PRINCE2™ and context

PRINCE2™ shouldn't be taken as a 'set' method. Rather it should be seen as a set of tools the application of which can and should change with the circumstances or 'context' in which the project is to be delivered. Context impacts might include the experience of the team, the PM the customer/board or by related to the project itself it's perceived riskiness, it's criticality to the organisation, its degree of familiarity and many other aspects.

Don't take PRINCE2™ as read, we certainly don't and would make two recommendations:
1) Read Tailoring PRINCE2 the best book on the subject
2) Make sure any PRINCE2 software you implement is more flexible than you think you will need!

A holistic approach

Delivering a successful project isn't just about planning and using Microsoft Project does not a successful project make.
We believe in providing users with a system that supports them through the whole project lifecycle. We don't just slap a mandate and a PID in and say we support PRINCE2™ we support all the PRINCE2™ management products.

Who are we to tell you about Project Management?

Appreciation of the workings and requirements of SMEs doesn't necessarily mean a lack of understanding of the corporate world and the ultimate objective of a successful mature Project Management Capability. Our background is a corporate one and our MD won the 1999 Sir Monty Finniston Award from the APM. This was for developing and implementing a scalable PM methodology across an organisation of 4,000 engineers and scientists with work ranging from international nuclear engineering projects to small value environmental consultancy. Our team have also had significant management roles in SMEs and PLCs as well as being MBA qualified.

While this isn't a silver bullet by any means we do recognise:
1) you need something that works for you in the here and now
2) and something that will help push you to where you want to be in the future.

Your Feedback
Whether you agree or disagree, we would welcome your feedback and want to hear your opinions on Project Management methodologies and systems.

Your views will be treated in confidence and your questions answered honestly. If you want your say to be public we will be happy to post the more thought provoking thoughts up on our site.

So what are you waiting for, let us know what you are thinking.

Our Ethos (what makes us tick!)

Firstly thanks for taking a look at this. We think that it is very important to build a rapport with our customers, for you to know what we think about, what drives us and what directions we are looking to take PROJECT in a box and for you to keep telling us what you want from your Project Management systems.

Why did we start Project in a Box?

We tried to introduce PRINCE2™ while working for a corporate, but found a the lack of available software tools to support this made it difficult. We specified and wrote our own - PROJECT in a Box...

During our previous corporate life we had made the decision to standardise on PRINCE2™ for our project management processes, a logical decision and one many of you will have also taken. We set about this by sending our Chief Software Engineer off on a PRINCE2™ training course but the problems began when he returned to the office with a whole new language and a stack of paperwork we were all required to complete....

So firm believers in the 'don't reinvent the wheel' philosophy we looked for a PRINCE2 software product to help our untrained team members penetrate the PRINCE2™ world and also something to help us manage the documentation. In effect we wanted to get to grips with the basics of delivering a PRINCE2™ project quickly so that we got the advantages of PRINCE2™ into our projects without the issues and costs associated with implementing a new management system.....

Needless to say we couldn't find one, an idea was born and the rest is history!

Working with fitness for purpose in mind

One of the things that really struck us when we were looking for a PRINCE2™ solution ourselves was that almost all the available project management software is aimed at corporate application. What we mean by that is that they are developed with large organisations in mind and to reinforce workflow, structure and control. Also they are frequently feature rich and developed to be encompassing of the full PM scope (finance, resourcing, planning, time recording, programmes etc) and with bespoking in mind. This has made them expensive to create, maintain and implement and generally over bearing on the smaller organisations or those without a mature project management culture.

However the world has moved on and project management is now the way that most organisations deliver their business even in the service industries and SMEs where traditionally this hadn't been the case. Unfortunately these organisations who are most in need of practical tools to help them adopt and develop a PM culture cannot afford and/or lack sufficient PM maturity for the available tools to be right for them.

We have developed our solutions with exactly this target market in mind but have been delighted to find that this approach has also been welcomed by many larger organisations with established cultures. We are priding ourselves on fitness for purpose and providing solutions that help PMs do the basics right and encourage rather than enforce good practice. We want our users to grow and mature with us and as they want to increase the level of rigorous control and sophistication we will help provide it.

Working with authentic PRINCE2™ not working around it!

Most people involved with PRINCE2™ know that it can be a bit difficult to follow, "mystifying" and "impenetrable" are amongst the more polite descriptions we have come across. It therefore makes it even more strange that much of the PRINCE2™ software on the market seem to have gone out of their way to avoid using authentic PRINCE2™ material. We have come across cases of vendors redrafting and modifying diagrams and paraphrasing key guidance from the manual, seemingly to avoid paying licence fees to reproduce it.

We see this as self defeating in several ways. Firstly it makes life more difficult for the end user when the language has changed and the structure has been altered from what they received on their training course or in their self study from the manual. Secondly it weakens the strength of PRINCE2™, the fact that it is a de-facto standard and the idea that all Practitioners use and share the same terminology and practices. Lastly it means they are taking and failing to put something back by not commercially supporting the method they, and we all, rely on.

We are the only software vendor to licence authentic material from the PRINCE2™ manual to include in our products, in fact we even pay licence fees on the material included in our free Community edition product. This is something we believe is good for our customers and good for PRINCE2™ and is a practice we are looking to increasingly expand on.

Vanilla PRINCE2™ and PINO, surely there must be a middle ground?

Organisations new to PRINCE2™ often try to implement PRINCE2™ in full, they give up and end up with PRINCE in Name Only (PINO).  Our tools use templates that you can tune to fit your processes and still keep it authentic. Our next release will let you use your own process diagrams too...

We have worked with lots of organisations and individuals on their implementation and know that there is always a tension about how much of PRINCE2™ to implement. Many purists or new practitioners fresh from training try to implement Vanilla PRINCE2™ straight from the manual but in many cases this is found to be a little heavy for most projects and frequently falls into the trap of becoming PINO (PRINCE In Name Only) very quickly.

Whilst we provide the Vanilla PRINCE2™ configuration in our products these templates which hold the rules on how each project is set up can be tailored to make the method you apply fit your needs more precisely. This is a key plank of our approach because it can be done by the user giving them control of their project management methodology. Because we don't have workflow and the content is not managed in a database requiring coding of new interfaces and forms when the project structure is changed this can be altered naturally to reflect the requirements of a particular project or the maturing approach of the organisation.

We are looking to continue building on this and our future Professional product releases will enable users to have even finer control on their multiple project templates and to even change the currently standard PRINCE2™ diagrams. We are also taking feedback from you our users about providing a standard template for a 'lighter' methodology to sit alongside PRINCE2™ for smaller/less risky projects.