At our second PRINCE2 Refresh Breakfast Briefing this morning, we found ourselves, thanks to our hosts in the British Council, in a beautiful conference room overlooking Admiralty Arch just off Trafalgar Square in Central London. There was a good turnout of knowledgeable people from a number of our client organisations. (One delegate even confessed to being a reader of this blog!)
One topic that prompted an interesting question from the floor was the principle of Learn from Experience. Where was the evidence that this was happening rather than just capturing 'lessons' and then moving on? John Edmonds confirmed that the new edition now calls the repository the 'Lessons Log' because until these are put into practice they are not learned. (It's obvious when you reflect on that for a moment.)
So imagine a situation in future where assurance people and auditors were to start with the PRINCE2 Principles. Might such folk look for evidence that the principles are being practised? How often has project assurance gone into spurious comparison with the detail of a method or standard when such details might not be relevant to the project in hand?
So in this case assurance would be looking for examples of where lessons earlier from the project or previous projects are informing and adjusting the management of this particular project. Wouldn't that be a better more mature way to confirm best practice?
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