Prince2 2009 – What’s the difference?

In June 2009, the Office of Government Commerce launched a new edition of the Prince2 method. Many organisations have previously invested heavily in Prince2 and will have been wondering what the key differences are and whether they offer any real benefit. In this posting, I will look at the key differences between the 2005 and 2009 versions of Prince2 and then from my own perspective offer a view on whether I feel they offer any advantages.

The most noticeable difference between the two manuals is size. The 2009 edition is over 120 pages lighter than the 2005 version. Less is definitely more as we have greater consistency in the terminology. The 2005 edition was once likened to a FIAT Multipla on one of my courses. As that was our family car at the time, I enquired how such a conclusion was reached. “Well Jeremy Clarkson described it on Top Gear as being designed by a group of people who have clearly never met each other”. I found this hard to refute. |You cannot level such an accusation at the 2009 edition – it is much more polished and complete.

The first structural change we notice in the 2005 edition of Prince2 is that Principles are a lot more prominent. In the 2005 edition they were implicit – distributed across the book and often repeated and paraphrased in a manner that is best described as inconsistent. In the 2009 edition Principles are explicit and are an integral part of the method.

Components in the 2005 edition have now been renamed Themes and they have reduced in number – only by one.  I have always described components as sub-appendices of detail that support the processes. In the 2009 edition, the themes now precede the processes. This makes a lot more sense as the processes use the themes. What makes even more sense is merging configuration management into the Change theme so we now have seven themes instead of eight components.

The processes have been altered too. We now have seven processes. Planning in the 2005 edition is now part of the Plans theme in the 2009 edition. The best change by far for me has been the abolition of the sub-process shorthand references such as SU1, DP2 etc. We now have activities in each process with names that are more meaningful but also capture the essence of Tailoring Prince2. Scalability of the processes in the 2005 edition is now replaced by a chapter dedicated to considering how much of the Prince2 method is actually required of your project.

There are less management products – eleven fewer no less. This is also a change for the better. Every project I have worked on – and I’ve worked on a few! – has never used the same documentation in terms of content – there is always some alteration or addition that is designed to meet the host organisations explicit needs. Once again the essence of Tailoring Prince2 is being re-enforced. Where the 2005 edition came across as being prescriptive, the 2009 edition encourages context to be considered at all times.

One area that I used to enjoy teaching the least (think about it) in a Prince2 course was the techniques, especially Product Based Planning. Techniques by their very name imply personalisation – “skill in some specialised activity” is how the Oxford English dictionary describes a technique. Did we really need over 25 pages to tell us how to work out what the project was producing? In the 2009 edition, the techniques are still there. Product based planning is much more concisely explained. Companies have always had their own method for change management and accepting products. With this in mind Quality Review and Change Control are shown as complementary guidance. In fact Prince2 encourages using the appropriate body of knowledge to get the best results i.e. M_o_R for risk management, MSP for programme management and ITIL for service management. Recognising that there are other, better qualified and specialised bodies of knowledge out there, enhances Prince2’s credibility.

So – is it any better? The proof as they say will be in the eating. One of the biggest misunderstandings – if that is the right word – with the 2005 edition is that on too many occasions people have tried to follow the book – creating management products with the same names and content as the management products in the manual. That was not what was intended. It was always the application of the message, never the method. The 2009 edition has gone one step further in re-enforcing that message with the emphasis on Tailoring Prince2. Once people move away from seeing the method to seeing the message, then we shall see the true value of Prince2.

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