Just back from the PRINCE User Group at Stoke-on-Trent my overall impression was that this was definitely one of the better PRINCE User Group conferences that I have attended over the last thirteen years.
There is much to report on but I will a short themed posting here and reflect on some of the other points that arose later.
There were three particular presentations on implementing best practice in large organisations:the UK Government's approach from Alan Harpham, Manchester City Council and Barclays. I found these common themes in all three:
- they all treated these implementations (knowingly or not) as business change programmes, where behaviours were more important than merely installing the artifacts of best practice (templates and procedures);
- all three identified divisions, departments, specialist business units that were power stakeholder groups and gave them ownership through some best practice group internal to them (e.g. Centres of Excellence or COE's);
- the implementation of best practice was given an owned branding or flavour generally but particularly within each COE, but remained generic best practice; and
- each COE was given a minimum 'core' of best practice (e.g. a core PRINCE2 project management) that they were encouraged to supplement in tailoring to the particular needs of their unit, but they were not allowed to mess with the core, which in turn provided a cross-organisational lingua franca.
Finally, Lt Col Chris Barkes of HQ Land and I did an impromptu duet on Does MSP Work ... Really? when we were asked to stand in the breach for a speaker who could not make it. I will post the results of that session here tomorrow.
