TenForce – Pragmatic Project Management

Theoretically your executive/sponsor (or project board) decides how formal or bureaucratic you want your project to be. In practice, the PM drives the level of formality.

If you check the Prince2 methodology you indeed have to do a lot of reporting, informing, assessing …. But if you dig into it a bit deeper you’ll notice that it rarely uses terminology like ‘document’, ‘write’… (Except for the logs; where I think you can’t do without actual files or notes).

While all the processes in the Prince2 methodology are very useful and all the reporting and checks absolutely necessary; you can do all those things the way that fits you or your project best: orally, written documents, electronically filed, broadcasted via the intercom, saved on microfilm and registered in state archives….

If you don’t believe me; allow me to tell you a little story. I learned it from a colleague PM, Marc) He was waiting for his coffee at the coffee corner.The COO came along, and they started to chat.

COO	Hey Marc, do you know we’re planning to move? [Could this be a project?]
Marc	Mmh, no I didn’t. What is the actual reason? [Finding out purpose of the project]
COO	Well, there are a number of reasons: high rent, long distance between HQ and warehouses … [Reasons for doing the project]
Marc	I see. And who is going to do it? [PM, supplier…?]
COO	Funny, you’d ask! I was thinking of assigning you this task [Assignment of PM (SU1)]
Marc	Great, you can count me in. And are you going to pay and approve the required budget? [Finding out executive]
COO	Yep [assignment of executive (SU1)]
Marc	OK, Can we contract a moving company or will we use our own people and trucks [project approach (SU5)]
COO	I want minimal impact on the business [project constraint € project brief (SU4)], so contracting a moving company is a good idea.
Marc	Anybody who can help me on this task? [Designing the project board (SU2)]
COO	You need to talk to the call center manager, his requirements will be critical [senior user]; and the office manager because she needs to draft the floor plan and she normally contacts the movers [senior supplier]. I’ll ensure they get on board [appoint the project board (SU3)]
Marc	All right, any idea yet of the planning or specific issues or risks you already know [info for project brief (SU4)]
COO	I want to be moved before Xmas; and we absolutely can’t miss that date; at any reasonable cost! [Content project brief (SU4)]
Marc	OK, give me 2 weeks to work out a plan, business case and get things going. [IP stage plan (SU6)]
COO	Perfect. [SU phase completed]

The conversation took a couple minutes, no formal documents, and all major aspects of the start-up processes are tackled.
Prince2 is great, isn’t it!

So it’s all about how you implement it! And a lot depends on the type of organization and board-members you collaborate with.

Jan