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Lecture_1A_PRINCE2_Intro

Brenton Burchmore

Hello, and welcome to lecture 1A of the PRINCE2 short course, with IT Masters. My name is
Brenton Burchmore and this will be our first introduction to project management with PRINCE2.

Let's begin with the real basics. Let's talk about what is project management; a project
management definition perhaps. Project management work in an organisation is considered to
be temporary work. It's usually for the purpose of some kind of structured change. It's
something we have to do to change what we usually do. So we contrast project work with the
other kind of work that we refer to as "business-as-usual" work.

The business-as-usual stuff are the things we do every day, every week, every month. We know
all about them, we know what to do, because we repeat it often. But when we're changing to do
something different we have a unique set of tasks that we need to do to change from one thing
to the next. That's the temporary work, and we only do that kind of work until we have a new
business-as-usual. It's that temporary work that we have to do to make everything change that
we put into a project.

Now, in the case of PRINCE2, it defines some particular characteristics of a project. It says that
projects are to bring about change, that they are temporary in nature. That is, they have a start
and a finish date, which our typically business-as-usual activities don't. A project is cross-
functional. That means it usually has a team of people who have a diverse range of skillsets,
because we need to change many different things, we're going to have many different types of
activity going on. It's going to affect perhaps different parts of an organisation, and the people in
the activity within a project often step over the normal boundary lines that occur within normal
business activity.

PRINCE2 also says that every project is unique. Although projects may seem similar to each
other, they will inevitably have some differences between them. So every project needs to be
treated as its own, unique animal. It's something different from everything else. It'll have some
specifics, some details, that are unique to it.

The last characteristic that PRINCE2 talks about is uncertainty. This is, again, something we
can contrast with business-as-usual activity. Business-as-usual stuff we do all the time. We
know what happens. We can predict what goes on. "We do this, that happens." With a project,
we're typically entering some kind of new territory. We're doing some changes, we're entering a
new normal. We're creating a new business-as-usual in many cases. That inherently has
uncertainty with it. There is less that we can predict. There's less that we can know for sure.
There's less that we can be certain of, in terms of what's going to happen. "If we do this, this
might happen, or it might be a little different."

It's this uncertainty that creates threats to the security of the project, to the effectiveness of the
project. Either in what it's attempting to do, or whether or not it does that with sufficient value.
But uncertainties can also have positive effects. It can mean opportunities. There can be
unexpected positive benefits, or unexpected opportunities to do something differently that we
discover along the way that we wouldn't have if we hadn't embarked on the project. But this
uncertainty is an inherent element of a project, according to PRINCE2. So if this is what a
project is, then let's talk about what a project does.

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A project in PRINCE2 has six major variables. Six things that we have to juggle or maintain that
are likely to change, up or down, as we go through the life of the project. Now they're called
variables, and there are six of them. For any of you who might be familiar with, for example, the
Project Management Institute method, the Project Management Body of Knowledge, which is a
different approach to project management. They also talk about six key elements, but they talk
about them as project constraints. PRINCE2 talks about project variables, but they're largely the
same thing. In fact, five of them are exactly the same. But there's one that's different between
them.

The five that are the same. These include costs, which is a financial or budgetary approach.
One of the things we have to juggle. The second is time, the time-scale. How long things will
take, when will it be finished. The third is quality. So it's not just about, "Is it on time and on
budget?" It's also a case of, "Has it done a good enough job? Is it fit for purpose?"

The fourth is scope. Exactly what will the project deliver? What is the scope of the... What
does it include, or what does it not include? The fifth common element is risk. All projects have
risk, and risk is something that we do need to be managing and dealing with as a variable along
the way.

In PRINCE2, the sixth is benefits. Now, benefits. These often overlooked. It's the sort of thing
that we don't necessarily think about, but this is the reason why we are making this change.
These are often less tangible. It's not simply about a scope of work that says, "Well, if we do this
work, we'll get this thing at the end.", but why is that thing good for us? Why are these changes
worth it? What's the point? What are the benefits to the parent of the project? The
organisation, the department, the company, whatever it is, that sits above, that's going to enjoy
the changes that we've brought about via this project. Those are the benefits.

Now as I've already alluded to a comparison with the PMBOK, the sixth one in PMI is resources.
Not benefits, resources. Now, I promise you that I won't be throwing in too many curve-balls
about trying to confuse you between one method and another. But I'm using it just here to
illustrate the point that there are some differences with how different methodologies use the
same ideas, but just tweak it slightly a little bit; to talk about it from their perspective. If you go
through a few weeks of this and you start to think that maybe they're throwing in these
differences just for the sake of it, well you wouldn't be the first to think that. But they are all there
for a reason.

There's an important reason why PRINCE2 looks at benefits, and it speaks to the whole point
behind what PRINCE2 is trying to achieve, and that is a more holistic, and more strategic, or
high-level perspective on what the project management is trying to do. It's trying to achieve
something that is an end goal that can often be very difficult to define, and easy to lose sight of.
It's not just a case of if you join the dots, follow your nose, connect all the steps, you'll get what
you want at the end. Well you might, but it might not be what you thought it was going to be,
and it might not bring the benefits you expected. Therefore, the project may be a failure if we
lose sight of the benefits that it's meant to be bringing.

Now one thing you could question in PRINCE2 is, "Well really, what's the difference between the
scope and the benefits?" The scope is exactly what the project will deliver. What does it
include? Well, the benefits is the answer of the question, "Why is that scope good for us? Why
is that scope there?" Because when we are managing scope, if we're saying, "Well, we're
running out of money, we're running out of time", we might have to do less. We might have to
change our scope. How we change our scope will be guided by our understanding of the

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benefits we need to achieve. Because if there are key benefits that we are managing and
monitoring and keeping an eye on, then that's going to guide us to say, "Well we can't drop
these things from the scope, because if we do, we won't achieve those benefits that we really do
need to get value out of this project."

So these are the pillars in our definitions of what is a project, what does a project contain. We've
talked about the fact that a project in PRINCE2 is somewhat specific, so what else is specific to
PRINCE2 that a project must have, or must be, in order to be considered a PRINCE2 project?
Well, in a nutshell, we need to apply the PRINCE2 principles. We need to meet the
requirements that are set out in the PRINCE2 themes, and we have to have processes that
satisfy, or do, what the PRINCE2 processes are trying to do. Lastly, we need to use the
PRINCE2 techniques, or equivalent techniques, that are doing much the same things. These
are things that we're going to go through in more detail in the upcoming discussions that we'll
have about each of these points.

So, if the project is this temporary thing that we do, and it has some variables to it, and it has
some key elements, then what is the project management? Or rather, the project manager?
What is their role? Well, the project manager is the one, the person, responsible for the plan.
Now, you might also say that they're also responsible for the execution of the plan, because if it
doesn't go to plan, they get kicked. Well, yes, that's also true, but we're starting at the
beginning.

The project manager is there to create the plan, because project management is based in the
idea that a project is, in simple terms, the conversion of some resources -- money, time, skill --
that get converted into benefits over a period of time. That's an almost scientific formula that
says, "We take these things, these resources and skills et cetera, we convert them, and we work
on stuff, and out comes at the end of it, these good things that we enjoy." So simply put, it's
turning money and effort into useful outcomes, and this of course takes time to do.

Now that's a very simplistic view of what project management is all about, but because this
change is not business-as-usual stuff, it's outside of all of the policy and procedure documents
that we might be able to rely upon for all of our business-as-usual activity. So what do we do?
We don't have a PMP document to follow in order change from 'A' to 'B'. So the project itself
needs a plan. Such a plan needs to be thorough, and it needs to be managed, because any
such plan is going to have only a limited amount of predictability to it. We can't figure out
everything in advance. We can't make our plan foolproof. But we can make our plan adaptive,
and flexible, and can respond to changes in reality along the way.

So this is the ethos that says that no plan survives contact with reality. Things change. Things
don't go to plan, and somebody, someone, needs to know about it and do something about it,
and that is the project manager. The two reasons why a plan can fail. One is that we can't know
everything in advance. We can only try to predict certain things, and perhaps fill gaps in our
knowledge later. The second is that things will change. What was once will perhaps be no
longer. What we expected is not, or does not, perhaps happen. So the plan itself, whilst
essential, is not sufficient. It needs careful monitoring, for any deviations, or for other threats to
its effectiveness. Its effectiveness for what, exactly? Well, its ability to deliver the benefits,
because it's the benefits that are the test of its value, the value of the project.

So the project manager is there to ensure that the plan is made, the plan is made well, the plan
is complete, has considered all that it needs to, and that the relevant variables -- the six
variables that we've mentioned earlier -- that they are all monitored, and that we will know if

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anything happens that we need to take action on. That action could be either to change the plan
in order to achieve something different that's more realistic, or to change the actions being taken
to make them more likely to achieve the plan. Thus in project management, or for the project
manager, we get the axiom, "Plan, delegate, monitor, and control." Decide what to do, decide
who will do it, check that it gets done, and do something about it when it's not. Project manager
has this responsibility.

So what else is there in PRINCE2 that we might need to worry about? Well there's principles,
themes, processes and techniques, which we've alluded to before. Let’s cover them briefly.

The principles define what needs to be done, but not how to do it. But the principles also give us
an idea of a way of thinking, about how this project should be managed. It also leads us to a
philosophy of how decisions could be made. So knowing these principles, knowing how they
work within a project, is important.

Now there are seven principles, all of them important, and they aren't unique to project
management thinking. Some of these are sensible; things that you can apply to broader aspects
of business. Those are things like... Learning from experience is one principle. Having clear
responsibilities is another. Tailoring to suit the situation, to suit the project. These are sensible
ideas that we might value and think are good things in any business endeavour. But in
PRINCE2, they are essential criteria, that says that a PRINCE2 project must have all of these
principles in it. Now PRINCE2 in particular makes some effort when talking about tailoring.
PRINCE2 helps us by defining what we can tailor, and what we really shouldn't. Not everything
is up for grabs, but some things should be flexible. So whilst tailoring is by itself a mandatory
principle, changing the wrong things is, shall we say, not very princely.

The themes. These are the things that we need to take care of throughout the project. They're
never ending. This is the stuff that if we dropped the ball on them, our project would fail
something important. So these are things like quality, and risk, and of course, progress. Stuff
that we need to keep an eye on, on an ongoing basis. PRINCE2 outlines what these themes
are, and says that to be a PRINCE2 project we need to keep an eye on all of these things.

Then we get to the meaty part of PRINCE2, which is the processes. PRINCE2 is a process
driven methodology. So what do we mean by this? Well, a process is defined as a set of
structured activities for a specific outcome. We take certain inputs, and we get certain outputs
from any particular process. In this way it might sound similar to other methodologies, but the
PRINCE2 actions are less prescriptive than others. The process asks us to do things like check
this, consider that, determine this, review that, define whatever, et cetera. It's not so much as a
join-the-dots, step-by-step activity, as it is a checklist of the good things that we need to do. It
doesn't tell you how to consider something, perhaps. It just tells you that you really should
consider it, and why, and where it fits into the framework of other activities.

So each activity is going to have its inputs and its outputs shown in PRINCE2, but we need to
decide exactly how to do any particular activity that yields those outputs. So when we're on a
PRINCE2 project, we use this framework so that everyone knows what needs to be done. That
they know what processes we will be using, what expectations we have. That they know which
principles of project management are important to us. That we know what themes we will be
managing throughout. It's a guiding light that shines on the path forward, but without forcing us
to stay only in the middle.

This brings us to the end of lecture 1A.

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