Hey Reader 👋,

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No, not really, but you can apply concepts from PRINCE2 with your team to improve collaboration with stakeholders and freedom - yes, freedom - for your team.

What is PRINCE2?

First things first, for those who already know PRINCE2, feel free to continue. Else, here's a quick overview.

PRINCE2 defines processes to effectively manage a project and stands for PRojects IN Controlled Environments.

So, let's see which concepts of PRINCE2 you could use for your teams.

Project performance

The Project performance of PRINCE2 contains the Benefits (added value), Costs, Time, Quality, Scope, Sustainability, and Risk. I'll highlight two of those concepts and how they could add value to your Agile way of working.

Benefits

Who are we doing it for? You should have a clear understanding of the purpose of what you'll be doing or what you're already doing.

In Scrum, we can define the Product Goal of the Product Backlog. This describes the future state of the Product and the added value it provides.

A good understanding also includes numbers, cause how will you measure the impact you've made on the business as usual?

Quality

To what quality should the product you are building adhere? How do you make sure you've built what is needed?

Defining the quality of the product will only make sure the product provides what is needed and will be in a good state when we go over to business as usual.

The most well-known concept of Quality in the Agile world is the Definition of Done. It describes what has to be done to consider a batch of work done.

7 Principles

In PRINCE2, there are 7 Principles, which are the guiding obligations that determine if a project is being managed by PRINCE2.

• ensure continued business justification
• learn from experience
• define roles, responsibilities, and relationships
• manage by stages
• manage by exception
• focus on products
• tailor to suit the project

Learn from experience

Of course, this one is easily linkable with all Agile ways of working, as we have regular reflections on our ways of working and try to improve each time. In PRINCE2, this goes even further.

When you start up a project, you should take the learnings from all previous projects and use those for the upcoming project.

Manage by exception

This one I found the most interesting of the bunch. Before we initiate a stage or a project, we are going to define the tolerances it has. When I look at it with my Agile lens, I see this as defining the freedom your team has.

I see it as the wiggle room the team has when it comes to time, budget, and scope.

Processes

PRINCE2 contains 7 processes.

• Starting up a project
• Initiating a project
• Directing a project
• Managing a stage boundary
• Managing product delivery
• Closing a project.

I'll highlight 4 stages that could give you an idea of how it could help in your way of working.

Starting up a project / Initiating a project

In the "Starting up a project" process, we try to answer the question of whether we have a viable and worthwhile project.

What I take away from this stage is defining whether we have business justification.

I've seen it happen multiple times that teams get started up just for the sake of starting an extra team.

Controlling a stage

During the "controlling a stage" process, the Project Manager gives highlight reports to the Project Board on a timely basis.

The good moment to have a Sprint Review to show our Done work and what is next.

Managing a stage boundary

When the end of a stage approaches, we are going to manage its boundary. One of the steps here is reflecting on the stage.

A good moment to hold a bigger Retrospective.

Greetings,

Jelmar

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