Wrapping PRINCE2 around Agile—Roger Fance
Wrapping PRINCE2 around Agile: You can, but should you?
Over the years, many organisations have invested heavily to increase the chances of project success by establishing project management frameworks, methodologies, processes, tools, templates and training to support their project managers and teams and improve project management maturity.
However, an ever increasing speed of change as a result of competition and technological innovation presents a serious challenge to business. It compels the need for continual re-evaluation of the project methods employed to ensure that organisations are responsive and adaptable enough not only to simply survive, but prosper. Some organisations have turned to Agile project management in an effort to improve their response to business change. In the right circumstances, Agile offers an effective way to rapidly react to change, indeed embrace change, through a range of management techniques. Some may be tempted to combine their original investment in traditional project management techniques like PRINCE2 with the benefits that Agile can bring.
This paper suggests two ways that PRINCE2 and Scrum as an Agile framework could be combined and compares the characteristics of each approach in relation to governance, planning, risk, change and value delivery. It poses some questions that organisations should consider before trying to combine these two approaches.
Author: Roger Fance
Review status: UXC Consulting
