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Page 1: Elizabeth Harrin - Get projects done with more …girlsguidetopm.com/wp-content/uploads/products/InsidePRINCE2.pdfInside PRINCE2 Elizabeth Harrin Introduction PRINCE2:2009 is no longer

Elizabeth Harrin

Page 2: Elizabeth Harrin - Get projects done with more …girlsguidetopm.com/wp-content/uploads/products/InsidePRINCE2.pdfInside PRINCE2 Elizabeth Harrin Introduction PRINCE2:2009 is no longer

Inside PRINCE2 Elizabeth Harrin

Copyright Notice:

Copyright © The Otobos Group, 2010. All rights reserved.

Reproduction or translation of any part of this work without the permission of the Publisher is against the law. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

While all attempts have been made to verify information provided in this publication, neither the Author nor the Publisher assumes any responsibility for errors, omissions, or contrary interpretation of the subject matter herein.

This publication is not intended for use as a source of legal, financial or human resource management advice.

The Author assumes no responsibility or liability whatsoever on the behalf of any Purchaser or Reader of these materials.

PRINCE2™ is a Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries.

MSP™ is a Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce.

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Inside PRINCE2 Elizabeth Harrin

Table of ContentsIntroduction..........................................................................................................................................4Tolerances.............................................................................................................................................5

Time.............................................................................................................................................................5Cost..............................................................................................................................................................5Scope...........................................................................................................................................................6Risk..............................................................................................................................................................6Quality.........................................................................................................................................................6Benefits........................................................................................................................................................6

Fixed date projects...............................................................................................................................8What PRINCE2 says......................................................................................................................................8The role of the Project Board.......................................................................................................................8

Exam tips.............................................................................................................................................10Read the answers......................................................................................................................................10Annotate your manual...............................................................................................................................10Get some experience first..........................................................................................................................10

Closing a project.................................................................................................................................11How does PRINCE2 handle closing a project?............................................................................................11What are the objectives of the Closing a Project process?........................................................................11How do I close down a project?.................................................................................................................11What if the project is closing before it completes?....................................................................................12Where can I get more guidance?...............................................................................................................12

Who does what in Initiation?.............................................................................................................136 Reasons to use your pm4success subscription...............................................................................15

1: Ask an Expert........................................................................................................................................152: Alchemy for Managers..........................................................................................................................153: OGC Resource Toolkit............................................................................................................................154: Mind Maps............................................................................................................................................155: Sample papers......................................................................................................................................156: Free.......................................................................................................................................................16Will I renew my subscription?....................................................................................................................16

A new way to think about RACI..........................................................................................................17What software works with PRINCE2?.................................................................................................18Book review: Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2................................................................19Book review: Directing Successful Projects with PRINCE2.................................................................20About the author................................................................................................................................21

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Inside PRINCE2 Elizabeth Harrin

Introduction

PRINCE2:2009 is no longer the new standard – it's the guidance of choice for many project managers. Over the past year, A Girl's Guide to Project Management has published various articles about applying PRINCE2 techniques, as well as advice on how to get the most out of the PRINCE2 exam process.

This short book brings together all those articles, covering topics as diverse as exam tips, project closure and managing tolerances. It will be a useful guide for those starting their journey to become a PRINCE2 Practitioner, or for those who are trying to implement PRINCE2 successfully in their organisations.

Even if you have no intention of studying for the PRINCE2 exams, I hope you will find something useful in here to apply to the way you do projects.

Elizabeth Harrin

LondonJanuary 2011

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Inside PRINCE2 Elizabeth Harrin

Tolerances

Tolerances are a key part of being able to work autonomously as a project manager. Having a tolerance means you can be over a bit or under a bit and not have to continually go back to your project sponsor and get any variation approved. It gives you some slack to manage things in the best possible way and to be a professional about how you deliver projects.

A tolerance is a performance range to which you will keep. Positive tolerances (the amount by which you can go over) are the most common. Who cares if you are significantly under against budget or come in three months early? Actually, negative tolerances are just as important. Coming in under budget means you have tied up company funds unnecessarily for a length of time, and in the current economic climate no sponsor will thank you for that. That isn’t to say that you should spend company money on random items just to stay within tolerance, but once you drop below your tolerance levels it would be a good time to reforecast your project budget and free up any spare cash that you won’t be using.

The two most frequently used tolerances are budget and time, although PRINCE2 offers you a choice of six tolerances:

• Time• Cost• Scope• Risk• Quality• Benefits.

These are summarised in the table overleaf. Let’s look at each of them individually.

Time

A time tolerance is the amount to which you can be over or under against your project completion dates. For example, if the tolerance is two weeks you can deliver two weeks earlier or two weeks later without it having an impact. If you are too early you will have created a problem for another project; too late and you have missed the final deadline.

Cost

Cost tolerances are applied as either a percentage or a cash amount against the planned budget. For example, on a £100k project with a 10% tolerance you can spend up to £110k before having to ask for approval for more spend.

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Scope

Scope tolerance is slightly odd, because it is a lot harder to quantify a percentage variation to scope. Scope tolerance is measured as an agreed variation from the product description, and any potential variation should be documented in the product breakdown structure. Think priority listing for scope tolerance. MoSCoW prioritisation will give you a list that provides potential for variation in delivery.

Tolerance area Description

Time + / - time of planned completion

Cost + / - amount of planned budget

Scope Permitted scope variations

Risk Permitted aggregate threat/individual threat value

Quality Permitted quality variations within a range

Benefits Permitted benefit variations within a range

Table 1: Tolerances in PRINCE2

Risk

Each risk should have an impact attached to it, and risk tolerance covers the aggregate impact of the project’s risk portfolio. For example, financial value of all the project risks should not exceed 5% of the project budget. You can also set a tolerance per risk, like ‘only two days of downtime permitted for any operational service’. Risk tolerances give you an idea of which risks you should be escalating to the Project Board.

Quality

Quality tolerances are targets that define acceptable performance for a product, and are documented in the product descriptions. An example would be that a software product must have a response time of between 0 and 0.5 seconds when a user hits ‘Submit’.

Benefits

It’s hard to think of a scenario where you would want to cap the project benefits, so normally benefit tolerances are set to the lowest levels. Benefit tolerances are defined as a range and will be part of the project’s business case. For example: ‘Achieve minimum savings on the cost of electricity of 6% for each of our shops, averaging 8% across all shops'.

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Tolerances can be set for the project, for a stage and also at work package level, so they can become very detailed. The overall project tolerances should be agreed with the sponsor at the start of the project, so you know what parameters you are working to. They form part of the ‘contract’ you have with the sponsor – and getting this clear up front will make managing the project (and the sponsor) a lot easier as the project gets going.

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Fixed date projects

Planning is an essential part of what project managers do, so you would expect there to be some mention of how to deal with fixed date projects in the PRINCE2 manuals. There isn’t. Fixed date projects only get a passing mention in the Managing Successful Projects book, and you’d have to look really hard to find a mention of managing time constraints in the Directing Successful Projects book.

That’s because PRINCE2 expects you to do project management properly, with sponsors who commit to realistic plans and don’t expect you to deliver the world on a plate by Tuesday lunchtime. Unfortunately, when does any methodology get applied perfectly? Project managers still need some guidance on how to manage projects that have a fixed date.

What PRINCE2 says

PRINCE2 advises that the fixed date time constraint is managed as a planning risk. It identifies planning risks based on fiscal boundaries (for example, where you can’t move the project budget from one financial year to the next) and also on calendar boundaries (for example, delivering something before the end of the tax year). It cites the Millennium Bug projects as calendar-bound planning risks, but there have been more recent examples, like last year’s 53 week year which messed up some software.

If you are doing your product based planning properly, you will end up with a schedule that shows exactly how long the project is going to take. You then take this to the sponsor and ask for agreement.

Project Board members are supposed to make a commitment to provide adequate resources to successfully deliver the project, and time is one of them. The Directing manual does acknowledge that there are factors that can upset the agreement process. For example, people may not be available to resource the project adequately to enable it to hit the scheduled dates because they are working on other things. PRINCE2 advises that the Project Board members decide between themselves how best to meet all the organisation’s commitments and manage competing priorities.

The role of the Project Board

The good news for project managers is that the Project Board are clearly advised by PRINCE2 that their role is to endorse the Stage Plans as realistic representations of the work required to achieve the deliverables. That is, by agreeing a Stage Plan, they also agree that it is completely possible to do all the work in the required time and they sign up to providing all the resources necessary to make that happen. They can’t agree a Stage Plan, take away half your project team and then blame you when you can’t get the work done on time. Has your Project Board done this to you? Point them to page 26 in the Directing manual which says: “Project Board members cannot subsequently distance themselves and blame the planners.” So there.

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While there isn’t a lot about managing fixed date projects in PRINCE2, the reason is that you shouldn’t be managing fixed date projects. PRINCE2 is all about managing in a controlled environment (that’s the C and the E of PRINCE), not one where everyone is rushing around panicking to get things done by a date some executive thought up on the golf course.

If you are expected to manage a fixed date project in a PRINCE2 environment, question how that fits with the method – because it doesn’t fit very well.

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Exam tips

Read the answers

When you are in your PRINCE2 exam pay special attention to the answers to the questions as they are written on the paper. The exam is multiple choice so there will be multiple answers to choose from. Look out for the language. There are very few absolutes in PRINCE2 so be careful with answers with the words 'must' in or those that say 'You always should do this' as chances are the examiners will be trying to catch you out.

Annotate your manual

The PRINCE2 exam is 'open book' which means you can take in your PRINCE2 manual but you can't take in any other materials, documents or notes that you have made. However that doesn't stop you from putting all the notes that you want to make inside the manual. There is lots of white space – inside the back and front covers, the blank pages at the back - where you can make the notes that you need, and draw the process diagrams that you feel will help you pass the exam.

Get some experience first

There are no pre-requisites for taking the PRINCE2 Foundation exam. You don't need to have any level of educational attainment or any previous project management experience. However, to take the Practitioner exam you do need to have already taken and passed the Foundation exam. While you don't need any project management experience to take Foundation and then move on to Practitioner, it is advisable to have some. It will be a lot easier for you to understand the concepts and to apply the skills that you have learned if you already have some experience working with projects.

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Closing a project

A project has a start, a middle and an end, so closing a project is an important part of the project management lifecycle. Closing a project successfully means a good, clean transition for the project team. This involves transferring ownership of the products to the operational team, and makes it clear that the project team are no longer responsible for them. The project manager and the team will be able to move on to their next assignment. A clear end to the project also provides an opportunity to ensure that any goals that were not achieved during the project can be addressed in the future.

How does PRINCE2 handle closing a project?

Closing a project in PRINCE2 uses a variant of the Managing Stage Boundary process, as this closure activity happens at the end of the last stage. The work required to close the project should be planned as part of this final stage. The Closing a Project process tackles the end of the stage in a slightly different way to the other stages: instead of gaining approval to move to the next stage, this process gains approval to close the project and handover to operations instead.

What are the objectives of the Closing a Project process?

The objectives of the Closing a Project process are:

• To verify that there is user acceptance of the project’s products; • To ensure that the operational team is able to support the products when the project and

the project team is disbanded; • To review the performance of the project against its baselines; • To assess any benefits that have already been realised, update the forecast for the

remaining benefits and plan a review of those benefits at some point in the future; and • To ensure that provision has been made to address all the open issues and risks, with

follow-on actions or recommendations.

How do I close down a project?

There are three areas to cover when closing a project.

First, the project manager should check that the expected results have been achieved. This can be done through updating the project plan, checking that all the products have been approved and meet the quality criteria and checking that the acceptance criteria for the project have been met.

Second, the project’s products must be handed over to the operational team. This could be done in one go, or it might have happened as part of a phased delivery. If anything is not yet completed, prepare a follow-on action list for the operational team to pick up, including scheduling a review of benefits at a later date.

Third, evaluate the project. This provides the opportunity to review the project’s original intent as

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agreed back in the initiation stage, against what was actually accomplished. The evaluation can be presented as an End Project Report, which covers how the project performed against targets, tolerances and the baseline schedule. The evaluation can also include a Lessons Learned Report, so that other projects can learn from what went well and what didn’t go so well on this project.

What if the project is closing before it completes?

Projects sometimes need to be stopped before they are planned to finish. There are many reasons for this, including that the business environment or strategy may have changed, negating the need for the project. If this is the case, the project can still be closed in a controlled manner, which will allow the project manager to salvage anything of value and check that senior management is aware of any gaps left by cancelling the project.

When a project is closed prematurely, there may be some products that have been completed. These can be handed over to the operational team if appropriate. It is also useful to notify the management teams that the project team will be released early and the team members will be available to take on other assignments.

When a project is stopped early, it is really important to make sure that there is adequate communication to the business and the project team. People don’t like to be associated with failed projects, so try to communicate the positive aspects of what the project managed to achieve before it was stopped, and clearly explain the business rationale for stopping the project at this time.

Where can I get more guidance?

The PRINCE2 manuals, Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2 and Directing Successful Projects with PRINCE2, both include sections on managing project closure.

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Who does what in Initiation?

Initiating a project is where it all starts in PRINCE2. This is the phase where you start working out who is going to do what. You also put in place all the required elements to make sure the project goes smoothly. The Initiating a Project process is designed to “establish solid foundations” according to the manual. Essentially, this is the part where you make sure that everyone knows what they need to do and that there is a common agreement on the project objectives and the rationale for undertaking the work.

There are a lot of items to set up in the Initiating a Project process, although if you have managed a project with PRINCE2 before you’ll just need to get out the versions you did for those projects and tweak them to suit this new one. No sense in reinventing the wheel.

In my opinion, the four most important parts of this process are putting in place the approach to deal with issues and changes as they arise. That means having:

• a Risk Management Strategy • a Configuration Management Strategy • a Quality Management Strategy, and; • a Communications Management Strategy.

For each of these you need to work out who is going to:

• approve the strategy (A) • review the strategy (R); and • produce the strategy (P).

The responsibilities for each member of the project team are shown in the table overleaf. Remember that the Configuration Management Strategy is where your issues register sits.

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Product Action

Executive or Senior User

or Senior Supplier

Project Manager

Project Assurance

Project Support

Risk Management Strategy Create A P R

Risk Register Create and complete A R P

Configuration Management

StrategyCreate A P R

Configuration Item Records Create first pass A R P

Issue Register Create and complete A R P

Quality Management

StrategyCreate A P R

Quality Register Create A R P

Communication Management

StrategyCreate A P R

Table 2: Initiation stage responsibilities

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6 Reasons to use your pm4success subscription

Exam rooms for APMG exams like PRINCE2 can be daunting.

The desks are clear apart from the papers you need. And somewhere on the desk is likely to be a leaflet for pm4success, the APMG’s website for exam candidates. In the stress of the exam, you could overlook the leaflet and forget to fill in the blanks to ensure you get access to the website. However, with over 1000 pages of content aimed at project and programme managers, it is worth remembering that you have free access to this site for 12 months after your exam.

Here are 6 reasons why you should log on to pm4success.

1: Ask an Expert

You can Ask an Expert, or browse the questions that have already been asked. Those asked in the last 30 days are flagged as ‘new’ so you can see what’s been recently added. Questions are answered by people like the chief examiner, so you know you are getting a good quality reply. Some of the answers include templates or sample documents, so you get more than just a stock answer – you get a tailored response with useful additional material if they have something extra to share.

2: Alchemy for Managers

You get a year’s subscription to Alchemy for Managers – which is very useful. Project management is also about good management, so brush up on all your basic (and some more advanced) general management topics. The year starts from the day you sign up to Alchemy, so it doesn’t run concurrent with your pm4success membership. This alone is worth logging on to pm4success for.

3: OGC Resource Toolkit

There’s a guide to the OGC Resource Toolkit. The OGC website is extensive and difficult to navigate. pm4success provides direct links to the most useful entry points, documentation and briefings, which saves you time. It’s in flux at the moment as the OGC website is being updated.*

4: Mind Maps

There are Mind Maps to download for M_o_R, MSP and PRINCE2. You need to download Thoughtograph, a mindmap viewing tool to be able to view them. It’s not how I think or structure my notes, but for graphically-minded people it’s an aid to not having to build your own.

5: Sample papers

There are sample exam papers available for PRINCE2, MSP, M_ o_R. Sample papers are a highly valuable resource. In order to get access to pm4success, you will have had to take one of those

* As at September 2010

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exams, but if you are thinking of taking another, you can get some exam practice in advance as part of your pre-course learning.

6: Free

It’s free! There are over 1000 pages of content. While I found that some of it is not helpful at all (although it might be helpful to people at different stages of their career), there has to be something here you can use!

Will I renew my subscription?

No. Much of the content on pm4success is static, and while they do add new articles on a regular basis, it’s not enough to encourage me to pay the annual fee. The Ask an Expert feature is excellent, but the newsgroup is not very active and I’ll get the same benefit of discussion with my peers from forums on Gantthead or LinkedIn groups. Overall, it is a useful perk to have for a year, but not worth continuing after that.

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A new way to think about RACI

Do you use the RACI model to help with stakeholder management?

RACI is a way of categorising stakeholders to help define their roles and responsibilities, and it is also useful for communications plans. The most common way to see RACI used is in tabular form – with the letters across the top and the list of stakeholders down the side. The letters across the top stand for:

• Responsible: these people have responsibility for certain tasks • Accountable: this is the person accountable for the job in hand • Consulted: these people would like to know about the task and we would seek their

opinions • Informed: this group gets one-way communication to keep them up-to-date with progress

and other messages

A tabular format is fine for documenting the RACI profile of your stakeholders. If you have difficulty trying to remember how many you have in each group, think of RACI as a triangle:

Figure 1: The RACI Triangle

There is only one person accountable for the task or project, and they are at the top. You then have several people responsible for various elements. A larger group is consulted and provides input. An even larger group gets regular communications but are not active in any other way.

This is a useful project management tool that highlights the type of input each stakeholder or group of stakeholders is going to have – but you actually have to make sure that everyone is engaged for the project to be a success. At least RACI gives you a starting point in identifying and categorising stakeholders, so you can then properly engage them.

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What software works with PRINCE2?

“I would like your suggestions on which software can apply the methodology of PRINCE2,” said the email from a project manager from Brazil. I love getting emails from readers, and it is good to have the opportunity to set the record straight about certain things. It was interesting that this question had been asked at all, so I thought it was worth answering here.

The short answer is that there is no software that applies the methodology of PRINCE2. PRINCE2 doesn’t work like that. This is what the manual says:

“PRINCE2 is a non-proprietary method… [it] is truly generic: it can be applied to any project regardless of scale, type, organization, geography or culture.”

PRINCE2 is tool-agnostic, so it doesn’t rely on any type of technology to make it work. I have used it in organizations using Niku and Microsoft Project, but that is just for producing scheduling information, and in the case of Niku, resource planning through the use of timesheets. You could use any scheduling tool. Or none at all.

If you search online for PRINCE2 software you will find some companies who say their software can help deploy PRINCE2 as a method in your organization. Project in a box, for example, or Project Progress, both have PRINCE2 ‘compatible’ software. I haven’t tried either of these (although I have had Project in a box on my radar for a while). I can’t tell you if they are any good – they might be. But they are certainly not essential for deploying and using PRINCE2.

Personally I would be hesitant about using a project management software product particularly tailored to one project approach, as I have to question how easy it is to pick and choose the bits of the method you want to apply. The great thing about PRINCE2 2009 is that it is far more customisable than previous versions, and that allows project managers infinite flexibility in how they use it. I imagine that it would be far more time consuming to manage customisable options in a software product than by letting an experienced project manager get on with doing their job.

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Book review: Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2

The new version of the PRINCE2 manual for project managers feels a lot clearer and structured. Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2: 2009 Edition has more diagrams and a greater degree of clarity and explanation about the themes and processes. This makes the book more graphically interesting than the previous versions, and I’m sure this makes it easier to study and reference on a daily basis.

There is a greater degree of emphasis on the business case, and the text in general spends more time on evaluating and understanding the project context. Chapter 5 sets the project in the organisational environment, with advice on working with a project team – part-time or otherwise – including short guidance on training and line management responsibilities.

This version has a clearer definition of the quality approach, including a sample quality review meeting agenda. Overall, the book provides more structured guidance on the ‘how’ of managing a project with examples of what the techniques or criteria actually map to within a project. Each Theme chapter ends with a table explaining the responsibilities of each team member as it relates to that Theme, and this is replicated in a similar fashion in the Processes chapters. However, the text still talks about a daily log and I remain unconvinced as to the usefulness of this concept in an electronic business environment.

The book includes useful checklists, and the Closing a Project checklist seemed particularly good, although it does overlap slightly with the Authorise Project Closure checklist. In total, the health check lists provided by Appendix E do offer a project manager the opportunity to assess the state of any project, which is helpful if you have not been the project manager since the beginning of the project, or if you are coming to the close of a major stage and feel that it is an appropriate time to schedule a review.

There is clearer guidance here as to how PRINCE2 sits within the family of OGC texts, and there are references to Management of Risk in Chapter 8 (Risks). This, combined with the advice on tailoring PRINCE2 for your own organisation, makes the manual seem more practical and more coherent. Previously, the PRINCE2 methods were in danger of being applied in an ‘all or nothing’ approach, but this new version sets organisational maturity and appetite in the heart of the project management process.

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Book review: Directing Successful Projects with PRINCE2

This book is long overdue: it’s a great idea to have a separate manual for those responsible for directing projects and sitting on the Project Board. Directing Successful Projects with PRINCE2 2009 has a clear structure – and it’s also clear what it does not include. There is nothing in here about the leadership skills required to carry out the Project Executive responsibilities, but the manual does reference the Focus on Skills series which does cover this. In fact, the inter-relationships between this book and the other OGC texts is set out in a way which provides context to this text.

I particularly liked the guidance for new Executives: there are case studies and boxed examples that help bring the theory into a practical setting. There are also discussions of the more complex concepts for Project Board members. The explanation of different types of tolerances in Chapter 3 is comprehensive and will no doubt assist project managers in securing tolerance limits on future projects. There are also practical shortcuts, like draft agendas for Project Board meetings and benefits reviews. However, I felt there could be more emphasis on the importance of a successful handover to operations, as this is often missed in projects and the support of the Executive is making sure this happens effectively is essential.

The book provides clear guidance as to what is expected of the project manager, as well as how to select the right project manager for the project. Chapter 8 offers advice on what to do if the project manager selected requires too much support or is failing to manage by exception, and again, this is good, practical advice for new Executives.

In the past, many project managers have had to provide guidance themselves to Project Board members, and ask for what they need. They will assuredly appreciate the concrete guidance this book offers in a form that they can give to Executives instead of having to hold difficult conversations which can often feel like undermining the Executive’s experience or authority. While it won’t avoid the need for all difficult conversations between project manager and Executive, it will hopefully ease some of the organisational challenges and allow both parties to get on with the job of managing a successful project.

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Page 21: Elizabeth Harrin - Get projects done with more …girlsguidetopm.com/wp-content/uploads/products/InsidePRINCE2.pdfInside PRINCE2 Elizabeth Harrin Introduction PRINCE2:2009 is no longer

Inside PRINCE2 Elizabeth Harrin

About the author

Elizabeth Harrin is a career project and programme manager and an award-winning blogger. She has been named one of the top project management thinkers today. Elizabeth is the author of two books on project management: Project Management in the Real World (BCS Books, 2006) and Social Media for Project Management (PMI, 2010).

Elizabeth writes and publishes A Girl’s Guide to Project Management, an irreverent look at the world of project management which aims to help project managers stay on time, on budget and on scope while delivering excellent value to their stakeholders.

Elizabeth has a background in financial services and healthcare, and an interest in international teams, having spent two years working in Paris, France. She is a PRINCE2 Practitioner, an MSP Practitioner and she trained as a Six Sigma Black Belt.

Elizabeth is also CEO of The Otobos Group, a business writing practice specialising in topics relating to project management and women in business. The Otobos Group can create and edit templates, articles, blog content, website copy trade journal articles to appear under your byline, and much more.

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“It’s not about replacing the tools you use to communicate now, but rather expanding your options so that you can communicate and collaborate more effectively.” Dave Garrett, CEO, Gantthead.com“I consider Social Media for Project Managers a must read for every professional.” Bas de Baar, The Project Shrink“A perfect, practical, step-by-step guide to putting social media tools to work today.” J. LeRoy Ward, PMP, PgMP, Executive Vice President, ESI International

www.SocialMediaForProjectManagers.com