Tailoring PRINCE2 to organizational cultures White Paper

Key to the successful use of PRINCE2 is the ability to tailor it to specific environments. PRINCE2 shows how to adapt the approach to a range of common situations such as:

• programmes and portfolios
• commercial customer and supplier situations
• delivery approaches such as agile and waterfall
• simple, localized projects.

However, one area that is not covered in the PRINCE2 guidance is how to adapt it to various organizational and local cultures, which have a huge impact on a project. Peter Drucker has been credited with coining the famous phrase, ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast!’ In the experience of many project managers, culture can hinder project success as well.

For example, PRINCE2 needs to be applied in a very different way in a large, process-driven and established corporate environment compared to a young, dynamic and sometimes chaotic start-up. Successful projects run very differently in creative, media environments compared to more traditional sectors such as finance or engineering. In the same way, projects are approached very differently in countries that have a strong hierarchical culture to those that favour flat organizational structures.

This paper will draw on the author’s own experience of working with PRINCE2 across various organizational cultures and will give examples of working in different countries. It utilizes a range of recent research showing how to define and work within different cultural environments. It will show how to successfully adapt PRINCE2 to make it a robust project approach, no matter what organizational, industrial or global culture the project management team is facing.