PRINCE2 Methodology and Project Management Failures, PRINCE 2 vs PMBOK - Report Example

PROJECT MANAGEMENT FEBRUARY 2014 SUMMARY SUMMARY This is a portfolio on project management. The first section is focused on PRINCE2 project management which is given under the subheadings: Management levels and responsibilities; Planning and Scheduling and control. The second section is a comparison of PRINCE2 and PMBOK. The final section gives a typical example of project management failure with the Concorde projects being given the focus. 1.0 PRINCE2 METHODOLOGY PRINCE2 methodology can be well illustrated under the following component: management levels and responsibilities, planning and scheduling and control. 1.1Management levels and responsibilities These include Corporate or Programme Management, Directing of a Project (this involves Project Board being chaired by the Executive), Managing of the Project this being at the project manager’s level and the Management of Product Delivery where there is team-level technology management. Through this set up there is close integration of corporate business or management of program with both project management and management of project technology at project level and team level respectively. In PRINCE 2 the project manager is recognized as a person with the authority and responsibility of managing the project on a daily basis and is expected to deliver the products as per the constraints set up by the Project Board. The constraints gives the prescription of acceptable ranges for each scope, time, cost and quality that the manager is expected to keep within. When things go beyond these prescribed limits, it becomes an issue that the project board needs to be made aware of. The project board is under the chairmanship of a person identified as executive who has full responsibility of the project. The executive is to ensure that business focus of the project is kept alive, with is authority being maintained and that there is active management of work including risks. The chair of the project board stands for customer’s interests and the business case is under his ownership. 1.2 Planning and Scheduling A key feature of PRINCE2 is planning which is product based whose main focus is on product delivery and their quality. This forms an important part of the planning process leading into utilization of other generic techniques such as Gantt charts as well as network planning. This gives a product based framework that can find application to any project, at any level of the project and be able to provide a logical sequence to the work of the project. Product may take a variety of forms with some being tangible such as a piece of software, a machine or a document, alternatively the product may take an intangible form such as change in culture or changing of an organizational structure. Three steps are described in PRINCE 2 with regards to planning: production of a product breakdown structure; coming up with a product description and production of a product flow diagram. In each of the step description is given in detail with examples being given to make illustrations. Step 2 is important as a clear, complete and unambiguous description of product ensures there is success in its creation. When adequate description is not feasible it will call for extra work to be done so as to come out with more information. In step 3 there is re-ordering of the products into the necessary logical sequence so as to come up with a flow diagram of the product. The original PBS may end up having a lot of details as a result of the links between the products in the product flow diagram representing the activities that are necessary in the creation of the activities and there is need for every product to be included so as to ensure that every activity is captured. On the other hand there is no need to include activities that do not contribute to the final outcome. A product flow diagram that is formed in the right manner will therefore expected to identify the activities involved in addition to leading to a schedule based on a network dependency or Gantt chart. In PRINCE 2 good explanation of technique are given with associated documentation being specified. Under Project Integration Management planning is discussed in detail, the essence being the creation of a consistent and coherent document which can be utilized in execution of the project an act as a baseline that will act as a guide for changes. Planning will also be part of each area of knowledge and it is necessary for it to be integrated across all of them. As a result of fragmentation there is attempt to map the various content of the guide to the planning process so as to make reference easy. 1.3 Control Control of technical work in PRINCE2 is put into practice by adopting authorization of work packages. The manual fully associates control with decision making and being central to project management. The purpose of control is seen as being: production of the required products, being up to the required quality criteria; carrying out the work as per the schedule, resources available and cost plans; and maintaining viability against the business case. PRINCE2 will have concern with the maintaining of viability against the business case owing to the business case being a dynamic document that is subject updating over time. This is likely to result into the tendency of matching the business case to present reality as opposed to controlling the prevailing reality to the justification of the business case. The work package control is made use of in the allocation of work to individuals or teams and thus it will encompass controls over time, cost and quality and goes further to identify the requirements of reporting and handing over. The managers get feedbacks from teams or individuals through checkpoint reports or through other means such as triggers and through quality log updates. In PRINCE 2 under control there is a clear distinction between tolerance, change control and contingency. Tolerance is identified as being the permissible deviation from plan that the project manager is allowed to make with no need of bringing it to the attention of the project board. Change control will entail a procedure that is designed to ensure that processing of all project issues is done in controlled manner, which is to include submission, the analysis and decision making. The description of the process is given in detail commencing with project issue management. 2.0 PRINCE 2 and PMBOK comparison One of the outstanding difference of PRINCE 2 is that it has a basis on project life cycle where six of the eight major processes run from project start up to project close up. Planning and directing project which are the other two processes are continuous and support the six. Each of the eight processes have sub-processes which brings the total to 45. There are a total of sic components that feed into the system some being documents while others can be classified as processes. In PRINCE2 three techniques are described this being change control, product based planning and quality review. The presentation of PRINCE2 is in such a way that the narrative can easily be understood with checklist which are bulleted, there is use of process diagrams and also hints and tips are given whenever need arises. On the other hand PMBOK has a total of twelve chapters that give description of function based knowledge areas with clear illustrations of the respective project management processes accompanied with descriptions taking form inputs, outputs, and tools-and-techniques. In PRINCE 2 there is references to stages as opposed to phases and it is stated that the use of stages is a must but there is flexibility in terms of the number depending on the requirement of project. In PRINCE2 there is clear differentiation of the technical stages and the management stages with technical stages being typified by some specific skills which in management stages deals with committing of resources and expenditure authorization where the two may coincide or may not. In PMBOK the definition of a project phase is taken as being a collection of project activities that have a logical relation and are likely culminate in major deliverables being completed. Here there is no attempt to distinguish between phases and stages and the two are used indiscriminately in the text. In PRINCE2 the project life cycle will not commence with original need, generation of the solution and feasibility studies as this are taken as being project life cycle inputs or even as independent projects. In PRINCE 2 five phases give the description of a product life span which are: conception phases, feasibility phase, implementation phase, operation phase and termination phase but the only phase that is covered by PRINCE2 is the implementation phase. PRINCE2 can be taken as being an implementation methodology which is highly similar to construction management as opposed to being a representation of the whole project management methodology. In PRINCE2 there is an assumption that the project that is being undertaken will be in context of a contract but the activity is excluded in the method itself. However, in PRINCE2 there is suggestion that by procurement and contracting being specialist activities, there management can be effected separately by use of the method. For the case of PMBOK it is recognized that the project would require either assessment or a feasibility study to act as the first phase of a project even though this does not resemble in all life cycles in the various industries. The presumption in PMBOK is that when Project Procurement Management is a requirement it will form part of the project management process can be taken in terms of a buyer in a buyer-seller relationship. 3.0 PROJECT MANAGEMENT FAILURES According of the findings by KPMG many organizations around the globe are loosing about a quarter of the benefits of their project undertakings as a result of failure in project management throughout the lifecycles of the project. A bout 50 percent of the organization that were investigated also indicate4d that there were massive project failures. T5his results to many questions being asked. Why some information is likely to fail while other end up as a complete failure. Could it be as a result of application of new technology or simply lack of understanding of the needed skills? Or could the answer be found in project management. Project management is aimed at achieving some specific objectives that encompass several tasks and activities with some resources being consumed. The objectives are to be accomplished within some specification and in a given time. The project objectives can be put into three important components which are: time where deadlines are to be met; cost where the budget is to be adhered to; and quality where the clients need are to be fulfilled. The three can be well represented by a simple diagram referred to as time, cost and quality triangle. This is a clear illustration of a projects constraints where the re is a chance of the constraints either working in support of one another or against each other. In the initial stages an organization undertali8ng the project may allocate equal weight to the three but eventually one of them may end up being more si9gnificant as the project moves forward. There is, therefore, a challenge in maki8nmg recognition of this trade-off with the aim of working towards an optimal solution. A good illustration in failure of project management is the case of the Concorde project. This was a project co-sponsored by UK and France aiming at making improvement European aerospace industry. The project was a complete failure when time and cost is put into consideration. The total time spend on the project was seven years with a total of £1.5 billion being spend. This was well beyond its schedule and the allocated budget and thus the origin of the term Concorde fallacy. The fallacy being that it was impossible to terminate the before delivery as it had already consumed a lot of time and monetary resources. Even after the project exceeding time and cost constraint it met the main objective bearing in mind that the goals of the two countries did was not profitability but ensuring that the aerospace industry was aligned. After years of waiting the alignment that was desired has been reported to be fruitful where the European aerospace is in full competition with US where Airbus has managed to takeover Boeing as preferred commercial jet aircraft supplier globally. Just as the definition of project failure is seen to very complex the causes of poor performance are equally complex. Some of failures in the Concorde project may have caused by poor management processes in the selection of business cases for the project and relying on informal measurement of cost and benefit measurement. There are several elements that could have eliminated the project shortcomings. There was to be proper planning in terms of time, cost and resources use. If the senior managers had a sense of ownership of the project and having the believe that project could considerably bring about improved performance in business. The Concorde project lacked in careful management of constraints that would have ensured that procedures were in place so as to control the space of the Concorde project and the money and other resources that were being put into use. the project should have taken risk management with much more seriousness as this could give the project managers a chance of making assessment of the likely pitfall and thus enabling them to come up with procedures that could have brought down the impact of risks. In any project there is need to evaluate risks in terms of the impact of their occurrence. References Court R. (2006). Integrated Management. Financial management. Max W. (2002). Comparing PRINCE2 with PMBoK. Vancouver, BC, Canada. Read More