The Office Move Project

Background

Please note that the example project was created with, and migrated from, a previous version (1.2.7) of PROJECT in a box Community Edition which was aligned to the requirements of the third edition (2002) of the Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2 manual. Accordingly the example is missing some of the documents now recommended for the 2005 edition of the manual and different interpretations have been taken as to where some documents and files should be shown. If you are starting a new project be sure to create a new project from scratch to pick up the latest templates.

The project concerns a small company moving into a larger office. They need to move because they are planning to expand their operation later in the year. They haven't got a large budget, and need to make the move with the minimum of disruption to their customers. They are worried about getting their IT and phones running properly - they had some big problems during their previous office move.

They are going to sub-contract a local removals firm to help them. The move is planned for over the summer, and there is a concern that the removals firm might be short staffed due to the holidays.

The People

The Project Manager - Jane

Jane has been on the PRINCE2 course and got her practitioner's qualification, but has not used PRINCE2 before. She has run plenty of projects before without PRINCE2, but is concerned about the time she will have to put in just to get to project approval. She has heard about the big problems they had last time they moved, but wasn't working for the company then.

The Project Executive - Geoff

Geoff is Jane's boss, and the MD of the company. He is keen to adopt PRINCE2 and has used it himself in the past. He plans to help Jane during project startup and initiation. His main concern is to keep costs under control. Geoff was in charge during the last move, and saw first hand how the costs spiralled as they tried to fix problem after problem with the IT systems.

The Senior User - Justin

Justin runs the help desk team. He hasn't used PRINCE2 before. He is worried about the disruption to service when they move, and is pushing to have the help desk staff moved last, after everything else is properly up and running.

The Team Manager - Bob

Bob is an old hand who is used to dealing with sub-contractors. Geoff wants him to run the day to day activities, but also to deal with the removals firm.

Senior Supplier - John Dore

John runs HK removals, and Bob has a friendly relationship with him. However, Geoff wants him where he can keep an eye on him.

How they used PRINCE2

Over the course of a couple of days, Geoff and Jane put together an appropriate level of documentation for the Project Startup. Jane created these documents using her standard Office PC programs (Word, Excel and Powerpoint) and put the results into Project in a Box. She used the checkin/checkout facility of Project in a Box to keep control of the many changes that were needed along the way.

Geoff made most of the decisions about how PRINCE2 should be applied in practice to this project. When they had a plan for the team structure, Jane talked to each person to make sure they could perform the role.

At the end of Project Startup, the board met briefly to approve the initiation stage. It was a good opportunity to bring John Dore (HK Removals) to get some committment from him. After this Jane felt confident enough to carry out Project Initiation with Geoff's more occasional help.

Jane successfully put together a Project Initiation Document, and a plan for the first stage. Justin had persuaded Geoff to let his help desk staff move last, so they split the project into two stages: Stage 1 - Moving the Project Staff and Stage 2 - Moving the help desk.

Using Project in a Box, Jane found it easy to keep everyone informed of what was happening by putting the latest version of each document on the company intranet.

The project board met over lunch to consider Jane's Project Initiation Document and Stage Plan. Jane took her laptop to the meeting and was able to use Project in a Box to show how, when and why various decisions had been made along the way. This prevented the usual "Let's make all the decisions again" debate. The board gave approval for the project to proceed.