All I need to know about Management and Leadership I learned from Dungeons and Dragons #PMOT#Agile #D&D

Recently I had the opportunity to play Dungeons and Dragons again. I hadn’t played since I was in high school and didn’t realize how much I missed it. D&D and I drifted away  after version 3.5 and all the advanced rules. I had heard great things about the version 5 so I thought it deserved another look. The thing that really triggered it was a fascinating article about how some middle-aged Dungeon Masters are becoming professional Dungeon Masters.

If you are interested in the article here is link: How to be a professional dungeon master host

Forming the Fellowship

So it turns out that if you work in Information Technology, all you need to form a fellowship is to mention you would like to play D&D. In the space of 15 minutes, I had six people wanting to play, four of them Druids. (Don’t ask me why, Druids were always my least favourite character class)

Before I knew it we had a party formed and were going on our first campaign. Those first sessions confirmed that my Management and Leadership style was indeed formed in those early Dungeon and Dragons sessions in my youth. I was amazed how many similarities there were between a good fellowship and great team.

Shared Vision

So I started off with the typical starting point for all good campaigns – Ye Old Tavern. Unlike my first D&D experience, the fellowship didn’t just accept the fact that we found ourselves in the Tavern. The fellowship spent an inordinate amount of time discussing their backgrounds, motivations, and history that would have brought themselves to this point. The was the first metaphor that applied to all good teams – everyone needs to understand what the shared vision is and why they are there. Only once that is understood can the team take on a new mission and campaign. Unfortunately, most of the time we just group people together and expect they will function as a team or fellowship.

Collaborative Storytelling

When I started to think about playing again I found a book called “Of Dice and Men” that reminisced about the memories of Dungeons and Dragons and told some of the history behind the game. One of the concepts the book introduced to me was that Dungeons and Dragons was so successful because unlike normal games, Dungeons and Dragons involved Collaborative Storytelling. Collaborative Storytelling involves the Dungeon Master creating the genus of the story and then works in collaboration with the fellowship to modify the story to create the best story, outcomes, and enjoyment. The primary thing is to accomplish the quest, but the path or plot may change based on the actions and decisions of the team.

Second metaphor for great teams and leaders. They start out with a shared vision and genus of what they want to accomplish, but the entire team contributes and changes the story as it evolves. Especially key to this is the fact that the Dungeon Master is not separate from the team. He or She doesn’t create an exact plot that the team needs to follow. (Although some Dungeon Masters, Leaders, and Manager do try this approach with very limited success)

For a truly great team, the Dungeon Master, Leader, or Manager must view themselves as a member of the team just playing a different role.

Now that doesn’t mean the Dungeon Master, Leader or Manager makes decisions by consensus. Sometimes they need to make a decision or ruling but they need to remember why they are making the decision. What is the intent of the fellowship or campaign? And most importantly a great Dungeon Master, Leader, or Manager encourages and incorporates team feedback to change the quest and story. It isn’t their story to solely own.

Helping Each Other

And finally the behaviour I notice most in Dungeon and Dragons fellowships is the coming to the aid of each other. It is extremely common for members to heal each other and shield each other from harm. It is the one behaviour I notice in every fellowship I have ever been part of. There is something about the game that really encourages risk taking that benefits others over yourself.

Summary

Perhaps instead of other ‘team building’ activities, we just need to break out the 20 sided die and remind ourselves how we succeed together. Even better, we should all take turns as the Dungeon Master to remind ourselves that the best Dungeon Masters, Leaders, and Managers exists to help the players level up, gain treasure, and enjoy themselves while solving a quest.

 

 

 

 

 

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#Agile versus #Agenda – #Rugby versus #Football #PMOT #JIRA #Sciforma #Favre

We were talking the other day about software products that are used to help the execution of projects in either an Agile or Traditional manner. In particular, the discussion was the difference in models used in JIRA versus Sciforma. JIRA follows the Agile or KanBan model while Sciforma follows the Traditional or Scheduled model. The difference between the two models seemed to be grounded in the concepts of whether planning is done in the temporal dimension. (i.e. have we created a preliminary schedule of when activities or tasks would be done and considered dependencies) In fact, you can’t plan in JIRA temporalily without buying add-on components like Tempo-Planner. (Which is probably where they ended up getting the name from)

Rugby versus Football

First of all, when I mention Football I am referring to the American or Canadian version of football. Sorry european and world Soccer fans.

It then became apparent how good of an analogy Rugby versus Football is for Agile versus Traditional.

There were three important observations:

1. 1. 1. Agile isn’t better than Traditional and Traditional isn’t better than Agile. They are fundamentally different games. The methods and objectives are different.
      2. Although both sports have positions and specializations, Rugby players play in 100% of the game (pending injury substitutions), while Football players typically play 50% of the game. This is similar to Football where there is more specilization and subsituting of players.
      3. And perhaps the biggest difference – Rugby is a game more built on flow and reaction, where Football is built more on set plays that are planned and scheduled. (See where I am going with this?)

The point again should be that the games and objectives are different and that one game is no better than the other one.

Agile versus Agenda

My next thought was if we could find a nice, short term for Traditional like Agile that helped to convey the difference between Agile and Traditional like the analogy of Rugby and Football did.

When we look at the definition of Agile, we get:

“relating to or denoting a method of project management, used especially for software development, that is characterized by the division of tasks into short phases of work and frequent reassessment and adaptation of plans.”

It took me quite a while and lot of research, but I think I finally settled on Agenda. Agenda is a term I don’t believe I have heard used when discussing Sotware Development. When we look at the definition of Agenda, we get:

“a list or outline of things to be considered or done“

The important difference here is that an Agenda is a list with a temporal dimension. In addition, an Agenda is perceived to be an initial plan that is to be modified and added to as agreed to. In fact, the first item usually asked in all meetings that have an Agenda, is if the Agenda needs to be modified.

Perfect. Agenda Software Development. Like Agile Software Development, but with an initial planned schedule, outline, and temporal dimension.

Finally a term that conveys the accurate intent of Agile Software Development with a schedule. And that schedule is to be changed, modified, enhanced, and pivoted.

Yeah, Agenda Software Development. That’s the ticket. And in an Agenda Software Development project where Brett Favre, the gunslinger, is the Project Manager. Yea, that’s the ticket.

 

 

Why #athletes make great #Project team members #PMOT #DnD

I was attending a Manitoba Coaches meeting last week we were discussing the topic of Emotional Intelligence in both leaders and teammates. Emotional Intelligence is usually discussed in conjunction with the ‘soft skills’ that people have.

Emotional Intelligence is usually defined as “the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically. ”

There are four fundamental aspects of Emotional Intelligence : Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management.

Although Emotional Intelligence can be augmented through training and education, there is the acknowledgement that some people have a propensity to have high Emotional Intelligence. The usual Nature/Nurture discussion arose and it was agreed that Emotional Intelligence is usually built through the relationships that people have in their early years.

Epiphany

It was discussed that people who are Emotionally Intelligent are proficient at:

• Collaboration
• Communication
• Accountability
• Independence
• Teamwork
• Leadership
• Problem Solving
• Critical Thinking
• Listening
• Conflict Resolution
• Managing their Emotions

I had an epiphany that team sports is one of the few things that provide consistent, repeated, and evolutionary experiences in most, if not all, of the characteristics listed above that Emotionally Intelligent people excel in. Team mates experience and grow in all of the proficiencies listed above due to the nature of team sports and shared purpose.

In particular, team sports are one of the few activities where peers hold each other accountable, manage conflict, problem solve, manage their emotions, and take turns leading in their own way.

Summary

Team sports are critical not only for physical and mental health, but also project health. Great project team mates have usually been great team mates previously in all sorts of sports.

The lesson? If your children want to be developers, sign them up for Hockey, Baseball, Basketball, and Volleyball. Their future team mates will thank you later.

If they really don’t like sports of any kind, get them to play Dungeons and Dragons. And the computer D&D games don’t count. They need to sit down with friends and learn how to co-operate and deal with looking each other in the eye when they betray or disappoint each other.

That’s accountability – Nerd Style.

The Future of #AI Augmented Project Management is misguided #PMOT #Agile

I haven’t read a Project Management article for a long time that spurred me to write a bog entry within 24 hours. I had that experience yesterday after reading The Augmented Project Manager by Treb Gatte. This article provided an introduction to the interesting application of Artificial Intelligence to the Project Management role.

Treb discussing the three areas of Project Management that could be affected by the application of Artificial Intelligence:

• Planning
• Resource Allocation
• Tracking

Planning

Treb discuss the future of AI Augmented Project Planning:

“Imagine if your scheduling bot generates a proposed project plan, based on the aggregated and anonymized experiences of similar sized companies doing the same type of project. Today, we use tools like Monte Carlo to simulate this information. The bot could incorporate real world data, potentially yielding better results.”

Let that thought percolate while we moved onto Resource Allocation.

Resource Allocation

Treb then illustrates the possible future of Resource Allocation:

“For example, your resourcing bot determines that you need a social media expert on your project on April 5^th for two days of work. It searches data sources like LinkedIn and your public cloud calendar to find a list of suitable and available candidates. Three are West Coast of the U.S., one is in Paris and one is in Sydney. It then automatically reaches out to these candidates with offers. If multiple people accept, it automatically manages the negotiation. Once complete, the planning bot is informed, a virtual desktop with requisite software is provisioned, user login credentials are generated and the specific task information is sent to them. When the job is complete and rated as satisfactory, the bot coordinates with your accounts payable system to pay the freelancer. The planning bot automatically updates the plan and pushes the data to the BI dashboards.”

I’m not sure this illustration involves much Artificial Intelligence as it really if just about integrating with existing technologies and platforms – but I digress.

Tracking

And then finally Treb discusses what the future of AI Augmented Project Tracking might look like:

“Project feedback loops on work are awful. The largest challenge is incomplete data, which results from increasingly fragmented work days, limits of the worker’s memory and tools that rely on human input. It is also incomplete as it serves little benefit to the person entering the data.

Workers are overwhelmed with tasks arriving via multiple communication channels and no consolidated view.

Imagine a world where the timesheet is antiquated. Today, we have systems such as Microsoft Delve that know what content you’ve touched. We have IP-based communication systems that know what collaborations you’ve conducted. We have machine learning capabilities that can determine what you’ve discussed and the content of the documents you’ve edited. This week, we have facial recognition capabilities and other features that can track and interpret your movements. Given all of this, why is a timesheet necessary?”

Opinion

Oh boy, where to start? It seems like most of focus of AI Augmented Project Management seems to be on the collection of data that will make the results better.

• “If we have better historical data, we can plan better”
• “If we have better, faster access to resources, we can complete tasks better and faster”
• “If we have better real-time data on tasks, we can report status and adapt better”

The Problem

The problem was all of these perspectives is they seem to be promoting, advocating, and recommending less human interaction between Project Managers and their teams. If we only had AI augmented Project Management, we can go back to our closed doors and avoid the pesky human interactions. Agile Project Managers realize that human interaction is he crucible of project success – AI Augmented Project Management seems to have forgotten that.

Yes, planning is hard.

Yes, resourcing and building high-performing teams are hard.

Yes, tracking and adapting the project is difficult.

But the answer is more interaction, communication, coaching, caring, and collaboration. Not less.

I’ve even seen another article promoting that chatbots could help to get status updates from team members. Oh yeah, that will greatly improve communication of information. Developers will just love getting the impersonal 9:03 am greeting of “What are you planning to do today, what did you complete yesterday?”

Summary

I believe the idea of AI Augmented Project Management will end up on the trash heap with the CASE tools that were going to replace developers in the 80’s, Artificial Intelligence can assist augmenting individual competencies, but not replacing team communication, interaction, and problem solving. Perhaps, there is a role for Artificial Intelligence in reviewing plans and highlighting possible areas of concern regarding scheduling or estimation that a human can review. But the automated  creation of plans, resource allocation, task assignment, and task tracking is misguided.

The idea that worthy Project Manager work is stakeholder management,  but not team collaboration, engagement and communication is wrong.

Software Development is a team sport, and requires collaboration, communication, and engagement to plan, resource, and adjust. The idea that you can broadcast the skills you need and just drop a resource in to do a task and not worry about culture, fit, team dynamics, and personalities is pure hubris. These are people working on complex, nasty problems. They need time to gel, bond, and collaborate.

Sports is frequently identified as an area Artificial Intelligence has helped. Absolutely. Artificial Intelligence can refine skills like throwing a football and shooting a puck. Assisting in team dynamics and planning remains elusive. Coaches still call the plays and adjust plans. Even coaches that leverage technology realize that…

 

Best #Coaching book ever! #TheCoachingHabit www.boxofcrayons.com/the-coaching-habit-book

I must admit when I was strolling through Indigo the other day, I wasn’t looking for a coaching book. In fact, it wasn’t even on my mind. I was there to buy my son a book because he left his copy at school and needed to finish reading the book by Monday. (Sound familiar, parents?)

So while my son tried to find his book, I sauntered over to the business book section and came across this little gem.

Two Reasons

This book is a gem for two reasons; the content is awesome and the author can actually write. I point this out because I usually slog through business books because the content is great, but the delivery is lacking. This book was very different, I picked it up on a Sunday and finished it on Wednesday. The book to easy to read, has great anecdotes throughout, and also a sense of humour to lighten the mood.

Michael Bungay Steiner introduces the 7 questions that are key to a coaching discussion. I won’t go into exquisite detail here as I want you to run out and buy the book. But he starts off with the Kickstart question of “What’s on your mind?” and concludes it with the Learning question of “What was most useful for you?”. I don’t believe I have seen a Coaching method or book that includes a step for reflection and a retrospective. That combined with the question of asking “So what is the real challenge for you?” helps to cut through gossip, complaining, and unproductive coaching sessions/meetings. In short, this book is a must have for every manager and aspiring coach.

You even get a bonus of a brilliant 5 step method of facilitating a Strategy discussion. But I’m not going to tell you what it is, you have to run out and buy the book. There even is a complete set of entertaining videos to complement the chapters and reinforce the learning.

Run, don’t walk to your nearest bookstore or amazon.

 

The #Two traits great #Managers have #PMOT #Coach

Managers and management in general usually have a bad reputation. That is probably  doubly so for middle managers. These roles are usually the first ones identified for job reduction and attrition. Why is this? Truth be told, it is an exceptionally difficult role that not many people excel at. Usually people excel at one aspect or another of the role, but not at all of the aspects.

What makes a great manager?

So what makes a great manager? The manager must be an agent for the decisions and directions that come from above AND be an advocate for the teams that ultimately execute the work. Unfortunately, most managers tend to primarily identify with either agency or advocacy, but not both. Most managers focus their effort on managing the teams, but not managing the executives. Managing-up is one of the most difficult and challenging skills and most also be welcomed by the culture of the organization.

It is a delicate balancing act that experienced managers deftly handle – the right balance of agency and advocacy that promotes high-performing teams both above and below them. If this balance is not appropriate the manager usually defaults to just concentrating on one or the other – to the detriment of both executives and teams.

But when a manager has the right balance, they build credibility with both executives and teams. Once that credibility is built, the managers are then invited in to discussion and designs to influence, contribute, coach, innovate, and inspire both executives and teams.

Two Traits

The two traits that a manager or Project Manager must have to reach this level of proficiency are Business Knowledge and Realization Knowledge.

• The manager or Project Manager must understand the business domain, business strategy, and culture of the organization they are an agent for. Why does the Business Exist? What is the Strategic Plan? Who are their internal and external clients? Who are their competitors? What are their values and principles?
• The manager of Project Manager must also understand the realization domain and implementation processes as well. Whether the realization practice be accounting, engineering, software development, or teaching – the manager needs to understand the work and the profession. How do we implement changes? What professional skills are required? Who are the experts and why? What are the industry-accepted best practices? What are the new methods and technologies on the horizon? What practices are no longer being used?

Only when the manager has both these traits, will they have the credibility to be invited in, contribute, coach, influence, and help to innovate the strategy of the business and the implementation of business initiatives.

This is a not an easy combination to achieve and the lack of the these traits can lead to just ‘paper-pushing’ as the manager doesn’t have the credibility or knowledge to do more. Most times a manager may have one or the other trait and while this is beneficial, true high-performing teams arise when the manager or Project Manager has both.

Our responsibilities as managers is not to just perform administrative duties, but to relentlessly inquire and learn both about the business domain and the realization domain. Only then will the manager be an integral member that makes the executive and team members better by coaching up and down.

#PMO Visual Management Tools #PMOT #Agile

I have now been the Manager of the Project Management Office at the University for Manitoba for over two years. One of the first items I struggled with was trying to determine how to visually communicate the status of the portfolio of projects in a visual, intuitive way. I was a huge proponent of visual reporting and communication from my days as an Agile consultant. A textual or tabular report of the portfolio of projects just doesn’t inform stakeholders easily as to the breadth, depth, and status of the portfolio of projects.

Epiphany

Late one day, I had a discussion with our CIO in regards to how he had seen a radar diagram used as a means to communicate the life-cycle of Infrastructure within an environment. After a short discussion, we had formulated a plan as to how it could be used to display the portfolios of our projects.

We had devised a template to show the following:

• Separate portfolio sections with
  • Projects represented by coloured circles of different sizes
  • Status of projects indicated by circle colour
  • Projects on hold indicated by a diamond
  • New projects shown by a distinct circle icon
  • Size of project indicated by size of circle
  • Indication of a project being over budget by a halo around the circle
  • Project phase indicated by the circle’s proximity to center of the radar
  • Project’s progress indicated by the circle’s overlay to show percentage complete

Results

The Portfolio Radar diagram has been refined over the months. but it is probably the most requested document the Project Management Office produces.

Recently, I have created a personal radar that I use to track my to-do items. Like a lot of managers, I usually have 10-20 items on the go that need periodic attention. These items can usually be categorized into 3-4 “portfolios”. The radar template is much more appropriate than the standard kanban board used for projects as the items can be recurring and of extended duration. Some of them can be standing items which are never really done. The “Personal Radar” is a great diagram for showing which items need to have attention paid to them next week and which ones can wait.

Like the Portfolio Radar, the Personal Radar indicates:

• Separate portfolio sections with
  • Items represented by stickies
  • Urgency of attention indicated by stickie colour
  • Stickie phase indicated by the Stickie’s proximity to center of the radar

This “Personal Radar” for the PMO Manager has been a great assistance to stay of top of multitude of items required in the PMO. The Personal Radar gets reviewed at the start of the week to plan the week and at the end of the week to ensure the items received the attention they deserved.

So far, this is becoming a key deliverable to stay on top of items. An example of the Personal Radar is show below:

Summary

The Portfolio Radar and Personal Radar have been excellent diagrams to use for communication of project status and task management. I’d love to hear your experiences with other means of visual methods for Project Management and personal management.

Student of the Game #PMOT #NHLJETS @srogalsky @MarkScheifele55

As I sit down to author my first Blog entry of 2019, I reviewed my recent Blogs. Although I knew I hadn’t Blogged for a while, I wasn’t aware that I had not Blogged since July 2018. I had gotten quite busy in my new role of Manager of the Project Management Office at the University of Manitoba, but I was unaware just how busy I had become. So one of my resolutions for 2019 is to create a new Blog entry every month.

In hindsight, joining the University of Manitoba was one of the best career moves I have ever made. I have grown immensely over the last 2+ years and learned so much from colleagues both within Information Services and Technology and with external units and faculties. I would highly recommend the experience working in Higher Education. The people are brilliant problem solvers and the problems are complicated and have high impact. But that isn’t the reason for this first post of 2019.

Student of the Game

I was fortunate enough to have worked with Red River College during my career and was honoured to be invited to Keynote the BTM Tech mash-up they were putting on. All I had to do was come up with a topic! I talked about options with the organizers and we discussed presenting on how projects are managed at the University of Manitoba and how the work environment is different between Private Companies, Government. Consulting, and Higher Education. I still wanted something to leave with the students in regards to habits and practices of successful team mates. I eventually landed on a Student of the Game summary at the end of the presentation. I remember talking multiple times with Steve Rogalsky on the concept of Student of the Game, We both had felt it described a set of behaviours that were inherent in all the great team mates we had worked with. Even better I was going to connect it with Mark Scheifele for a Winnipeg Jets connection. I think I had a winner!

So what do we refer to when Steve and I mentioned team mates that were “students of the game”? I came across a great article “How to become a Student of the Game” by Anthony Iannarino. In this article, Tony makes the following three excellent points:

1. Study the Fundamentals
   • The best performers in any endeavor spend a great deal of time studying the fundamentals. They read, study, and practice the basics. The best performers are willing to spend time on the plateaus, plugging away at the basics, even when it feels like they aren’t making any real progress.
2. Make Distinctions
   • Reading, studying, and practicing are what allow high performers to make distinctions. They start to notice things. They notice things about themselves, and they notice things about others. They start to see how tiny changes produce outsized results.
3. Teaching and Learning
   • The highest performers seek out teachers. They know that someone who has already had the experiences and made the distinctions can help them understand their own experiences and make their own distinctions. They’re excited about the prospect of someone facilitating their learning.
   • These high performers also learn by teaching others. The very act of sharing what you have learned takes your mastery to new levels. It means you have to think deeply about the how, what, and why something works.

Mark Scheifele

I then connected the concept of “Student of the Game” with Mark Scheifele and reviewed how Mark is a great example of being a “Student of the Game”

• Selected 7th overall in 2011 in NHL Entry draft
• Sought out Dale Hawerchuk at 17 to seek advice and counsel
• Added Hall of Famer and skills coach Adam Oates to his off-season workouts
• Attended Gary Roberts Summer Hockey Boot Camps every year for 6 years
• Never swears on the ice – Respect for the Game

Summary

I added the connection to Mark Scheifele because of the concept of having Respect for the Game. This is something Tony did not mention but I think is critical for being a Student of the Game. The presentation even allowed me to connect the “Student of the Game” concept to the Agile Principles!

• Continuous Learning
  • Find a Mentor or Role Model
  • Get on Twitter – follow other experts and read
• Reflection
  • Review your work and others to spot opportunities
• Collaborate and Learn from others
  • Review others work and practices
  • We are smarter than me
• No Ego
  • Be respectful of others and their contributions
  • Understand that there are always things to learn and get better at
• Be Brave to be wrong
  • Help to create a safe space to experiment

All in all, I think this presentation touched all the bases and it was very well received. I encourage you to read Anthony Iannarino’s article and watch a Winnipeg Jets game. GO JETS GO!

 

Is my #PMO #Agile?

I recently presented on Agile Project Management Offices at Canheit 2018 at the lovely Simon Fraser University Campus in Burnaby. The conference was extremely well-organized and had many great sessions. The only complaint I have is that there was no bacon, but that is a small point. 🙂

In putting together my presentation, I had a to think about what makes a PMO Agile? We all know what makes a Project Agile, but how did that translate to the PMO? To further complicate the matter there are different types of PMOs. There are PMOs that deliver templates, those that dictate a methodology, those that provide a Career Centre for wayward Project Managers, and others that try to do all of these things.

I’ve always felt that an Agile Project at its heart does three things:

1. Provides Brutal Visibility
2. Minimizes Inventory
3. Uses the Brutal Visibility and Minimize Inventory to deliver more value

Agile PMO

On first blush, those factors translated pretty well to an Agile PMO. But I still had to ask myself how did the Agile PMO deliver more value? I looked at Agile Projects again and how do they deliver more value? The one word that kept popping in my mind was that Agile Projects use Brutal Visibility and Minimal Inventory to Pivot or change the direction of the project. More important than that, the Brutal Visibility and Minimal Inventory allow the Pivot to be done in ‘an informed manner with limited waste’.

So ultimately I felt Agile Projects or Agile PMOs do three things:

1. Provide Brutal Visibility
2. Minimize Inventory
3. Pivot in an Informed Manner with Minimal Waste

Summary

So for projects, this means Pivoting to allow the scheduling/trading/exchanging of features to deliver the most value.

For a Project Management Office, these means Pivotting to allow for the scheduling/trading/exchanging of projects to deliver the most value. And for Project Management Offices this means understanding the best way to allocate people and budget to the work required. In my expeience, budget is far easier to allocate than people with the team dynamics and role mixtures that are required on a project.

Sadly, most Project Management Offices struggle with Resource Management and manage resources in a series of Excel Spreadsheets that are usually out of date by at least a couple of months. When Project pivot decisions are required, the Project Management Office is guessing at people’s true allocation. More importantly, the Resource Management system usually doesn’t track actual hours that would indicate the leading edge of problems on projects.

To be a true Agile PMO, a Resource Management system must be used where your Resource allocation is current and the ability to Pivot exists every day. We recently implemented a Resource Management solution and the data being generated/captured is just showing how impactful it can be.

Now how many of our Project Management Offices could be considered truly Agile?

In #PID I Trust #Prince2 #PMOT

I’ve been using Prince2 as a methodology at the University of Manitoba for almost a year now and I’m quite impressed. As a methodology it is quite good and focuses on the right things. Prince2 recognizes that a project initiated well sets a project up to succeed. There three things Prince2 does during initiation that I feel set it apart from other methodologies.

Project Initiation Document – PID

The PID or the Project Initiation Document is the main initiation document in Prince2. We commonly refer to the PID as a Project Charter on steroids. The table of contents for a typical PID contains the following

• Business Case
• Project Definition
• Product Based Planning
• Project Approach
• Project Governance and principles
• Quality Management Strategy
• Risk Management Strategy
• Organizational Change Management Strategy
• Organizational Capacity Management Strategy
• Project Plan

As you can see from the table of contents, the PID is a much more in-depth document and agreement than the typical project charter. It also more of a strategy document than project charter by getting the project team to discuss and document strategies for Quality Management, Risk Management, Issue Management, Communication Strategy, Change Management Strategy, and Capacity Management Strategy.

There are two sections of the PID that go right to the strength of Prince2

Project Governance

One of the main strengths of Prince2 is the Project Governance and formal Project Board structure. In Prince2, the Project Boards makes all the decisions for the project and is made up of the following three roles:

• Executive – Main sponsor or project champion – typically provides the budget
• Senior Supplier – typically provides the resources for the projects
• Senior User – typically will use the solution operationally when complete

These three roles are unique compared to other methodologies and it really serves the project well to ensure that all decisions are made in a balanced and thoughtful way. The really unique part of the Project Board structure is allowing for a seat at the table for the Senior User. Typically the users of the solutions don’t have a leadership role and only get involved for requirements definition and testing. By getting involved earlier, the Senior User has the ability to guide the vision of the solution. In my experience, this really allows for great value being delivered and fewer subsequent enhancement requests that are required to make the product useable. 🙂

Product Based Planning

Perhaps one of the most valuable Prince2 concepts is the Product based planning. This term refers to the Prince2 focus on what products the project is going to produce. Prince2 has a deliverable named Project Product Description. The Project Product Description is intended to describe the ultimate product that the project will produce. This deliverable helps to focus the project team to describe what project success will accomplish before defining detailed requirements. This process is very helpful and helps to create a shared vision across the project team. Prince2 then tasks the project team to define the interim product descriptions that are needed to ultimately create the Project Product Description. These Product Descriptions could be documents, demos, prototypes, or anything that is created during the project. A Product Breakdown Structure is then created to define the order the products and sub-products are created in. This Product Breakdown Structure is an excellent vehicle to uncover dependencies without having to create a detailed work breakdown structure.

By creating these three descriptions/documents, a lot of clarity is provided to the project team on what will be accomplished, what interim steps and documents are needed, and what order the project team will create them in.

Agile?

Right now, I bet you are wondering just how top-heavy and cumbersome Prince2 is. The real benefit of Prince2 is that these deliverables can be detailed separate documents or a few paragraphs in the Project Initiation Document.

Prince2 has two principles that align it with Agile:

1. If you don’t customize Prince2 methodology then you are doing it wrong. The customization of Prince2 is one of the 8 foundational principles of Prince2
2. Prince2 is perhaps the only Manage-by-Exception methodology I have seen. There is a section in the Project Initiation Document that defines the acceptable tolerances for the project. Only when the project goes outside these tolerances, does the Project Board need to be involved.

So Prince2 formalizes space for the project team to work and not be micro-managed.

Sounds more Agile than Scrum if you ask me…