them in the first place.  This dangerous impartiality should not be carried forward into projects or we might start to see what is really going on.  It is much better that the support people talk about standards and enforce the use of all possible forms at all possible times, so nobody ever gets round to the really important ‘audit’ function to make sure the projects are being run properly.  After all, if the PSO is making sure that all of the forms are being filled in then by definition the project must be being run properly.  Making the PSO responsible for this also means that there is nobody left to question what the PSO itself is doing which makes life a lot more comfortable – well for the PSO anyway.

3.      Ignore product led planning.  Ok,ok, some claim that this is the ‘jewel in the crown’ of PRINCE2, but it can’t be that good because so few people are using it and even less understand it properly.  Besides, our PRINCE trainer didn’t really see the point and only spent about 40 minutes on it in the course (one major PRINCE2 training company) and we have enough to do with drawing up all those colourful bars in the Gantt Chart without bothering our heads about still more planning.  “Never mind more planning techniques”, says us, “get on with the real work”.  Anyway, the earlier things start to go wrong, the more time we have to try and fix them.  And with problems in our projects where we don’t properly understand what we are supposed to be delivering, when we keep finding bits of the project we missed off the plans and with stuff continually going off track because monitoring is so hard, we have even less time.  Besides which, Microsoft Project doesn’t cover it and that proves that this product planning thingy whatsit is no good.

4.      Make sure that you get training from trainers who have never actually used the method.  They learned the method in the training room (often this is surprisingly recently - a PRINCE trainer in Hong Kong and a lot in the UK) and they are now training your staff, in the training room.  Well it is familiar ground then, and they do have the advantage of a clear view of the theory and a good trainer can train in anything since their skills are in communication (said by a ‘qualified’ PRINCE2 trainer with no practical experience applying to my company a while ago).  While you are at it, recommend your trainer to your local teaching hospital for training surgeons ready for when you need treatment for some life threatening condition.  After all, your trainer can train in anything because their skills are in communication.  And besides they have read a surgery manual as well as being a long time fan of the hospital ‘soaps’ on TV.

5.      When your training company itself says that their course covers the theory of PRINCE, accept that without questioning it.  Don’t let it cross your mind that projects are rather practical things.  And then don’t expect your staff to know what they are doing after they have attended an expensive training course.  Instead let a contract (an organisation in South Yorkshire) for multiple thousands of pounds for consultancy help on how to actually implement the method.  Never question what the word ‘practitioner’ (as in ‘PRINCE2 Practitioner Course’) is supposed to mean.  You might even follow up the expensive PRINCE2 training with your own ‘Projects in Practice Course’ (another multinational) because PRINCE2 as taught on the practitioner courses is so theoretical it simply doesn’t work.

6.      At all costs, avoid sending your staff for training to companies who claim to show people how to use the method well and make it ‘earn its keep’ instead of focusing on the only important thing which is exam passes.  After all, we all know that exam passes are indeed the most important thing and if your staff get a qualification (albeit not an ‘ology) then that has to be the overriding factor.  It will look so good on their CV when they leave.

7.      Rest comfortably with the illusion that all accredited PRINCE2 training is the same.  It is only a matter of price and we have got a really good deal.  Don’t ever stop to wonder if accreditation might be a minimum standard, not a uniform standard.  That would require thought rather than getting the HR Department to just get the lowest bid (many organisations including, strangely, large cash-rich ones).  Better still, get locked into a ‘framework agreement’ with a single supplier for all of your training (many local government organisations in the UK).  That way you can ignore trying to be sure that you have found a good PRINCE training company and you have the real bonus of a clear conscience – “we didn’t have any choice because we have a framework agreement”.

8.      Make sure that your staff attend a PRINCE2 Foundation Course.  This is the most important since they will return knowing all the jargon and structure of PRINCE without understanding how to make it work properly.  Practitioner training just means more time out of the office.  When they come back, their heads will be full of forms and processes and they will enthusiastically set up your paper mountain for you and waste many more days than if they had learned the practicalities of making it work well.  If you really want to excel, don’t even send them on Foundation training and make do with a one day overview (a very large ‘plc’ company because they had won a multi-million pound project contract which required them to use the method – or at least to say they were using the method).

9.      If any of your staff really insist on Practitioner training, send them to a PRINCE2 training company that separates Foundation training from Practitioner training (most of them).  Then the Practitioner bit is only 2 days including preparation for, and taking, the exam.  That leaves about 1 day to cover the subjects not included in the Foundation syllabus and go over the whole method again to show how to make it work well on different types and sizes of project.  As well as do all that thoroughly in one day, there is bound to be time for a late start, long lunch and early finish.  There surely can’t be that much to filling in PRINCE2 forms properly and we have been told that the method is a ‘standard approach’.  That makes perfect sense because we know that all our projects always have been, and always will be, identical.

10.  Don’t ever question how PRINCE2 is being used in your organisation and how much any unnecessary documentation is costing you.  Even if you do suspect that a document was not needed, always calculate the cost based on the number of staff hours used to create it which is probably just a couple of thousand pounds.  Whatever you do, don’t think about in terms of delay such as making the project a month longer than it need be (one large company recently delayed a project by 3 months with unnecessary documentation).  Don’t stop to realise that if the project is due to save you 3 million pounds a year then that document actually cost a quarter of a million pounds because of the one month delay in getting the benefits on stream (a multinational delayed a project for a month, and it is now saving 12 million a year so the one month delay cost … you’ve got it!).

Do these steps conscientiously and then when projects fail, all those forms and the ‘list-tickers’ checklists will clearly show that the correct procedures were followed and that is by far the most important thing.  Even for business critical projects you must keep things in proportion.  At the end of the day with your PRINCE2 projects, it is not winning that counts, it is the taking part.

 Alternatively, abandon these steps completely and see how PRINCE2 is actually an extremely powerful adaptable project method that can really pay for itself … and then some.  That means understanding it properly in the first place with good training, then using it intelligently on projects.

 Inspirandum offers a full range of effective PRINCE2 training, including our powerful PRINCE2 Practitioner course which shows exactly how to get the power out of this highly effective project method.  Please contact us to book in, or follow the link at the side to read more about it.

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The PSO should provide administrative support but, if its staff includes people with expertise, it can also offer advice to Project and Team Managers.  But offering advice is not the same as taking control.

Be careful not to confuse the PSOs being talked about here with the ones that really do provide a superb support service to projects.  Some are amazingly good and earn their keep many times over.

Inspirandum runs a course on setting up a good PSO.

Click here for details
Setting up a PSO

The 'Product Led' approach to planning is hugely powerful.  Sadly, very few understand the approach and many courses devote very little time to it.  One training company has freely admitted that they "don't see the point of it".

A surprising number of trainers have never actually used PRINCE.  At Inspirandum, we often get enquiries from people wanting to teach PRINCE and they have only just learned it and taken the exam themselves.  We simply don't use trainers unless they have significant project experience of PRINCE2.

Don't be fooled by poor use of PRINCE2 in so many projects.  It really is a powerful and helpful method when used properly.

Click here for details of our
PRINCE2 Practitioner course

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