PROJECT Management explored

OGC have announced today the publication of Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2 (or PRINCE2 2009) in German, French and Spanish.  All three are available from today in hardcopy or PDF from the TSO on-line store or in Hardback from bookshops.

It is my understanding that further translations are planned over the coming months.

If this is of interest you may also like to know that the PRINCE2 Glossary is already translated into eight languages and these are available in PDF format from the official PRINCE2 website.

I keep seeing articles about the rise of open source and occasionally getting myself into 'discussions' about the value and validity of open source software.  It depends who you talk to whether open source is the saviour of us all who will release the shackles of commerce and provide better solutions at zero cost or is a random, collection or toys and pet projects which can't be relied upon by serious organisations.

As with most of these discussions the reality is somewhere in the middle and actually the discussion can be broader than open source to look at free software.  So I thought we should road test this....can you find all the tools you need to run a modest project for free?

Obviously I'm going to start with the PROJECT in a box Community Edition which is a free application from a commercial software house.  This will be my cornerstone and provide me with my project methodology, including templates and structure (PRINCE2 and DSDM Atern) as well as configuration management and version control of the documentation I produce.

For Planning I'm going with OpenProj from Serena.  I have tried a few but this is in my opinion comfortably the best due to its similarity to MS Project and the ability to load an MS Project .mpp file into it.  In our commercial packages we support the openproj.xml file format in our reporting engine so this will also ease your upgrade path should you want to later.

I know lots of you use mind mapping and I hear FreeMind is very well regarded in this space, certainly I see its outputs appearing more and more widely.  In terms of general productivity tools (word processing, spreadsheets etc) many of you may consider Office to be 'free' as it is bundled with your PC or already there...if so great!  If not then there is still hope with Open Office which is a great set of tools which in some cases arguably out perform their MS rivals.

Of course it would seem lunacy to try and run a project without the use of emails and there are loads of free email options although my personal favourite is Google mail.   All of these tools will work together and can be treated as free as you will not be charged to use them giving you a meaningful tool box for basic projects.  If you are looking to move up to larger project teams with multi user interactions then some of these solutions may start to feel the strain and we will provide some suggestions to that dilemma in a future post.

It could very well be coming soon if the Conservatives get their way.  The party's shadow minister for science and innovation, Adam Afriyie, floated the idea in a recent speech as a way of addressing the risk attached to large scale IT projects.  Saying "if several suppliers are asked to come up with working solutions, they can then be piloted, and the most successful can be scaled up and rolled out nationally".

This is an idea that “borrows a lot” from Agile thinking and could have real legs if implemented in the right sort of way, getting projects off to a flying start with innovative approaches and lean developments which would also give smaller players a chance to break into a previously closed market.  In fact it could be the break that DSDM Atern has been waiting for to be seen as an equivalent method to PRINCE2, rather than a way that parts of PRINCE2 projects are delivered.

I have some experience in this area.  On a government IT project I was involved in we pushed to provide a prototype for a key part of the system.  We did this because although the customer had approved the spec but we were sure it wasn't what they actually wanted or needed.  The prototype brought the issues into focus and resulted in a significant re-specification of the capability early in the process not when the budget had already been spent....

Agile approaches have significant benefits in areas of uncertainty where requirements are emerging or there isn't sufficient consensus on the requirements to document them to the required level of detail for development.  From the number of changes seen on many Government IT projects Agile and DSDM Atern could help significantly so it looks like the conservatives might be onto a winner here....

No need to worry if Agile and DSDM Atern are new to you.  All PROJECT in a box products (including the free Community Edition) come with the official DSDM Atern method template providing structured, processes, templates and guidance materials to help you start your journey and our colleagues at the DSDM Consortium will be delighted to provide further details on DSDM training and certification.

Why is it we don't hear much about project successes and it is always failures that grab the headlines?  It is tempting to blame journalistic voyeurism and sensationalism but if we didn't read it they probably wouldn't publish it.

I have been keeping an eye, as lots of people have, on the situation in Cumbria post the floods.  I can't find enough praise for the oft maligned folk at network rail (thinking west coast main line and many other project low points) for the great work they have done setting up a new station in under a week.  Seems simple but I'm sure the safety work, licensing, timetabling and all else were probably significant, yet essential to maximise the use of the remaining working bridge in the area.

I hope more is made of this and a review might feed some lessons learned back into their other ongoing and upcoming projects.  Actually it would be a great project for them to case study and promote as people should be doing with other successful projects both within their organisations and outside.  Possibly even an early candidate for an APM project award in 2010….

On a similar note a big up to the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in their support of the Bloodhound Supersonic car project which is trying to inspire and promote engineering as a career by getting young people involved.  My APM branch are having a talk on the subject and wouldn't it be great if there was more like this going on for Project Management or even some joint activities that could catch the imagination and positive press attention in such a way.

Well apparently Managing Successful Programmes is ten years old….if only I had known I would have sent a Birthday card!

I thought about checking but it must be true, the email telling me came directly from TSO and kindly offering 10% off any MSP publications purchased today....drop me a line if you want to know the discount code ;-)

MSP is cropping up quite a bit just at present as preparations are being made for its update and we are in the process of relicensing our MSP materials from OGC so I have been reflecting on it and how it has followed a less populous path than PRINCE2.  I'm sure that many training organisations as well as OGC, APMG etc had hoped that there would be a steady flow of people through PRINCE2 training and then on upward to MSP as organisations matured but the figures have never supported that thesis.  It is refreshing to see that MSP has retained its core programme/business level change focus while other methods have generalised and gone in seek of ever larger numbers of users, even though this means the numbers are not there and many trainers no longer run public MSP courses.  Instead the trend tends to be in company courses with organisations finding the value in managing their programmes appropriately rather than individuals seeing a strong benefit in having the qualification on their CV.

At PROJECT in a box we see the same corporate demand trend and find that our ratio of MSP to PRINCE2 users is much higher than in the general trained population.  This is partly because of our very cost effective provision of the materials for lone programme Managers or small PSOs, but also because organisations can personalise these and integrate closely with their various project methods to get something well joined up across the different change levels. Click here to find out more about Managing Successful Programmes method template add on.

It will be interesting to see the mandate for the MSP refresh and to find out if the previous direction will continue or as the teenager years approach whether the direction will falter.