CHAPTER 4: FIVE KEYS TO PRINCE2 AGILE SUCCESS

Implementing PRINCE2 Agile is more than understanding the principles and processes that drive the framework. For PRINCE2 Agile to deliver high business-value outcomes, you need to ensure that you have an organization, a project, and a team that are positioned to maximize its effectiveness – and that you establish the most suitable approach for your environment.

The following are five key factors that can influence the success of your PRINCE2 Agile projects, and recommendations for addressing the challenges that might occur for each. In reviewing these factors, it is important to note that the decision to implement PRINCE2 Agile is often a question of determining what the ideal approach is for your environment (that is, by asking the questions “How Agile can we be?” and “What do we need to change in order to be more Agile?”). It is rarely a “yes/no” question whether or not to use PRINCE2 Agile altogether.

To address these questions, the official PRINCE2 Agile guide provides readers with an Agilometer,³¹ a six-point sliding scale that can assist organizations in determining the extent to which Agile methods can be used for their projects. The Agilometer can be used both for the initial assessment before the project begins, and as a comparison baseline to assess the effectiveness of ongoing project work, and to apply adjustments as needed.

It is recommended that you use the Agilometer as part of your evaluation of the following five key factors in determining the optimal approach for achieving PRINCE2 Agile success on each of your projects.

The first key to PRINCE2 Agile success: the right organization

PRINCE2 Agile is more than a framework; it is a mindset. For PRINCE2 Agile projects to be successful, you need an environment of trust, teamwork, open communication, flexibility, continuous improvement, and allowing people to fulfill their potential.

You may also need executive management to be open to committing funds based on a more broadly defined business case, i.e. without having a detailed upfront specification or without a commitment to exact functionality being delivered on a specific date.

If your organization is forward-thinking enough to provide staff with the trust and empowerment that PRINCE2 Agile requires – and to appreciate the benefits that this responsive approach can deliver in an ever-changing, fast-moving marketplace – then your project is better positioned to successfully deliver outcomes using this framework.

If, however, your organization is more focused on heavy management (i.e. distrustful of staff), prefers to issue top-down directives without staff consultation, or discourages open communication within and across departments, then leveraging the benefits of PRINCE2 Agile may be more of a challenge for you. That is not to say that the PRINCE2 Agile framework cannot be implemented in these environments; it is a caveat that there are likely to be more significant overheads (i.e. more formal and frequent status reporting, less flexibility to adapt functionality based on emergent information, more time required for Project Board members to negotiate ongoing work). Each additional overhead reduces the efficiencies and benefits that PRINCE2 Agile can deliver for the organization.

The closer you can get to working in an empowering, trusting, open-communication environment – even if the Project Board members need to create this environment as a microcosm within the organization – the more likely it is that you will deliver a successful PRINCE2 Agile project.

The second key to PRINCE2 Agile success: the right motivation

In addition to having (or creating) the right working environment for PRINCE2 Agile to thrive, it is important for you to recognize why PRINCE2 Agile is being implemented for this project in the first place. Is executive management interested in adding more flexible governance in order to increase team productivity or the relevance and quality of deliverables? Does the project delivery team want a greater awareness of the business drivers for the work that they are doing? Or is implementing PRINCE2 Agile a compliance mandate (or a customer request) that the team is required to fulfill without having a strong interest in – or a genuine appreciation of – the framework?

Understanding the motivation for the move to PRINCE2 Agile will help you to determine the degree to which the framework is incorporated, the most appropriate approach to select within the framework, and the areas where additional team education may be required for PRINCE2 Agile to be successful.

If you find that the motivation for implementing PRINCE2 Agile is from the organization or from external stakeholders – and not from the people on the project team – then it is likely that PRINCE2 Agile will be implemented in practice, but not in spirit. Similarly, if the motivation is coming exclusively from the Project Board without input from the project delivery team – or the opposite – you may find that the necessary project roles will be assigned and the correct documentation will be created (i.e. it will look like a PRINCE2 Agile project on paper), but the team may not fully appreciate, or adhere to, the core underlying principles that distinguish PRINCE2 Agile from waterfall projects or from ungoverned Agile projects.

The previous section identified the challenges that your project might face when the overall organizational culture is not ideal for the PRINCE2 Agile framework. In some cases, not having a supporting organizational culture can become an insurmountable challenge that makes PRINCE2 Agile difficult (if not impossible) to implement effectively.

If the issue is that the motivation for implementing PRINCE2 Agile is not coming from the project team, addressing this challenge can be as simple as supplementing the team’s formal PRINCE2 Agile education with collaborative sessions that focus on the spirit of the framework and the benefits for the project.

For current PRINCE2 practitioners, this education may need to focus on the value in empowering the team, encouraging open communication, and having flexible product descriptions that can be adapted as the project progresses. For current Agile practitioners, this education can equally focus on the value of having greater management support, more awareness of business drivers, and status reporting with fewer overheads.

Even if the original motivation for implementing PRINCE2 Agile did not come from the entire project team, you have an opportunity to address this early in the project and ensure that the implementation of PRINCE2 Agile is more than having the team meticulously following a framework without maximizing the benefits that it can deliver.

The third key to PRINCE2 Agile success: the right project

PRINCE2 Agile can be a highly effective framework when it is used for projects that are well suited to Agile delivery, specifically:

• Projects where business stakeholders are available to work with the project delivery team throughout the project lifecycle.
• Projects where the technology platform supports incremental delivery.
• Projects with development teams that have four to eight people (or larger development teams that can be distributed into integrated smaller teams using methods like Scrum or Scrums or the Scaled Agile Framework).

If your project meets all of the above criteria, it is likely to be well suited to Agile delivery, and you can progress to the “right people” section below.

If your project does not meet one or more of the criteria, you may be able to apply selected Agile practices in your project work (e.g. daily stand-up meetings, information radiators), but it is likely that you will not be able to leverage the full benefits of the PRINCE2 Agile framework.

For example, if the technology platform that you are using does not support incremental delivery of functionality (e.g. fixed enterprise platforms, mainframes, legacy systems), you may be able to have the team work on the highest-priority capabilities using time-boxed intervals, but the benefits of leveraging what they are building in a live environment may be restricted to the end of the project (or may not occur at all if the project ends earlier than expected).

This does not restrict the project team from going forward with a PRINCE2 Agile framework, but it does impact how PRINCE2 Agile is implemented and it may affect the benefits that can be achieved. It is critical information to include in the Agilometer and in your assessment of the extent to which Agile methods can be used for your project.³²

The fourth key to PRINCE2 Agile success: the right people

As described above, PRINCE2 Agile is as much a mindset and an attitude as it is a framework. For PRINCE2 Agile to be successful, all of the project team members need to be prepared to work in an environment of trust, empowerment, teamwork, open communication, flexibility, and continuous improvement.

For the Project Board members and the project manager, this could mean trading off the direct control of project activities that they have had in the past in favor of entrusting the project delivery team members to take ownership of their work and to be responsible for communicating significant information as the project progresses.

For project delivery team members, this could mean taking greater ownership and responsibility for delivering agreed outcomes, as well as actively communicating project status information (instead of waiting for the project manager to ask them for a status report).

This type of open and trusting environment can be a welcome change to the “command-and-control” projects that people have worked on in the past. It can, however, also be extremely uncomfortable for some people to relinquish their control, to take more responsibility for their work, to become more communicative, or to focus on team success over personal gains.

Where you have the discretion to select project team members who are ideally suited to the PRINCE2 Agile environment, it is beneficial to look for people who are strong communicators, who are willing to take responsibility for their work, who can trust other team members to deliver on their commitments, and who strive to continuously review and refine the process to ensure that the team is positioned to deliver excellence throughout the project. People who have previous experience working on PRINCE2 Agile projects (or on well-executed Agile projects) are more likely to flourish in this environment – and to encourage others on the team to do the same.

Where there is limited opportunity to choose other staff for this work – and some (or all) of the project team members are uncomfortable in this type of working environment – you may need to decide whether these challenges can be addressed with the proper guidance, e.g. training and mentoring. It may be that the team members have reservations because they have never worked in that type of environment before and, with some exposure, they will begin to see the value and embrace the approach. It may also be that they are going outside their comfort zone and need the support of an experienced PRINCE2 Agile (or Agile) practitioner to pair with them and give them confidence.

As with the other factors, having people who are uncomfortable with (or resistant to) the PRINCE2 Agile environment is not necessarily a deal breaker, but it is important to include this in your assessment of the extent to which Agile methods can be used.

The fifth key to PRINCE2 Agile success: the right approach

Implementing PRINCE2 Agile is not an exact science with strict instructions that apply equally to every project and every organizational culture – it is a framework with guidelines that you can adjust and adapt to the specific needs of each project.

In those circumstances where the Project Board, the project manager and the project delivery team are located in the same offices with a culture of openness and high communication, ongoing status reporting may be achieved by having an information radiator prominently displayed outside the delivery team’s work area – supplemented by highlight reports, checkpoint reports, end stage reports, and exception reports, where required.

In circumstances where the Project Board and the project delivery team are in physically separate locations (or the delivery team itself is spread across multiple locations), the traditional wall displays may need to be supplemented by electronic status reporting tools such as online burndown charts or issue registers. Equally, if the Project Board and the project delivery team do not have a long history of working together – and the organization is new to Agile methods – the project manager may need to create supplemental status updates and other lines of communication to keep the Project Board appraised of the project status and confident about continuing to use PRINCE2 Agile.

The following chapters provide step-by-step advice on how to implement PRINCE2 Agile, specific to the needs of your project and your organization. They focus on the five most likely situations that an organization will encounter in the implementation of PRINCE2 Agile:

• moving from PRINCE2 to PRINCE2 Agile
• merging existing PRINCE2 and Agile methods
• moving an existing waterfall project to PRINCE2 Agile
• implementing a new PRINCE2 Agile project with no existing framework
• implementing a new PRINCE2 Agile project with an existing Agile delivery team.

In each chapter, recommendations and alternatives are provided specific to each project situation, allowing you to choose the approach that is most suited to your organizational culture, your project requirements, and your project team.

It may be helpful for you to refer back to Figure 1 to determine which chapter(s) are the most relevant to your specific needs.

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³¹ Chapter 24, PRINCE2 Agile, Keith Richards, AXELOS (2015), www.axelos.com/store/book/prince2-agile.

³² It may also be valuable for you to consider using the Cynefin framework to determine the level of uncertainty in your project. See Section 17.4.1, PRINCE2 Agile, Keith Richards, AXELOS (2015), www.axelos.com/store/book/prince2-agile.