Organization

The organization theme is about the way people work together in the project and the way teams are organized. It’s necessary to pay attention to the organization of any project, either predictive or adaptive (Agile). When it comes to Agile projects, there are some concerns that we have to consider in this theme.

Self-Organization

Agile teams should be empowered and self-organized, based on the Agile Principles. It means that they should find their own way instead of following orders.

Absolute self-organization is possible only with a flat organization such as that of Scrum, but not possible in larger projects, and certainly not in PRINCE2 Agile. However, we should still give more authority to the teams in PRINCE2 Agile.

The original Manage by Exception Principle is about delegating power to the lower levels of the project organization; however, the level of authority is up to the management team, and can be very low if they decide so. Even though it limits the project. In PRINCE2 Agile, the level of authority delegated should be higher.

The empowerment should be supported by the whole system, and for example, the should be high-level enough to allow the team decide about accepting or rejecting a wider range of changes.

The Link between Project and Delivery Levels

There’s a Team Manager role in the delivery level who reports to the Project Manager and leads a team. This is problematic when Scrum is used in the delivery level, because Scrum is flat and no one can become a “team leader” or “team manager”.

PRINCE2 Agile suggest using one of the following, based on the project environment:

There’s no Team Manager and the project manager is directly in touch with the whole team(s). To keep it consistent with PRINCE2, we can imagine that the Project Manager is also holding the Team Manager role.
Assign one of the team members to be the contact point with the Project Manager, but without the Team Manager title.
Assign one of the team members as the Team Manager. PRINCE2 Agile suggest the Scrum Master, and also accepts the Product Owner.

PRINCE2 Agile states that these three alternative are presenting different levels of Agility, with the first option as the most Agile one, and the third option as the least. Considering a spectrum for Agility is a common notion that has roots in interpreting Agile as a set of rituals, which has a lot of potential for causing the Cargo Cult effect. A more structured understanding of the Agility concept removes that problem, and also doesn’t leave a lot of room for seeing it as a spectrum.

Additional Roles

PRINCE2 Agile frequently mentions the Scrum roles as if they are the default roles in a PRINCE2 Agile environment (e.g., Scrum Master and Product Owner). However, since PRINCE2 Agile is supposed to support all Agile delivery methods, it doesn’t accept them as the official additional roles, and instead defines the following:

These roles are more or less isolated in the manual and are not connected to the descriptions. The normal responsibilities tables in the original PRINCE2 manual are also not updated to include these new roles.

Original Roles

There are small changes in the original PRINCE2 roles; usually about the fact that they should be focused on the high-level aspects and empower the developers. More details can be found in the following pages:

External Links

Organization theme at PRINCE2 wiki

Written by Nader K. Rad

This is (and will be) a work in progress: More details will be added in the future, depending on the feedback.

This wiki is developed and managed by an accredited trainer, independent of AXELOS. While aligned with their guidelines, it’s not an official resource.