Make your projects more successful with the principles of transformation

You can’t make a strategy a reality without a few projects to manage the?

transformation. Here’s a few pointers from my PRINCE2 days.

(Wait. Don't leave! If you're a PRINCE2 hater I also discuss how the principles actually help reduce the administrative burden of PRINCE2 if followed appropriately, read on...)

How many PRINCE2 qualified practitioners remember the principles of managing projects? These are, if you’re not aware, principles that without fail, should be applied to all PRINCE2 projects.

I’m talking about those qualified professionals that sail through the full PRINCE2 course, they have masses of project management experience and they manage projects every single day of the week.?

But in my experience, I’ve seen so many project managers that are PRINCE2 qualified that haven’t applied the principles to their projects. Without fail, when the principles aren't applied appropriately, this unfortunately causes significant issues.?

Without the deployment of PRINCE2 principles I’ve seen delay, confusion, and on occasion, complete failure. So how can this be avoided?

By all means you can (and should) tailor PRINCE2 to suit your project or your organisational processes. The balance between bureaucracy and being organised is a fine line and there are lots of people across the globe that bemoan the rigidity and administrative overhead of a PRINCE2 project.? But, if you want to adhere to best practice, if you want to give your project every chance of success, the principles are principles and these are not optional. Any PM following PRINCE2 of any description that’s worth their salt should understand these, their importance and they should be applying these on all of their projects.

Any PM should be empowered to design their project team, their governance and the approach. I'm not suggesting total rigid enforcement of PRINCE2 here...processes can be tailored, administrative overhead can be tweaked, frequency of meetings can be altered. All of that's fine. It's the principles, when missing, that causes issues.

You know you're not applying the principles of transformation when you see these things happening on your project... time and again I’ve seen projects, project managers and programme managers that:

• Rely too heavily on email communication. Emails should verify discussions, not hold them.
• Don’t have clear roles and responsibilities in place. People on the project aren’t always sure what they’re there to do or what the purpose of the project even is. Teamwork on a project is vital and without a team, the project is likely to fail. Projects are team environments and not simply a PM acting in isolation.
• Don’t even meet regularly. This is one of my biggest bugbears. Where has the art of a well structured project meeting gone? Project meetings should not be seen as a burden. They’re essential. Clear agendas, shared plans, face-to-face discussions and properly tracked actions can save literally thousands of ad-hoc emails and delayed hours/weeks/months/years over the lifecycle of a project. The meetings ensure a real team approach to the project, they motivate to achieve, and they help keep communication and outputs flowing. A good PM builds morale, shares a clear vision, and uses meetings to build and maintain momentum towards the shared goal of project success.
• Those project meetings that are so important? Well, they should frequently review the whole plan, the upcoming milestones and break those down into stages or gateways. There is no better way of intermittently checking you’re on track and managing by exception than having pre-planned gateway review meetings that are there to review if all required outputs by a certain point have been successfully achieved. Far too many project managers plan in isolation and don’t ensure that the whole project team are aware of basic things like the next output or product to be delivered, the next milestone, or even the planned project closure date! The whole project team need to own the plan and your meetings should consistently verify that they do, or make alterations for if they don’t.
• Waiting until the end of the project before trying to learn any lessons. Again, this is symptomatic of not meeting properly and discussing the plan as a project team. In every project meeting you should be discussing, learning, sharing then applying new knowledge to avoid making the same mistakes during the next task/milestone/phase of the project. Don’t wait until a formal lessons learned event at the end of a project before telling the project team what they could have done differently. Learning throughout the lifecycle of a project can avoid exceptions and even bring projects ahead of schedule. Keep reflecting, keep learning, keep speaking to other organisations that have undertaken similar schemes with similar products.
• I’ve seen too many projects where the project managers aren’t truly invested in the outcome of the project. Projects slip, deadlines are missed and they seem to hang around in the programme in perpetuity. How could this happen if the PM truly wanted the project to be successful and was consistently following the PRINCE2 principles? The whole project team isn’t going to understand or believe in the justification for the project if the PM hides behind emails and doesn’t instil a sense of importance to what people are being asked to do. Those missing meetings? They’re not about beating people about delayed actions. They’re about communication, collaboration, motivation, influence and persuasion. A good PM is a leader, using meetings to motivate the project team to deliver the plan for the good of the business. If the team aren’t meeting consistently and aren’t motivated, it’s more than likely your projects will hang around, part delivered, the desired outcomes and business case benefits not fully realised.

Your principles cheat sheet

So if you’ve read that list of common project failings and you’re thinking to yourself, what actually are the PRINCE2 principles, well, I’ve listed them below. But just remember, they’re not just words on a test and in a manual gathering dust on your bookshelf, they’re in place to make a difference to the projects you are managing right now. Don't ignore them, live them.

1. Continued Business Justification - a clear shared goal that everyone is behind and understands
2. Learn from Experience - before, throughout?and after the project
3. Defined Roles and Responsibilities - everyone?knows how they're personally contributing to the project
4. Manage by Stages - clearly defined gateway meetings are essential in keeping a project on track throughout its lifecycle. Projects without sufficient stage boundaries always tend to slip.
5. Manage by Exception - this principle actually helps?reduce the bureaucracy of PRINCE2, using tolerance to keep control locally with the project team where possible and only escalating when necessary.?
6. Focus on Products - make sure you know what you're delivering, and every stakeholder understands the deliverables. It's basic, but lots of the time people tend to miss a list of clearly defined outputs and products that their project is delivering.
7. Tailored to Suit the Project Environment - here's your bureaucracy obliterating principle! Tailor the heck out of your project. Adjust documents, meeting frequency, templates. Tweak what you want so you're not burdened by admin, just don't?ignore the 7 basic principles of your project

Your whole project team and project processes should be established to ensure that continual adoption of the PRINCE2 principles are in place if you want your project to stand every chance of being successful. If you can work through my list and address some of the areas I’ve listed, I reckon you’ll be halfway there.

By the way, these completely align to AGILE delivery methods too. We slot AGILE for development focussed projects into the delivery phases of PRINCE2 very neatly, and AGILE’s own principles are also very similar and equally important.

Have I missed any of your bugbears? Got similar experiences? Any thoughts? Think I’m completely wrong? Let me know...

Further Reading:

By deploying the PRINCE2 principles on our projects we've successfully delivered 60 digital projects since April 2022 on our MPFT Digital Strategy

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