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As a PRINCE2 ® consultant, trainer and practitioner, what do I think of the PRINCE2 2017 Update ? Not wishing to be contrary but it’s great that PRINCE2 has a changed a lot, while remaining the same. What I mean is that the good things about PRINCE2 are still there wh...

It’s a natural response for many IT organizations to think about how implementing tools can be the solution to IT problems. But it’s a big problem, as there’s no magic pixie dust sprinkled over a tool and it can affect people negatively as much as positively. This issue ...

Those familiar with Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2® will know that the value of the universal, process-based project management method is that it can be applied to any project regardless of  type, organization, geography or culture. It can be used for any project...

Do you have what it takes to be a Business Relationship Manager (BRM) ? What does a BRM do? The role is responsible for building relationships between the IT organization and the business units to ensure IT services meet the needs of business customers. BRMs collaborate...

Rarely does an organization design its project management method from scratch. Instead it needs to be aware of the standards, best practice methods and bodies of knowledge related to project management (e.g. BS 6079 , PRINCE2 ® , PMI’s PMBOK ® and APM’s Body of Knowle...

“It won’t work if organizations expect IT people to pick up an ITIL ® book or go on a training course and then implement successful service management solutions. “Organizations and people need to ‘adopt and adapt’ ITIL to the specific and unique requirements of their b...

How can DevOps bring service improvements to IT service management (ITSM) in organizations and avoid throwing operations the “hot potato” of badly planned change projects? And what is the role for ITIL ® Practitioner’s 9 Guiding Principles – in particular start where y...

IT Service Management (ITSM) practitioners often forget that service management was not something they invented but rather a concept taken and adapted to create their own view of the world. They borrowed the principles of good customer service used by businesses, put “IT” in...

Being able to break through jargon is vital for effective communication, particularly when dealing with people who have little or no technical background. This is particularly true in change management where a breakdown in communication can potentially lead to failure in any ...

ITIL ® and ISO/IEC 20000, the international standard for service management, have enjoyed a long and mutually supportive relationship. ISO/IEC 20000 is currently being revised for the third time, with an increased focus on Service Integration (SIAM), governance and manag...

If your key stakeholders and end users aren’t happy, nobody’s happy. Key stakeholders can make or break the success of a project, even if all the deliverables are met and the objectives are satisfied . I was thinking recently about what added value I bring to the success ...

In this first blog post, Julia Gosse considers organizations and their staff that have already adopted PRINCE2 ® : What challenges do PRINCE2 practitioners and their employers face with the concept of agile project delivery ? The biggest challenge is that the term “agile...

Do you all have 15 July 2018 marked in your diary? If not then it’s high time because that is the day of the football final. We now know that France will play Croatia in Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium  on Sunday and Adam our #PRINCE2PUNDIT  is already planning his big football p...

Does it matter whether companies can predict their future and the potential impact of cyber risk? According to the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), it does. For companies reporting year ends from 30 September 2015 onwards, and driven by the need for greater transparency in...

Following the release of ISO/IEC TR 20000-11:2015: Part 11 - Guidance on the relationship between ISO/IEC 20000-1:2011 and service management frameworks: ITIL® at the end of 2015 , we spoke to Shirley Lacy, managing director of ConnectSphere, who was involved in i...

Why is IT Service Management (ITSM) important to organizations? Executives, of course, want to measure systems, data and people and how the IT infrastructure and the provided services are helping end-users to accomplish their business goal more efficiently. In the past, onl...

Why is it important to plan a project and why are project plans not taken seriously enough? Planning is an integral part of our everyday lives and is perceived as a natural process, such as deciding what to do at the weekend. So why do some people still see it as a tick box...

ITIL Practitioner is best practice guidance I use both in implementation as a consultant and in training people working in IT service management. Before the arrival of ITIL ® Practitioner there was, in my opinion, a large gap between ITIL Foundation and ITIL Expert ....

The new ITIL ® Practitioner qualification is about giving IT Service Management (ITSM) professionals practical guidance that allows them to truly adapt and adopt ITIL® in their organization. Practitioner is very much going to be about continual improvement as much as...

What is the current state of project management and Project Managers? At the turn of 2016, PM Perspectives Blog - in its top 10 project management trends post - said: “Project management is no longer boxed away in a corner of the room. It stands front and centre and is b...

How can organizations and their programme managers ensure agile approaches and programme management work well together in 2017? This is a hot topic right now, with a rapidly-evolving technology landscape which lends itself to agile techniques and the pressure on organizatio...

PRINCE2 ® can, and should, be “tailored”. That means being flexible in your use of PRINCE2 when delivering projects rather than applying the method rigidly. Unfortunately, this is something many people have struggled to grasp about PRINCE2 and, as a result, shy away from us...

As more and more people turn to Agile frameworks over traditional project management methodologies to help enhance project capabilities and deliver outputs, it’s important to highlight that Agile is not a panacea for poor project management. At this point, let's distinguish b...

PRINCE2 terminology can be a real bugbear for agile practitioners; they see it as being too prescriptive and inflexible. However, there are many PRINCE2 terms that reflect agile approaches. Here, we provide one example from each of the five PRINCE2 elements: 1.  Initiation:...

Agile is such a hot topic at the moment with clear recognition that agile approaches are increasingly important to fast-paced, organizational change. It’s definitely up there as important to the future of the project management profession and the people in it. Project...

A perfect storm of circumstances in UK public sector project management is helping open the door to agile methods. First, some projects have not been as successful as expected - either not delivering a product or not meeting stakeholder expectations. Combining those issues w...

It’s fashionable to convey confidence in a standpoint or outcome by incorporating the phrase “100 percent”. If I gave such an absolute level of assurance when managing a project, I suspect my customers would soon become disillusioned with me as I have never delivered 100% o...

The transition from project to programme management means being able to adapt and to draw upon a set of different skills as programme management is more than just being able to manage multiple projects. Where a Project Manager can deliver against a set of pre-defined goals a...

Any discussion of project management in the USA demands the question: “how well are we doing?” I’d like to say that Project Managers are doing a good job in delivering projects on time and within budget along with all the scope and quality the customer expects. However, th...

PRINCE2 ® 2017 Update co-author, Robert Buttrick, looks at how the latest update of PRINCE2 helps organizations to design their own corporate project management and change approaches. While PRINCE2 can be used to run a single project, it can also be tailored by or...

To my mind, one of the most useful additions to ITIL ® Practitioner is the Guiding Principles (GP). The Guiding Principles help focus on the essential aspects for a successful ITIL adoption. They provide a powerful checklist to those responsible for ensuring an ITIL deploy...

Throughout the 25 years of its existence, ITIL has supported IT organizations in providing business value for their customers in the form of well-designed and supported services. ITIL has become the most widely used and most successful ITSM (IT Service Management) framework i...

How do you prepare your organization for an agile project? Naturally, this depends on the project; but if it’s a major technology project with a digital outcome , then using agile methods will probably be a significant shift for your organization.  Where your organizationa...

Robert Burton explains why he feels that ITIL shouldn’t be viewed as a prescriptive regime. There is a common misconception that ITIL is a rigid set of tools, procedures, and processes and if you don't follow what’s in the books, it’s not ITIL. With this approach,...

I started life in IT as a technical support assistant about eight years ago and I have worked in a number of different organizations. In that time, I’ve often been the only woman in the IT department. There are few IT women in Kenya due to a mix of cultural and practical rea...

One element of PRINCE2 ® that I use on every project I’m involved with is product-based planning. This PRINCE2 technique is especially useful for putting a plan together which comprises the “shopping list” of the things that my project team needs to create to deliver...

Recently, I have been lucky enough to attend some excellent events in the IT service management (ITSM) space. I have noticed some reoccurring themes running through the presentations and networking discussions, which was affirmed by the talks I attended at Pink17 . There a...

Sue Taylor examines the importance of the blueprint in programmes and within AXELOS’ Managing Successful Programmes (MSP ® ) best practice guidance. By implementing change through a programme , an organization is trying to achieve a better future. That starts with a pr...

What is effective project and programme governance and why is it important to define and establish governance arrangements for success and the realization of benefits? T he focus of many organizations , particularly in the public sector, is how to reduce the cost of opera...

Ongoing measurement of project progress is vital. In the simplest terms, it tells you how much work has been done and what is left to do. However, in certain instances it tends only to be treated as vital when something on the project goes wrong; and only then will you hear ...

"How do I hold on to my current ITSM budget or even grow it? I know I need to show value to the business, but my concern is that the 'powers that be' see only cost. What's my best approach to this?" As technology continues to advance and develop, IT is becoming even more i...

Rameez Chikhalia, Commercial Analyst at AXELOS describes how PRINCE2 can help finance teams improve communication and collaborative working. What’s your role within the Finance team? I work in the Finance team at AXELOS, providing support in two key areas. Initially, my...

Cyber security, today, is often very technology-based with a focus on technical issues such as firewalls and virus scanning software. While technology is an important part of the cyber defence, it is important not to neglect strategy in identifying what controls an organi...

The PRINCE2 ® 2017 Update arrives as organizations around the world are on a maturity curve towards achieving consistency, greater efficiencies and cost savings. This has led to a growth in organizations developing their own approaches to delivering projects based on sta...

Delivering value to a customer doesn’t begin and end with a product and its features – it also requires service . In the IT development world, recognizing the need for service means cultivating skills in service management. This is where turning to ITIL ® is important...

Are you a person who wants to get things done and be successful but lacks the time to make big changes or to start anything complex and new? Based on PRINCE2 ® processes, though taking a more lightweight approach, we have created a brief, practical guidance paper using...

When PRINCE2 Agile ® first arrived on the market in 2015, it explicitly addressed a deep-rooted misunderstanding . It challenged the assumption that PRINCE2 ® should be used to facilitate project delivery solely through a Waterfall process. But this focus on the Waterfall ...

The space in between people managing and operating IT services and those that build and deliver IT products could be called the great divide. Among developers, the thinking can - sometimes - be based on the principles of "build it and hand it over". The big issue is that the...

Recently, we investigated the misconceptions around ITIL in order to better understand and address the common challenges when adopting ITIL. We asked our community members to share their stories. To our delight, our members did not stop at listing the challenges, but f...

Are you getting the very best from your PRINCE2 ® best practice knowledge? Sometimes, it’s useful to have a handy reminder of the key points you need to think about at any stage in a PRINCE2 project. My AXELOS has created a series of templates covering the bre...