PRINCE2

Prince 2 is the big beast of project management. It is the gold standard for UK government projects and is widely adopted by many industries. The notable exception being the software industry where Adaptive methodologies are more common.

Prince 2 is a classic example of a waterfall methodology.

A project is broken into a few large phases each laying the groundwork for the next. The planning phase produces a large amount of documentation which is expected to survive with only small modifications to the end of the project.

For this reason Prince 2 suits projects where the brief is clear, or can be made so during analysis, and the technologies and deliverables can be unambiguously defined.

At the heart of Prince 2 is the idea of verifiability.

In the setup phase this takes the form of the project benefit log which lists the benefits that the project as a whole is expected to deliver to the organization. These are quantified in terms of money so it will clearly be possible to test, when the project is over, if those benefits have been delivered.

In the planning phase the project is broken down into a large number of separate 'products' which are deliverables with an unambiguous acceptance criteria which can be independently verified. A lot of the planning effort goes into identifying testable metrics and the means to test them.

In prince 2 a clear distinction is made between a 'product' which is to be delivered and the work which goes into its delivery. Work done counts as a cost not as progress. Progress is only measured in terms of product acceptance according to the predetermined tests.

Administratively PRINCE 2 brakes a project into three phases
An organised and controlled start
An organised and controlled middle
An organised and controlled end
These may seem trite but the point is that the start of a project is very important, it is where mistakes can be made which make it impossible for the project to succeed. The first task to be performed under prince 2 is to make sure the project is worth doing and if so why? The start up phase of prince 2 is widely regarded as one of its main strengths.

The end phase helps focus minds on the idea that the project is going to be explicitly judged not just allowed to fade away with mistakes swept under the carpet.