Patrick Mayfield

PRINCE2 2009 Edition is Launched

What is used in 20,000 organisations across 150 countries?

Answer: the PRINCE2 project management method.

And last night I attended the launch of the new edition at OGC's Cavendish Conference Centre, London.

Most of the luminaries involved in the history of PRINCE2 were there; those who authored it, published and those who set exams against it. I managed to snap this picture of the authoring team:

They are (from left to right) our John Edmonds of pearcemayfield; Nigel Bennett, Sun Microsystems; Sue Taylor, APMG PRINCE2 Examiner; Bob Patterson, Fujitsu Services; and Andy Murray, Outperform. The person on the far right is Mike Ashton of Sun Microsystems, who helped manage on of the 13 pilots of the refreshed method. It's encouraging to know that the new edition had such a thorough field testing.

John and I also linked up with another recent author, Sue Vowler, who was the lead author of P3O. Sue is looking a lot happier these days now she has the book project behind her.

Finally, it was really great to see Zoe Peden, formerly TSO, who was my project manager on the MSP re-authoring project, and who started the PRINCE2 re-authoring project and recruited John as one of the authors.

Whilst there I picked up a copy of the companion volume: Directing Successful Projects with PRINCE2(tm). This book is aimed at senior managers who sponsor projects and sit on Project Boards. An initial glance tells me this is good stuff. More later.

Our Breakfast Briefings, led by John, will be as follows:

• University of Leicester, Tuesday, 14th July
• British Council, London, Thursday, 16th July 
• University of Cardiff, Tuesday, 21st July  
• Imperial College, London, Tuesday, 28th July 
• Oxford University Press, Oxford, 18th August  

all running from 0800 to 1000.

Finally, do you want to be trained now in the new edition? Well, we'll have courses in place with exams to the new book from the week commencing 6th July.

How Refreshing! PRINCE2 has a makeover

Yesterday the first batch of the new edition of the PRINCE2 Manual arrived at the office. As one of the authors, my colleague John's name appears in justifiable glory a few pages in.

Its gratifying to see that the refreshed edition has followed the design approach of MSP, such as there is now an earlier chapter on the Principles of PRINCE2 project management. John and I will be working through the implications of this with the folk who have booked onto our seminar at the Best Practice Showcase later this month.

There are only seven principles (as with MSP). In the case of PRINCE2 they are:

Continued business justification
Learn from experience
Defined roles and responsibilities
Manage by stages
Manage by exception
Focus on products
Tailor to suit the project environment

To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling, "If you can do all those then you are a PRINCE2 Project Manager, my son."

The new PRINCE2 book is a slightly different shape and size to its predecessor. The 'old' edition was some 457 pages. This new edition is a slimmed down 327. This has been achieved largely by ditching the so-called 'sub-processes' in the process model. I understand that some of the PRINCE2 examiners are weeping and gnashing their teeth. Well, the rest of the project management community is rejoicing. I never understood the concept of 'sub-process' anyway: either it is a process or it isn't.

Tailoring is now normal. It always was, but this edition makes the point in visible, emphatic, unavoidable terms.

Already press releases by various pundits are getting some points more or less wrong about the new edition. It is not a revolutionary new departure; it is not PRINCE3; it is not even 'PRINCE2:2009.' It is simply the 2009 Edition of PRINCE2.

Nor, as I have read, are the Principles optional. If some of these eager commentators bothered to read the book it clearly says:

"It is the adoption of these principles that characterizes whether a project is using PRINCE2, not the adoption of processes and documents alone. The principles facilitate good use of PRINCE2 by ensuring that the method is not applied in an overly prescriptive way or in name only,but applied in a way that is sufficient to contribute to the success of the project." (Page 11)

Sane words indeed, which will be cheered by every common sense practitioner.

So please, don't let the dogmatists tell you otherwise. Beware of geeks swearing rifts.

Finally, with the help of some of our key clients, we are running a series of free breakfast briefings around the UK from mid-July to mid-August. Running from about 8am, for a couple of hours you can have the chance to ask John about what's different in this new edition over breakfast, and see how it will promote the best management practice of projects. We will be running these briefings at:

    The University of Leicester (14th July)
    The British Council, Whitehall, London (16th July)
    The University of Cardiff (21st July)
    Imperial College, London (28th July)
    Oxford University Press, (mid-August - date to be confirmed)

Call (01235 227252) or email our office to book your free place before places run out. And when you do come, please introduce yourself; it would be good to meet you.

Sorry ... we're out of vanilla

When a project manager applies the PRINCE2 Method 'as is', without any conscious tailoring or scaling to the business context or the needs of the project, when they apply it 'from the book', it has come to be called 'Vanilla PRINCE2'. And yet PRINCE2 itself always stated that it had to be tailored. (Believe me, I helped write the original edition.)

Yesterday I was in Cardiff as the keynote speaker for the launch of the Cardiff Centre for Lifelong Learning's

Project Management 'Alumni': a community of practice for people who been trained through the Cardiff University Unit's public project management training programme. I was glad to do this. The Centre are a valued business partner, they source their accredited project and programme management training from us, and as their name implies, they believe in the value of lifelong learning. I was asked to speak on the subject of 'Being a Project Managers in Troubled Times'.

'I hoped that I would see no more vanilla PRINCE2 projects ..'

Of course, I couldn't resist referring to the coming refresh of PRINCE2. We will be running a series of Breakfast Briefings on this around the UK, one of which will be hosted by Cardiff University on 21st July. One of the improvements I mentioned was how the scaling and tailoring of the Method will be made much more overt. So much so, I said that I hoped that I would see no more vanilla PRINCE2 projects, that is to say, projects where a practitioner had monolithically and indiscriminately applied the method 'as is'.

In the Q&A afterwards it was clear that I had struck a chord. Such vanilla applications of PRINCE2 betray an inability to think, to apply its principles to the context the project happens within.

So, I hope pretty soon we'll be out of vanilla...

Presenting, project management

uABC: (Un)acceptable Business Conduct

Just what is acceptable behaviour in business? In our work as consultants and trainers we come across a whole spectrum of cultures and what counts for 'normal' behaviour in organisations we work within.

Recently one of my sons gave me a DVD of the movie 'The Corporation'. ("The Corporation [DVD]" (Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott, Joel Baker)). The movie has been Released four years ago it has taken me a little while to catch up with this title, which I remember caused quite a stir at the time.

I suppose it falls into the Michael Moore genre of establishment-skeptic movie-length documentary. This work is about big business.

I found it to be well researched and produced, a worthy movie asking pertinent questions of our giants of globalisation, although it is somewhat selective in what it did present. At its heart is a thesis that if these global giants were human personalities then they would be psychopaths, behaving purely selfishly. And the way the movie develops this thesis is very clever, using an interesting presentation device: a behavioural profile that builds up the case during the first two-thirds of the movie.

It left me wondering why the company I belong to - albeit tiny by comparison with the subjects of this film - seems to express an entirely different personality, or so our clients tell us; a personality that unintentionally has built our brand, and a very positive one at that.

How did this happen?

I think the essential advantage of pearcemayfield is that we had a set of values established from the beginning, which we all live by consistently.

So what is acceptable behaviour in a business? In pearcemayfield our values drive the answer to that question in any context. They are our ABC of behaviour.

Seduction of the Short Term

One of the most damaging features of this recession is not so obvious. It is the drift to short term horizons. Because confidence has taken a knocking, because we are no longer as certain as we were about what the future will look like, then we take comfort in short-term decisions.

I think this can become a form of denial. We take comfort in the month-to-month perspective, because looking longer term can be too scary. The result is often short-term and short-sighted decision-making.

Recently a client told me,

"We are not going to make the mistake we made seven years ago. Then we hit hard times and stopped all investment in training. We regretted it three years later."

This is visionary thinking. It transcends a recessionary period.

The ability of this organisation to learn lessons such as this from the past is rare. This organisation, partly because of this ability to reflect and learn from its history, has become a market leader.

So how short term is your thinking? Are you willing to plan for, invest in, the future beyond recession? If not, what will you have in place when the tide turns?

Excellence in Exeter

Recently I and a colleague paid a business visit to the Met Office, which is headquartered in Exeter, Devon. It was the first time I had visited the new premises. (Previously the Met Office HQ was based in Bracknell, Berkshire.) I found an impressive new building, light and airy, with good facilities for a professional community, some of whom you would find at work all hours of the day.

After our meeting we were given a VIP tour of the machine rooms that now house some of the most advanced super computers and storage in the world. At one point I asked our guide, "Is there another machine room like this in the UK?" to which he replied, "Yes, it's just across the corridor," which is their back-up system.

I was told how the current system runs a global model of weather systems, to a level of detail of 40 square kilometres across the entire surface of the earth and to some 50 levels in the atmosphere above it. The new capability will increase this level of detail to 25 kilometre squares at 70 levels(!). The numbers I was given made my head spin. I'd heard of terabytes, but now I had been introduced to petabytes - a 1,000 terabytes - apparently the only sufficient unit now to measure the required processing capacity of the Met Office systems.

All kinds of organisations now buy forecasting services from the Met Office, from the NHS to the farming industry. No plane in the northern hemisphere takes off without a forecast from the Met Office. This saves untold amounts of fuel as aircraft can reduce loads to the optimal levels.

Then we were taken into the operations centre. The picture here doesn't do justice to the the impressive banks of screens we saw and the quiet buzz of Meteorologists going about their business.

My colleague and I came away feeling deeply impressed and proud of a British capability like this that is having a profound global impact for the good.

Communications, project management

The Bleeding Edge of Benefits Realisation

Last week I was co-leading a residential MSP course. The class was discussing Benefits Realisation Management and, among other things, this prompted a discussion around dis-benefits. We tried to explain that a dis-benefit was not a risk, since it is something that is predictable outcome of the programme, and would be something that should be managed - managed down in this case - as you would with any other benefit.

We were struggling for an apt illustration. Then one came to me.

Think of a surgical team (an illustration used before by Fred Brooks in his classic, The Mythical Man Month). Among the team there will be a surgeon or nurse whose particular role is to control the bleeding around the wound created by surgery. Bleeding is a consequence of conventional surgery. It has to happen. It's not desirable., but it is inevitable once the patient is cut open. [I trust you are not feeling faint and woozy ...] The appropriate response is not to try to avoid any bleeding - usualy futile - but to control the bleeding, to make sure there is not an excessive loss of blood during the procedure and after.

So when you think of a dis-benefit, think of bleeding; the bleeding edge of benefits realisation.

benefits management, benefits realisation management, programme

Missing Link, Gold Mine or Glue?

Now we have run some early P3O courses, how is the Guide and the course being received?

From the courses I've personally delivered, I've found this a very positive experience. P3O seems to generate some stimulating discussions on our 2-day course and is emerging in the minds of these early delegates as the 'Missing Link' in Best Management Practice Guidance from OGC about change through programmes and projects.

Last week, I trained a group of consultants in the Netherlands, and their consensus was that the Guide was a Gold Mine of nuggets that they could immediately use with their own clients. For example, the Value Matrix was a keen topic of conversation.

Whilst in the UK, a senior manager from the public sector said to me:

"The P3O model is the 'glue' [between portfolio, programme and project management]."

Here is an example of an early discussion in the Guide on 'Balancing the Portfolio' as we've represented it graphically in this Mind Map:

As an executive director myself, I found this helpful and clarifying in how we in pearcemayfield engage with our own change agenda.

So how has P3O been received so far? I would say it is creating a growing 'buzz' and a growing community of enthusiasts.

P3O, Portfolio Management

Collaborative Cardiff

What is a 'community of practice' when it comes to programme and project management?

I was invited to be part of an encouraging initiative yesterday in Cardiff - the launch of the Wales Community of Practice for Project & Programme Management - led by Cardiff City Council's PPM Centre for Excellence. Around 150 practitioners met for the day at City Hall to share and discuss various ideas and challenges, particularly in the public sector.

I spoke on the MSP 2007 Update and this seemed to generate one of the several buzzes going around the event. As well as briefings from suppliers, several practitioner case studies were presented including the St David's 2 Project.

One delegate from one of the welsh colleges asked me whether I thought programme and project management practice lagged behind the rest of the UK. I replied that I could only speak from what I had seen and heard, but that my impression was Wales did not lag, but was actually relatively progressive. I think there are two reasons for this:

1. Over the last twenty or thirty years there has been significant public investment in regeneration programmes, particularly in Cardiff. Early on there were some high profile embarrassments but in recent years there have been some resounding successes, such that Wales can hold its head up high. Witness the Millennium Stadium, the Welsh Assembly Building and, in fact, the whole Cardiff Bay Area development.
2. As a visitor from across the Severn River I notice a culture among the Welsh of positive collaboration. Lessons from one programme or project seem to travel more easily. Yesterday was a case in point.

So, well done Wales!

Communications, programme management

Reverse Culture Shock

Returning from Venezuela this week to the UK after spending the previous three weeks over Christmas and New Year almost without any exposure to the UK news media, I've had a strange sort of reverse culture shock: on returning I feel almost assaulted by its negativity.  

I know we are in recession and I know the war in Gaza is frightful, but we are called to obsess about the awful and what further awful things might happen. Having come back to this diet, I am seeing the irony, and the self-fulfilling nature of the negative. Pundits say things like, "People falling ill through flu may be not yet technically be an epidemic, but can we cope?!" And after an upbeat interview with the credible and competent Sir Stuart Rose, "Marks and Spencer may be warm and breathing ... but only just!" P-L-E-A-S-E. This is now verging on the ridiculous.

In pearcemayfield, I lead a great team and I'm acutely aware how bad trading conditions may become, but confidence in ourselves, our clients and our suppliers counts for a great deal. Yet I find it is the journalistic industry itself has spouted such negative propaganda in their voracious search for copy that this in itself breeds fear and undermines confidence - "Oh dear, there is now no confidence in business!", they will no doubt respond.

My friend and sometime co-presenter, Helen Whitten, of positveworks has written an interesting and useful piece on her blog.

I think I might watch the news less from now on and treat the little that I do read and hear with almost as much humorous skepticism as I do with TV advertising. And I think I'll do that positively!

Communications