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This article provides some insights on how key agile values, principles and behaviours influence the focus and mindset of a project team.
PRINCE2 is a project management method that provides a structured approach for the planning, execution and closure of a project. It is recognized for its focus on management and control. Agile environments, value management and control but with a different focus influenced by agile values and principles as outlined below. These values and principles are designed to influence the way people think, interact and manage their work when seeking to apply agile ways of working.
The aim of PRINCE2 Agile is to provide guidance to project teams wanting to integrate agile thinking and ways of working with their use of PRINCE2. Such thinking and ways of working is not foreign to project managers, many may already be applying such concepts. For example, a key focus of agile ways of working is to develop products iteratively and incrementally in order to realise value faster for the customer. Many PRINCE2 project managers may already be applying this practice. Though, agile is more than agile practices and techniques, it’s also about a way of thinking and the mindset to be adopted when approaching a project and the different situations and problems that commonly occur in a project’s life.
The image above, of our PRINCE2 Agile cake, attempts to illustrate this. Where PRINCE2 is commonly viewed as a top-down management approach, agile is often seen as an approach adopted by delivery teams to deliver products incrementally and iteratively. Though as mentioned, agile is more than practices and techniques to support faster delivery.
Our cake diagram also illustrates agile thinking rising, which is perhaps a more a common way on how agile practices and mindset are integrated in a project environment. This may be as delivery teams (initially software development teams) were amongst the first to experiment with agile concepts and pioneer contributors to the growing agile body of knowledge.
Today this body of knowledge is expanding, with attention to agile leadership, process agility, structural agility and other important management domains.
You may have already seen our article on Top tips for the agile project manager where we discuss the following key tips for agile project managers:
These are some elements that influence the focus and mindset of a project manager and similarly, together with the values and principles described below, the project manager can take a lead step in integrating agile concepts and thinking at the Project Board and delivery team levels.
As mentioned, PRINCE2 is known for its strength in project direction and management and the standard use of PRINCE2 is not in conflict with common agile values and principles.
The four values of the Agile Manifesto as described below, may already be present in the conscience of many project managers and actively applied:
Do note, when reading the Agile Manifesto listed above avoid interpreting that the right side of the list as elements that are not valued, it’s just that the left side of the list is ‘valued more’.
Adoption of these values and principles and combining with PRINCE2 principles improve the capability of a proven project management model to adapt to the demands of an agile environment. Together they also support the structure and control needed in certain business environments and project types.
For example, where change and new initiatives can be challenged in determining their ongoing viability, PRINCE2’s principle of continued business justification and associated controls for assessing ongoing viability will complement agile ways of working. As this principle supports the ethos of staying in control by empowering people and ensuring the initiative is continually reviewed and remains viable. Larger initiatives of higher complexity inherently have a higher risk profile that threaten the project’s viability. Hence, initiatives adopting an agile approach for product delivery may also gain benefit from adopting specific PRINCE2 practices or consideration of PRINCE2 principles, that enable the reduction of such risks.
Agile has a strong focus on principles, and the Agile Manifesto and different agile frameworks promote a set of principles in some form. Principles help to describe a fundamental mindset, attitudes or ethos.
| PRINCE2 Principles | Agile Manifesto – Summary of Agile Principles |
| ⦁ Continued business justification ⦁ Learn from experience ⦁ Defined roles and responsibilities ⦁ Manage by stages ⦁ Manage by exception ⦁ Focus on products ⦁ Tailor to suit the project | ⦁ Satisfy the customer ⦁ Welcome change ⦁ Deliver frequently ⦁ Work together ⦁ Trust and support ⦁ Face-to-face-conversations ⦁ Working software ⦁ Sustainable development ⦁ Continuous attention ⦁ Maintain simplicity ⦁ Self-organizing teams ⦁ Reflect and adjust |
We can see from the above two lists, that there is no direct conflict between the two sets of principles, they are indeed complementary. All that is required is some simple consideration on how to integrate both sets of principles in a PRINCE2 project wanting to adopt an agile approach to delivery. Our PRINCE2 Agile training will help with providing this guidance, similar to what is illustrated in the table below. The table provides some insights on how PRINCE2 principles are adapted to integrate agile principles and drive agile thinking throughout the use of PRINCE2.
| PRINCE2 Principles | Adapting the PRINCE2 Principles by integrating agile thinking |
| ⦁ Continued business justification | ⦁ With focus on the minimum viable product |
| ⦁ Learn from experience | ⦁ Continual customer involvement, reflect and adjust |
| ⦁ Defined roles and responsibilities | ⦁ Agile teams prefer to be led and coached. Important for the agile project manager to adopt a servant leadership approach |
| ⦁ Manage by stages | ⦁ Reducing stages, perhaps equivalent to a delivery sprint of 2 – 4 weeks |
| ⦁ Manage by exception | ⦁ Empowering people to self-organize and make decisions within agreed limits and escalation thresholds |
| ⦁ Focus on products | ⦁ Applying prioritization techniques such as MoSCoW to acceptance criteria, scope and products to allow ‘flexing’ on what is being delivered |
| ⦁ Tailor to suit the project | ⦁ By considering: “How agile can we be on this project?” |
Agile projects are likely to have stable teams working within agreed timeboxes. This means that there is no opportunity to flex time and cost. What is flexed is scope and quality. This is a core concept in agile working, just another concept influencing focus and mindset of a project team wanting to adapt their use of PRINCE2 to be more agile focused.
Where the traditional focus of a project manager is on management and control, in a PRINCE2 Agile environment there is more emphasis on the project manager monitoring the behaviour of the project and delivery teams. PRINCE2 Agile views: transparency, collaboration, rich communication, self-organization and exploration as behaviours important to agile ways of working. What’s the connection to the title of this article? Mindsets underlie behaviours, and behaviour will influence the achievement of desired outcomes. If a project team commences with a wrong mindset, perhaps caused by conflict, low motivation levels, unclear project objectives or roles, the desired behaviours required to effectively apply agile practices are less likely to be displayed. Therefore, by monitoring the application of these important behaviours, a project manager can use behaviour as an indicator of how well agile thinking and the agile mindset is being applied.
In conclusion, it is important to recognize PRINCE2 and agile ways are complementary and together can provide a more flexible and robust management approach.
Our PRINCE2 Agile training is designed for people seeking to integrate agile thinking and practices within their project environment.
