The biggest misconceptions about PRINCE2

Over the years, I've heard plenty of criticism of PRINCE2. Those whom I spoke to often provided the following critique:

• It's too bureaucratic.
• It's just waterfall.
• There's far too much documentation.
• It slows projects down.

And while I understand why people say these things, I've increasingly come to believe that most of these criticisms aren't about PRINCE2 at all.

They're about organisations that have misunderstood the fundamental principles, and as such, have implemented it badly, leading to the aforementioned criticisms.

So, let’s review some of these criticisms and compare it to what PRINCE2 actually says and how to address these points.

"PRINCE2 requires mountains of documentation."

People often assert that PRINCE2 requires piles of documentation.

One of PRINCE2's fundamental principles is “tailor to suit the project”.

A two-week internal enhancement shouldn't produce the same level of documentation as a multi-year, billion-dollar transformation.

If your organisation insists on dozens of templates, multiple approval boards, and documents that nobody reads, that's a governance decision, not a PRINCE2 requirement.

"PRINCE2 is waterfall."

This one always surprises me because PRINCE2 never says a project must be delivered using a waterfall delivery methodology.

In fact, it doesn't prescribe a delivery methodology at all.

PRINCE2 is a project management framework. It defines how a project is governed, how decisions are made, how risks are managed, and how progress is controlled.

Whether your delivery teams use Waterfall, Scrum, Kanban, or another Agile approach is a separate decision.

Ultimately, it is up to the team delivering the work to determine their delivery methodology. The project manager’s job is to interface this with their stage boundaries. I suspect the use of the word “stage” here is the main culprit for the confusion. These ‘stages’ are just a means of ensuring that appropriate governance points are in place, rather than prescribing an SDLC process (I have heard this point mentioned 1,000s of times).

"PMI is the equivalent of PRINCE2."

They are both respected approaches to project management, but they solve different problems.

PRINCE2 provides a structured method for managing projects, with defined principles, roles, processes and management products.

PMI's PMBOK is a body of knowledge, a collection of practices and guidance rather than a prescriptive method.

Many experienced project managers happily draw from both.

• PRINCE2 tells you how to run a project.
• PMI (PMBOK) tells you what good project management should cover.

"PRINCE2 only works on large projects."

Because tailoring is built into the method, PRINCE2 can scale from relatively small initiatives through to major transformation projects and programmes (using the MSP framework).

The size of the project should influence how much governance you apply, not whether you use PRINCE2.

"PRINCE2 is bureaucratic."

This is probably the biggest misconception of all. Poor governance creates bureaucracy.

PRINCE2 encourages appropriate governance. Those are very different things.

When organisations add layers of approvals, duplicate reporting, unnecessary committees and excessive documentation, they're often blaming PRINCE2 for rules that PRINCE2 never asked for.

PRINCE2’s governance model is remarkably simple, and if adopted, will ensure that projects keep moving and decisions go to the right person every time.

"PRINCE2 slows projects down."

Good governance doesn't slow projects down. Poor governance does.

Clear decision-making, defined accountability, active risk management and agreed tolerances often allow projects to move faster because fewer issues are left unresolved.

Management by exception ensures that things keep moving unless they breach agreed tolerances. There’s little point having a one-hour long steering committee if all KPIs are green and there are no decisions to make.

The cost of weak governance is usually far greater than the cost of good governance.

So why does PRINCE2 get a bad reputation?

Because many people have never actually experienced PRINCE2. They've experienced their organisation's interpretation of PRINCE2.

Over time, organisations often add extra templates, additional approvals, bespoke processes and local rules until the original method is almost unrecognisable.

Eventually, every frustration gets attributed to PRINCE2, even when it wasn't part of the method in the first place.

Perhaps it's time we stopped asking:

"Is PRINCE2 the problem?"

And started asking:

"Are we actually following PRINCE2... or are we blaming this methodology on years of organisational baggage that has accumulated around it?"

Sometimes the methodology isn't what needs fixing. The implementation is.

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