Lite relief for project delivery

The technical community puts much store in project management frameworks, such as Prince2 or Rational Unified Process (RUP). However, such approaches are inherently flawed because it is not project management that is of interest, but project delivery.

The fact that a project is well managed and ticks the right boxes does not mean it will deliver a working system. It is surprising that senior managers take a complacent attitude towards IT project failure. Such complacency soon changes, though, when the project is nine months late and consuming money hand over fist, with little evidence that it will ever be finished.

Let me dispel a myth ­ user requirements will not become clear as the project goes along and it is no use delegating requirements to your supplier. As the project manager, you have a role to play.

If there is no unambiguous statement of requirements, how will the project be measured? What is the definition of success and how are you going to judge it? Running out of money and patience is not project management.

In my experience anyone can understand case models, activity models and screen mock-ups. Such tools are all that business people need because UML (unified modelling language) takes care of the rest and technical specialists know how to transform business-oriented artifacts into code.

What is really needed is a delivery framework that prioritises the business community stakeholders, senior management, middle management, project management and users.

Such a framework means producing artifacts that the business community can fully understand and own intellectually.

I advocate the fullest use of pictures to ensure all documents are short. If they are not short, they will remain unread, which defeats the purpose.

Ultimately, project delivery is about bridging the gap between the business stakeholders and the technical stakeholders ­ and that is the role of the business requirements specification.

PrinceLite ­ a lightweight framework for IT project delivery ­ is a work in progress. It does not tell you exactly what to do, but does give you some very strong hints.

The framework is the culmination of 10 years’ worth of work with organisations, some of which claim they are following Prince2, but which are really doing Prince in name only.

My response is to proclaim a new delivery framework that really is Prince in name only ­ and proud of it.

The main point of PrinceLite is that it is oriented around the business community, and as such serves the project sponsors ­ the people that pay the IT bill.

Help make the framework better by visiting the PrinceLite web site and contribute to the body of knowledge so we can start delivering projects, not just managing them.

Peter Merrick has worked for the Health and Safety Executive, HMRC, Great Hotel, University of Cambridge Examinations Syndicate and the European Patent Office.

He holds a senior contract position with central government and is available to discuss any of the points he makes here on the PrinceLite site: www.princelite.co.uk