Why project management is important and Why Prince2 Training
is the Answer.
Whenever we decide we want to
do something, go somewhere, build something, achieve something, we need to know the answer to some questions. What are we
trying to do? When will we start? What do we need? Can we do it alone, or do we need help? How long will it take? How much
will it cost? These are typical questions asked at the start of any project and the answers are the building blocks of project
management – defining what we want to do and working out the best way we can do it.
Structured project management means managing the project in a logical, organised way, following defined
steps. A structured project management method is the written description of this logical, organised approach. PRINCE2 is a
structured project management method.
We have
briefly covered what structured project management, and hence PRINCE2, are all about. Now for some more details about the
PRINCE2 method.
Coverage of PRINCE2 with Prince2 Training
PRINCE2 Training says that a project should have:
- An organised and controlled start, ie organise and plan things
properly before leaping in;
- An organised and
controlled middle, ie when the project has started, make sure it continues to be organised and controlled;
- An organised and controlled end, ie when you’ve got what
you want and the project has finished, tidy up the loose ends.
Organising and controlling a project means that we need to have someone responsible for doing the
organising and controlling – this person is called the Project Manager. The Project Manager will select people to do
the work on the project and will be responsible for making sure the work is done properly and on-time. The Project Manager
draws up the Project Plans that describe what the project team will actually be doing and when they expect to finish.
The person who is paying for the project is called the customer
or executive. The person who is going to use the results or outcome of the project, or who will be impacted by the outcome
of a project, is called the user. On some projects, the customer and user may be the same person.
The person who provides the expertise to do the actual work on the project (ie will be designing
and building the outcome) is called the supplier or specialist. All of these people need to be organised and co-ordinated
so that the project delivers the required outcome within budget, on time and to the appropriate quality.
Each PRINCE2 project will have a Project Board made up of the customer
(or executive), someone who can represent the user side and someone to represent the supplier or specialist input. In PRINCE2,
these people are called Customer, Senior User and Senior Supplier respectively. The Project Manager reports regularly to the
Project Board, keeping them informed of progress and highlighting any problems he/she can foresee. The Project Board is responsible
for providing the Project Manager with the necessary decisions for the project to proceed and to overcome any problems.
Providing an independent view of how the project is progressing
is the job of Project Assurance. In PRINCE2, there are three views of assurance; business, user and specialist. Each view
reflects the interests of the three Project Board members. Assurance is about checking that the project remains viable in
terms of costs and benefits (business assurance), checking that the users’ requirements are being met (user assurance),
and that the project is delivering a suitable solution (specialist or technical assurance).
On some projects, the assurance is done by a separate team of people called the Project Assurance
Team, but the assurance job can be done by the individual members of the Project Board themselves.
On most projects there is a lot of administrative work needed, keeping everyone informed, arranging
meetings, keeping plans up-to-date, chasing things up, keeping files, etc. Project Managers often do all this work themselves,
particularly on smaller projects. But if there are a number of projects going on at the same time, a Project Support Office
can be setup to help the Project Managers with this work.
Apart
from describing the different people involved on a PRINCE2 project, and what they are each responsible for, the method also
explains how to manage risk, how to manage quality, and how to control change on the project. Risk Management is about working
out what could go wrong and planning what to do if it does. Quality Management is about checking the quality of work done
on the project, either by testing it or reviewing the work in some way. There are always lots of changes during the life of
a project; people change their minds, other things happen, which affect what the project is doing. PRINCE2 has a technique
of controlling the way changes impact the project in order to prevent the project going off in the wrong direction.
So, PRINCE2 is a method for managing projects. It helps you work
out who should be involved and what they will be responsible for. It gives you a set of processes to work through and explains
what information you should be gathering along the way. But PRINCE2 doesn’t do the work for you, it cannot guarantee
that your projects will be successful. Good projects, which deliver quality results, on-time and within budget are dependent
on the quality of people involved from Project Board down to individual team members.
Prince2 Training give todays
Project Managers the tools to manage Prince2 projects and is now a sought after Prince2 qualification. Prince2 is also in
many cases now a prerequisite when applying for a project management position. Prince2 training is now so affordable when
delivered as a group Prince2 training option it is hard to not see the value.
Prince2 Training options click here
