MSP and PRINCE2
The Office of Government Commerce’s methods

The UK’s Office of Government Commerce (OGC) has done an amazing amount of good work in championing programme and project management. Have a look at their web site which contains a few thousand pages - perhaps too many pages! OGC has created:

  • P3O, which brings together in one place a set of principles, processes and techniques to facilitate effective portfolio, programme and project management through enablement, challenge and support structures.
  • Managing Successful Programmes (MSP), which comprises a set of principles and a set of processes for use when managing a programme.
  • PRINCE2, which is a process-based approach for project management providing an easily tailored and scaleable method for the management of all types of projects.

OGC has also created, for the UK government, the “Gateway Review” process.  In its first implementation they missed the initial stages and had to create a Gate 0, and (embarrassingly, 0a) as projects did not start up very consistently. In fact, the start and end points of a Project Framework are often places where people have difficultly specifying the process - all too often I see projects are started up in a vacuum and fizzle out, with “closure” and “PIR” being confused. (And yet .. .. PRINCE2 actually gets this right!).

MSP and Prince2 are probably the best methodologies of their type on the market, but they do need  tailoring carefully.

P3O, MSP and PRINCE2 compared with the Project Workout

The principles contained in the Project Workout comply with the principles given in the UK’s MSP and PRINCE2 methods. As the first edition of Project Workout predates both MSP and Prince2, there are differences in terminology as much of the language hadn’t yet evolved. MSP and Prince2 have since gone a long way to helping people understand the distinction between a project and a programme.

MSP and Prince2 have not been designed as a unified whole. There are differences in the way they are structured, the terminology used and the process structure. On this latter point, Prince2 uses a “role centric” approach to its processes, with each role being prime in particular processes. For example, Project Manager in Controlling a Stage, Executive in Directing a Project and Team Manager in Managing Product Delivery.  However, MSP does not take this approach and lumps the SRO (sponsor) and programme manager together, thereby muddling the distinction beteen these two very different roles. This implication is that if you are to create an enterprise-wide process set for your organization, you will need to ensure the terminology, process structure and approaches are compatible.

The first edition of Project Workout, predated Prince2 and MSP and, whilst is concentrates moslty on the “project”, in Part 3, it deals with what are now becoming known as “portfolio and “programme management”. Project Workout was probably the first book to contain the portfolio, programme and project concept. The view in Project Workout is that your organizations should be run programmatically and every project must be part of a “Business Program”.  The mapping is as follows:

In Project Workout, I have two entities, “Business program” and “Project”.

Business Programs take on a chunk of the organisation’s strategy, dealing with running today’s operation and building for tomorrow’s operation. Business Programs may also include “sub-business programs” to cope with spans of control or very large change programmes. Business Programs are outcome oriented

Projects are triggered from a Business Program via an authorisation process either as individual projects or as a group of related projects. Projects are outcome (or business objective) oreinted.

The two entities, Business Program and Project, can be used flexibly to group them and/or sub-divide them to suit the particular circumstances. You only need two processes and accountabilitiy sets to define this.

MSP/Prince2 has three entities, portfolio, programme and project.

A portfolio  comprises programs and projects. “non-project” activities. It is similar to the Project Workout’s “Business Program”, in that it represents a chunk of the busness.

Programmes are triggered from the portfolio and comprise projects and non-project work. They are outcome oriented

Projects are triggered “standalone” from a portfoluio or from a programme”. They are there to develop outputs, which when used, will create outcomes.

You need three process and accountability sets to define these, one each for portfolio, programme and for project.

 

In Project Workout, a Business Program equates to an OGC/PMI “portfolio”. However, you can also use the “Business Program” to represent OGC/PMI’s “programmes” - they are simply like “Business Programs within a Business Program”. The scale and complexity of your organization will determine how you structure this. If your organization only has one portfolio, then the term portfolio is the organization and becomes redundant. See Project Workout Chapter 14.

This may all sound very confusing and if you are dogmatic about the use of some words you will get into a mess. The main point to remember is that there needs to be a chain from organizational strategic intent through to action on the ground. How many layers and what you call them is up to you.  Look at Figure 14.2 in the Project Workout - notice the authorization process sits between the Business programs and the projects. Above the authorization process you are merely budgeting to do work, below it you are actually doing project work as authorized, a stage at a time. When building your processes and structures, use the authorization process as the starting point, working up and down, as many layers as you need, calling them whatever you want.

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