Ports Royal is a large corporation that constructs ports worldwide and has an established reputation. It operates since 2015 and has completed two sound projects that were evaluated excellent, which allowed the company to consider further opportunities for growth and development. The industry of port construction requires vast investments from actors, as well as an advanced system of project management (Ramboll, 2019; Waves Group, no date). Orders mostly come from the governmental sector, so all of them are expected to be of the highest quality. Here, it should be noted that despite the significant success of Ports Royal, it is a relatively young company and still has not adopted a particular project management approach, which resulted in a number of issues during the implementation of the first two deals. Now, the firm recognizes such a necessity and ready to make a choice in this regard – it has been assumed that PRINCE2 is a good option in the framework given. Below, the essence of PRINCE2 methodology, its advantages, and disadvantages in relation to Ports Royal activities, as well as possible alternatives and recommendations will be provided.
PRINCE2 Essence
PRINCE2 is the UK’s premier project management standard. It has also been successfully used in the United States and Canada, as well as Europe. The advantages of this approach are flexibility, increased control over projects, and an expedient distribution of responsibilities between teammates (Jovanovic and Beric, 2018). Then, according to Alvarez-Dionisi, Turner and Mittra (2016), the PRINCE2 method was created in the public sector but has received a gem-cut from business representatives. Many private companies, as well as experienced project managers, provided feedback, which was transformed into important improvements.
There are seven processes of PRINCE2 that Port Royal is to follow while implementing its project (PRINCE2.com, no date); first, it is starting up the project. The company should consider in detail whether it is worth launching it, whether it will work out, and by what methods. If everything is good in this vein, the firm is to evaluate the cost of the project, its lead time, and the risks ahead.
Second, it is directing the project, which implies an appropriate organization of the latter. The Project Board is to control the work of the Project Manager, as well as report to the Corporate Management itself. Third, it is initiating the project, which implies composing at all its stages. One of the crucial aspects of PRINCE2 is planning founded on product characteristics: the reason for its creation and required materials or skills. This will allow Ports Royal to initially focus on the aspired results and not allow sudden fluctuations later. In particular, the proper utilization of the island’s space will require continuous adjustments to the construction process, given that this space is considerably limited.
Fourth, it is controlling a stage – the company should be sure that projects meet the specified criteria, do not spend more resources than assumed, and the chances for success are also high. For Ports Royal, this implies advanced accountability at all levels, for which PRINCE2 provides a significant framework. Fifth, it is managing product delivery, during which The Project Manager will distribute tasks to the wards and ensure that the work is done according to the plan. Sixth, it is managing a stage boundary – The Project Board should assess the implementation of the current stage and approve the next one. During this process, the primary documentation is to be reviewed and confirmed. Finally, there is closing the project, which implies that the work done is to meet the customer’s expectations, and the end result may be utilized appropriately (Invensis, no date).
Advantages and Disadvantages of PRINCE2
There are partially identified advantages of the PRINCE2 approach above. It is significant due to advanced management thanks to a system in which everyone understands what should be done. Then, those taking part in the process are not in a nervous state because of the continuous planning meetings (McGrath and Whitty, 2020). Project managers only intervene when there are alarms – the teammates are out of bounds and either go back or make changes. Port construction involves a plethora of macro and micro aspects that should be dealt with, and the latter advantage contributes to coherence in this regard.
Moreover, the Project Board acts is accordance with the interests of business; thus, decisions are made reasonably. If one does not forget the principles of the methodology, he or she will always stay in line with the goals (Wang, Sasanipoor and Wang, 2020; Mousaei and Gandomani, 2018). It should also be noted that PRINCE2 is a robust methodology with strong guarantees of success. It is continuously upgraded based on the best practices of previous projects; (Copola, D’Ambrogio and Gianni, 2016). Within the scope of port construction, it seems apparent that the listed aspects are critical. PRINCE2 was developed in order to be used in important governmental projects, but due to its significance, it is utilized in businesses as well.
The weaknesses of the methodology include the fact that at times it is poorly suited for not-large projects. When flexibility is required, the conditions change regularly – PRINCE2 will not provide aspired results (Hasibović and Tanović, 2019). Teammates will not possess the necessary time to respond to changes by filling out the bundles of reports. This issue can take place while dealing with some little unexpected problems like tides or weather conditions that may harm the equipment, during which an immediate reaction from management is required.
Then, experienced project managers note that PRINCE2 is poor at revealing the agility of “soft management” – managing conflicts, as well as communicating with project arrangement. The methodology has also been undesired due to the fact of being more attentive to reporting than to management. This may result in poor team performance – team members are not communicated enough or are poorly motivated. However, it might be assumed that for the Ports Royal case, the advantages of PRINCE2 are more convincing than disadvantages.
Alternatives
There might be some alternatives for Prince 2. First, it is The Adaptive Project Framework that is developed to continually fit fluctuating project situations and take into account previous experience. The founding aspect of APF is that its scope can vary. Additionally, within established time and financial inconveniences, APF aspires to maximize incomes by regulating coverage after every iteration (Das and Khanapuri, 2019). Entrepreneurs usually do that by making sure that clients remain central in order to determine the most considerable value of the business.
Second, it is Agile, which is an indispensable instrument that many modern project managers use. It is a progressive and advanced pattern that utilizes not-long developmental circuits named sprints. The latter ones are a particular amount of time taken to meet goals of projects. At the end of this period, the sprints are considered complete. The hallmark of Agile is that it is impossible to forecast what the product will be (Rasnacis and Berzisa, 2017). Here, the development of a plan starts from clients outlining how they will utilize the end product. Constant cooperation between teammates and the client to find reasonable options is key here.
Recommendations
The above discussion shows that PRINCE2 provides a considerable amount of benefits for Ports Royal. The crucial one is that the company will be able to arrange its management system in accordance with high requirements for the projects somehow involved in the governmental sector (Ilin et al., 2016). As mentioned above, port construction is an industry that implies orders mostly from authorities as they are interested in the development of infrastructure for transport and trade. From this perspective, PRINCE2 also a good option for the firm because this methodology was initially developed for the public sector and huge projects.
Moreover, PRINCE2 demonstrates a substantial extent of flexibility in terms of combination with other approaches (Jamali and Oveisi, 2016). Hence, when it comes to issues regarding on-the-spot decisions, PRINCE2 can be mixed with APF or Agile that imply significant opportunity for adaptation to unexpected situations. PRINCE2 is not a strict approach that recognizes the only standardized sequence of actions. It is open for amendments, and Ports Royal can use this feature appropriately.
Conclusion
To conclude, the appropriacy of PRINCE2 implementation for Ports Royal was discussed. In this simulated case study, the imagined company is involved in the port construction industry. It was found that PRINCE2 is a sensible approach for the project management of this corporation. It provides many relevant benefits, as well as may be expediently combined with the alternatives if necessary. The explored pros of the methodology apparently prevail over its cons.
Reference List
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Das, M. and Khanapuri, V. (2019) Adaptive Project Management Framework using NTCP model’, Proceedings of PMI India Research & Academic Conference, Mumbai, India, pp. 322–341. Web.
Hasibović, A. and Tanović, A. (2019) ‘PRINCE2 vs Scrum in digital business transformation’, Proceedings of 42nd International Convention on Information and Communication Technology, Electronics and Microelectronics (MIPRO), Opatija, Croatia. Web.
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Invensis (no date) Principles, themes, and processes of PRINCE2 – explained! Web.
Jamali, G. and Oveisi, M. (2016) ‘A study on project management based on PMBOK and PRINCE2’, Modern Applied Science, 10(6), pp. 142–146.
Jovanovic, P. and Beric, I. (2018) ‘Analysis of the Available Project Management Methodologies’, Journal of Sustainable Business And Management Solutions in Emerging Economies, 23(3), pp. 1–13.
McGrath, S. and Whitty, S. (2020) ‘The suitability of PRINCE2 for engineering infrastructure’, Journal of Modern Project Management, 7(4). pp. 312–347.
Mousaei, M. and Gandomani, T. (2018) ‘A new project risk management model based on Scrum framework and PRINCE2 methodology’, International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 9(4), pp. 442–449.
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Wang, J.-J., Sasanipoor, N. and Wang, M.-M. (2020) ‘The influence of PRINCE2 standard on customer satisfaction in information technology outsourcing: an investigation of a mediated moderation model’, Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 33(6). Web.
Waves Group (no date)Port design and construction. Web.