Project Angels

Project Angels - News

2010 - What's new?

P3O® – widespread interest

Portfolio, Programme and Project Offices (P3O), OGC’s latest best practice guidance, was launched on the 28th October 2008. It has attracted wide spread support and TSO have done several reprints to keep up with the demand.

Sue Vowler, the lead author of the P3O guidance and Director of Project Angels, has been asked to speak at many conferences to explain the new guidance, including Scotland 09 Programme and Project Management and the Public Sector PPM conference in Manchester. Other recent presentations have included the Welsh Assembly, the Cross Government PPM Group and the PPSO SIG.

Global interest continues with invites to speak at conferences from both the German PRINCE User Group in Cologne on 24th April and the Netherlands PRINCE User group conference in Utrecht on 18th June 2009.

Interest has been particularly high amongst local government and Project Angels are currently coaching several local authorities in rolling out a P3O model. If you would like us to talk to your senior managers about how P3O could help your organisation then please contact us.

Partnership with CA

Project Angels have formed a partnership with Computer Associates to develop a P3O friendly version of their popular Clarity Tool.

The partnership includes collaboration on P3O client implementations with Project Angels providing a client healthcheck, PPPM improvement plan and CA providing a tailored tools implementation service to help automate data capture and analysis, providing a virtual decision support engine. Many tools implementations fail because the organisation doesn’t have the base processes or culture in place to support the effective adoption of a tool.

The collaboration between CA and Project Angels will ensure these issues are addressed up front and the tool roll-out tailored to meet the maturity and culture of the organisation.

PRINCE2® 2009 launch

After almost 2 years in development, PRINCE2 2009 was launched on 16th June 2009. This is a major refresh of the popular OGC project management method and addresses many of the issues raised in recent years. In a nutshell, the differences are:

  • More guidance for Project Board members - separation into 2 books – Managing Successful Projects (for Project Managers) and Directing Successful Projects (For Sponsors and Project Boards)
  • Introduction of Principles and Themes – replacing components and techniques
  • Sub processes are being replaced by activities
  • Planning is being tidied up generally and now becomes a Theme rather than a main process and a technique
  • More focus on tailoring and scaling the method – separate chapter
  • Revised terminology e.g. replacement of Logs in some cases by Registers e.g. Issue Register and Risk Register
  • Will be supported by an online knowledge centre
  • Improved linkages with other OGC products - alignment with recent changes in M_o_R , MSP™ and P3M3™ to ensure language and processes are consistent – e.g. risk now aligned to M_o_R language and techniques
  • Less prescriptive
  • Greater emphasis on seeking lessons – at start up, during and at closure
  • Greater emphasis on product quality
  • Greater emphasis on Business Case and Benefits
  • Fewer management products – more easily scaled
  • Improved guidance on tolerances
  • Revised approach to issues and changes