Implementing Project Management Methodology: Choosing Between PMBOK And PRINCE2

Methodology

If a business wants to create a niche in the market, it needs to be innovative such that is able to survive in the competitive business world. One possibility is adoption of a project management methodology for planning, organizing, managing and controlling work such that the productivity of team is improved and performance of the organization is enhanced. However, one project management methodology may not always fit all companies and thus, decisions are required to be made after studying the organizational structure. Two standard methodologies that are used by organizations worldwide are PMBOK and PRINCE2. In this report, there are 3 organizations including a financial organization, a residential society, and an international IT organization that are in the process of deciding a project management methodology out of the two. This report would explore the three cases from the perspective of project management methodology implementation to understand the likely problems that companies can face such that an appropriate choice can be made.

Existing Methodology: It is a Financial Services organization that is operating with 80 employees in Australia and New Zealand. The company uses Australian Prudential Regulation Authority – Regulator Performance Framework for managing its business operations. The project manager can have a direct influence on the senior manager in the company. The management was fast in deciding the project management methodology.

Proposed Methodology: The company needs project management methodology for managing its financial projects that are specialized. PRINCE2 is a methodology that is most suitable for general projects and thus, a PMBOK methodology may be more suitable for the Organization A. Moreover, PMBOK is more focused on the work of project managers as they are given the authority of decision making, the methodology would fit the organizational structure in which project managers are already given priority (Karaman & Kurt, 2015).

Existing Methodology: It is a Building Society that houses 600 people. The society uses Australian Prudential Regulation Authority – Regulator Performance Framework for managing its operations. The company is using a project management methodology that was developed by the company internally.

Proposed Methodology: However, the methodology has not been efficient which is why the company want to adapt to a new and more organized methodology. As PMBOK guide provides a very detailed view of projects management processes, it can be chosen for the Organization B (PMI, 2010).

Existing Methodology: It is an international technological services organization operating with 1200 people worldwide. The company uses Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)  for managing its operations and is certified with CMMI.

Figure 1: PRINCE 2 Methodology for Organization C (Turley, 2012)

Proposed Methodology: As the company is already using a standardized methodology for IT project management, what is now needs is a methodology that helps the company explore best practices of the industry. It does not need very detailed process guidance but something that is flexible and can be tailored based on the projects being managed. Thus, PRINCE2 would an appropriate project management methodology which is also popular with IT projects worldwide. The project would be divided into 4 major stages including pre-project, initiation, execution, and closure. In the pre-project stage, all the information that is required to initiate the project is collected and an initial plan is made. During initiation, project is authorized to start and an initiation document called PID is approved. During the stage of execution, project deliveries are managed as per the identified work packages. At this stage, the control measures would be established to manage the stage boundaries and deliverables as per the project plan. The last stage of a project is closure which involves development of the end project report.

Organization A

The IT projects taken by the company would be carried out in four stages including pre-project, initiation, execution and project closure. First the information needed for respective project would be gathered and an initial plan would be made which would be approved by the management for project initiation. The project would then be executed as per the project plan in a controlled environment that ensures taking care of the project boundaries. Once, the entire project activities are finished, project closure report is prepared along with lessons recorded for final sign off.

For the implementation of PMBOK for the company, certain knowledge areas would be chosen that would be most appropriate for the processes that are already being handled by the company.  The top management along with the project manager and the PMBOK consultants can take a decision on what knowledge areas and what processes must be adopted by the company staff. Once that is decided, the next step would be to plan and conductive extensive trainings on chosen subjects to uses of the company.

PMBOK is not process that can be implemented directly but a guide that can be used to put its ideas into practice on specific projects.  The global library of PMBOK would be used as a reference material for determining what is best for project. This would include ideas, terms, principles, and best practices. These would only be used as guides and the processes would be customized for the organization B for actual use of PMBOK practices on the real estate management project.

Figure 2: PMBOK Processes

PMBOK inventory is divided into five stages including initiation, planning, executing, controlling, and closing. In each of these stages, certain processes would be included that can be divided into 10 knowledge areas that include  Integration, scope, time, cost, quality, HR, communications, risk, procurement and stakeholder management.

For implementing PRINCE2 in the Organization C, first the top management of the company including CEO, COO, CFO and Vice President, who would be approached to get the buy-in from them for its implementation. Once, this is done, the employees of the finance company including credit controller, accounts manager, and IT manager would be trained on the PRINCE 2 practices as per their role requirements in the implementation of PRINCE 2 and management of activities accordingly. Once the training of employees is completed, the new processes would be implemented for the management of new projects. As the company is already using CMMI certified processes, the implementation approach would also include deployment of improvement professionals from Project Management consultant to create technological links between the two methodologies as well as bridge any communication gap between the two (Kirwan, et al., 2008).

The implementation of PRINCE 2 in the financial services organization would require embracing of all the principles of the methodology by the company including:

• Creation of a business case that justifies the project such that only if the project is financially and strategically justified can the decision be taken on moving ahead with the project
• Company can learn from experiences of other IT organizations implementing PRINCE 2 such that best practices can be identified and implemented for the company. To carry forward the idea of learning, every project management process would also involve recording of the lessons learnt from the current project.
• The implementation of the project would be divided into manageable stages using logical structure that would allow for periodic reassessment of plans. These stages would include negotiation, search for funds, IT system or software development, testing of developed system, IT training, and the final stage of project closure or go live.
• The IT projects would also be managed by exceptions such that there would be a definite organizational structure with defined responsibilities. The accountability in the project team for aspects of cost, time, quality, benefits and risks is also required.
• Implementation of any IT product using PRINCE 2 methodology would have the focus on the product
• Use of tailoring would always be required as the projects would vary in deliverables

There are certain challenges that can be faced while implementing PMBOK in the financial organization as it would be the first time that the company would be using an organized and highly dedicated project methodology like PMBOK and these would include:

• As the methodology is very extensive, it would be challenging for the organization to adopt it especially when it does not have an experience of using PM methodologies as it would require buy-in and cooperation from the employees who may show resistance to learning new methodology because of complications involved
• For implementation of PMBOK methodology, a complete cultural transformation would be required as it would need the people working in the company follow new principles of working which could be time consuming and difficult
• The company would have to make a huge number of templates, processes and documents to be able to adopt the methodology which can be overwhelming for the staff.

Organization B

There are certain challenges that can be faced while implementing PMBOK in the real estate management project such as:

• Not all the business processes need PMBOK guidance and thus, it becomes difficult for the management to decide on where to use PMBOK practices and where to keep using tradition al methods on the project.
• When implementing PMBOK, managers may have the tendency to make attempts to use the guide for every process which can make it difficult for the team to implement the guide in practice all of a sudden when the same has not been used earlier and the staff would lack the familiarity with the processes and templates.

There are certain challenges that can be faced while implementing PRINCE 2 in the IT company such as:

• PRINCE 2 needs to be tailored for every project for which the company employees must know how it works in detail such that unless they are trained appropriately, the methodology could not be used in parts.
• As PRINCE 2 practice is driven by a specific management style, the company that has not been using any professional methodology would find it difficult to learn and implement as it would need the entire culture of the company to change
• Without the adequate knowledge of PRINCE 2 , the implementation would not deliver required benefits to the financial organization and thus, the implementation has to be done only after the teams are appropriately trained in practice
• The methodology requires professional certification to be taken by the project team which could be time consuming for the company and unless that is done, the projects cannot be started using PRINCE 2
• PRINCE 2 is not an extensive process and thus, does not included certain processes such as procurement and knowledge management in which case, the staff would face difficulties if planning to avoid PRINCE 2 or tailor it(Saad, et al., 2012).

There are certain additional challenges that can be faced while implementing PRINCE 2 in the IT Company as it already has CMMI implemented so the addition of PRINCE 2 would create a multimodal environment which would pose following challenges:

• With CMMI and PRINCE 2 added in the same organization, a coordinated infrastructure would have to be created for process improvement which would need integration of training and coordination of roles and responsibilities which would not be easy
• The measurement systems used in the organization would have to be aligned between CMMI and PRINCE 2 such that PRINCE 2 brings additional benefits for the company such as better governance which would be another challenging task

The challenges faced by the Organization A in adopting PMBOK guide is majorly due to the lack of experience with professional methodologies which can be overcome in following ways:

• The company can use services of a project management consultant who would guide the company staff in adopting the methodology
• An extensive training would be required for the company staff enabling them to learn all PMBOK processes and best practices
• The financial organization may begin with only one knowledge area of PMBOK in the iitail implementation and multiple stages of adoption can be used.

The challenges of adopting PMBOK in the real estate society would face two major challenges including inability to take decisions on what processes would follow PMBOK and this challenge can be overcome by following certain methods for adoption such as:

• Taking advise from project management consults to guide the implementation of the PM methodology in an appropriate manner
• Providing training to all the key project team members and take a mutual decision between the team leader and the top management on what PMBOK practices to adopt
• The company may not start using all the PMBOK processes in one instant but can do the same phase wise starting with some processes followed by other

To address the challenges of adoption of PRINCE 2 in the company would need the learning of methods and principles by the company staff from professionals to ensure that every aspect of the methodology is sufficiently understood. Moreover, the company must understand that it is a methodology that provides selective guidelines such that if additional business processes have to be managed using PRINCE 2 then a tailoring would be required.

As the company needs to create a process improvement infrastructure to be able to make the best use of the PRINCE 2 methodology in the presence of already adopted CMMI certification, the first step would be to identify the common roles between two methodologies that in this case would include:

• Senior management that provides budget and strategic direction to the organization C helping company bring improvements
• Personnel who would act as facilitators and bring coordination in processes so as to bring improvement of the IT products and solutions
• The company would deploy a temporary staff for implementation of the methodology for the organizational improvement. A Project management consultant can be approached for this and a team can be guided by the temporary staff provided by this consultant.

Besides the personnel alignment, the consolidated infrastructure may be improved through optimization of structures across multiple technologies and systematic distribution of these technologies for brining strategic, domain related or tactical benefits (Valek, 2014).

Benefits of using PMBOK guidelines for the project management in the organization A include:

• The methodology will formalize and organize the project processes of the organization thereby making the team more productive and projects more effective.
• The use of guide would allow extensive planning such that the project deliverables can be clearly defined, monitored as well as assessed.
• Use of PMBOK would bring the strategic benefits to the organization by making processes fast and transparent

Benefits of using PMBOK guidelines for the project management in the organization B include:

• The methodology will help company formalize its processes thereby making its services more productive
• The process documentation provides a detailed guidance on each knowledge area of PMBOK which would help company adopt the methodology with effectiveness.
• The processes of the company would become transparent and accessible to all team members which will make their system more transparent and shareable.

Benefits of using PRINCE 2 guidelines for the project management in the organization A include:

• It is a highly flexible methodology which gives the IT company to tailor the approaches for individual practices to get best results
• As the methodology works on learning systems, the best practice lessons could be made available and put to use
• PRINCE 2 in addition to CMMI would help refine the IT project management practices by adopting the best practices and methodologies as per PRINCE 2  which would support the CMMI works also.

Conclusion

This report was prepared to explore the project methodologies including PRINCE 2 and PMBOK guide with an aim to understand how choices are made between project management methodologies by people, what challenges are faced in implementation and how they can be overcome. There were three organizations of different sizes including a financial organization, housing society and an international IT company. The organizational structures of each of these were studied based on which the recommendations for the use of appropriate project management methodology were proposed. The banking company was advised to use PMBOK. Also, the housing society being a non-specialised product can be transformed through the use of social media.  Certain challenges were found in the paper such as challenges of adoption by users, lack of experiential knowledge in the suers. Most of the challenges could be overcome with the involveent of the PM consultant and through traiing of employees on either of the methodology that is used in the organization.

References

Karaman, E. & Kurt, M., 2015. Comparison of project management methodologies: prince 2 versus PMBOK for it projects. Int. Journal of Applied Sciences and Engineering Research, 4(4), pp. 572-574.

Kirwan, P., Siviy, J., Marino, L. & Morley, J., 2008. Implementation Challenges in a Multimodel Environment, s.l.: Carnegie Mellon University. .

PMI, 2010. The Value of Project Management , s.l.: PMI.

Saad, S. et al., 2012. A Case Study on Implementation of Prince2 Methodology in Automotive Industry in Malaysia (A Preliminary Study). International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, 3(4), pp. 1-24.

Turley, F., 2012. The PRINCE2 Foundation Training Manual. s.l.:MPlaza.

Valek, L., 2014. The Time Bank implementation and governance: Is PRINCE 2 suitable?, s.l.: University of Hradec Kralove.