Introducing 'PrinceLite'
PrinceLite is a framework for project delivery, not project management for its own sake. It may be termed lightweight but that is not meant to imply it is suitable only for small projects: it is suitable for any size project.
- On one level, PrinceLite is a 'dialect' of Prince2™ (a means of configuring Prince2); it informs which project artefacts are most important to project delivery.
- On another level, Princelite should really be termed PrincePlus, because it sets a particular project in the context of wider business change, programme and project definition.
What does PrinceLite offer that is new?
| Designed specifically for delivering I.T. projects. |
| Formalise the roles and responsibilities of both the business and technical communities |
| Factor in IT's political dimension through mappings from enterprise goals to project deliverables. Business change, project governance and software engineering are considered together |
| Formally define exactly what an unambiguous business requirement looks like |
| Define the minimum artefacts necessary to deliver |
Define 'Agility'
To some people the word ‘agile’ means no paperwork, and that has the effect of precluding the idea of project governance. That is fine for some projects, but not for others. This may be because either the project is too big, or the culture of the organisation requires a mechanism of 'control'. The idea of 'control', of course, can be an illusion. In PL we are more concerned with a realistic and pragmatic approach to project delivery. To that end, PL does not explicitly define 'Project Management' as a fundamental activity. Instead the method is comprised of:
- Governanace
- Contemplation: is this project a good idea? Should this project be funded and continue to be funded?
- Progress reporting: what progress is being made against the project plan?
- Engineering
- Agile
- Waterfall
- Iterative
PL defines a method where the engineering is iterative/agile in each stage, but which is waterfall in that it still features project stages.
PrinceLite adopts concepts from Prince2, PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge), RUP, Agile, DSDM, in fact from everywhere. For instance the RUP project lifecycle model of inception, elaboration, construction and transition is used and combined with a business project lifecycle that runs concurrently. This business project lifecycle for projects in the pre-funded or pilot funded stages is introduced in 'roles defined'. PrinceLite is primarily concerned with delivering IT projects.
Engineering
Business requirements are at the technical heart of the combined governance/engineering method. Requirements bind the business and technical communities together.
To achieve unambiguous business requirements, the Unified Modelling Language is used extensively.
