Tailoring PRINCE2 to the project environment

• What is tailoring?
• General approach to tailoring
  • Overview
  • Applying the principles
  • Adapting the themes
  • Applying the organizations terms and language
  • Adapting the management products
  • Adapting the roles
  • Adapting the processes
• Examples of tailoring PRINCE2
• Projects in a programme environment
  • Overview
  • Themes Business Case
  • Themes Organization
  • Themes Quality
  • Themes Plans
  • Themes Risk
  • Themes Change
  • Themes Progress
  • Processes
  • Management products
• Project scale
  • Overview
  • Simple project
  • Simple project Themes
  • Simple project Processes
  • Simple project Management products
• Commercial customer/supplier environment
  • Overview
  • Themes Business Case
  • Themes Organization
  • Themes Quality
  • Themes Plans
  • Themes Risk
  • Themes Change
  • Themes Progress
  • Processes
  • Management products
• Multi organization projects
• Project type
  • Lifecycle models
  • The evolving project
  • The feasibility project
• Sector differences
  • Overview
  • Senior Responsible Owner
  • OGC Gateway Review
• Project management Bodies of Knowledge

Key sections

• Introduction
• Business case
• Organization
• Quality
• Plans
• Risk
• Change
• Progress
• Introduction to processes
• Starting up a projectDirecting a project
• Initiating a project
• Controlling a stage
• Managing Product Delivery
• Managing a Stage Boundary
• Closing a Project
• Tailoring PRINCE2 to the project environment
• Directing Projects with PRINCE2

Tailoring PRINCE2 to the project environment

Multi-organization projects

Increasingly, the organizational context of projects is becoming more complex.
Rather than a simple customer/supplier relationship involving two organizations, projects are being instigated that involve multiple organizations.

Examples are:

• Joint ventures
• Collaborative research
• Inter-departmental projects
• Inter-governmental projects (e.g. the European Union)
• Inter-agency projects (e.g. United Nations Development Programme)
• Alliance contracting
• Bidding consortium
• Partnerships

There may be one main commissioning authority (or one main customer), but there may be several customers.
Likewise there may be several supplier organizations.
This may result in a situation where the project is ‘multi-owned’, in that more than one organization shares ultimate control over the decision-making process.
Failure to agree the basis for this ‘multi-ownership’ puts the project at risk and increases the chance of project failure.

The guidance to using PRINCE2® in a multi-owned project is similar to the commercial customer/supplier context with respect to tailoring the themes with any reference to ‘contract’ being substituted for ‘agreement’.
However, arrangements catering for multi-organization projects can become extremely complex.
Project Boards, for example, can have more members than can practically make effective decisions.
If no single party holds sway over the others, a consensus has to be built on each decision.
Large consensual Project Boards work very slowly and the pace of their projects is likely to suffer.
Alternatively, Project Managers begin to take decisions that are beyond their remit.
Consideration should then be given to adopting the organizational structures of programme management to assist with benefits management and stakeholder engagement.

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