Darjeelink - Alexis Perrier

PRINCE2 Practitioner Training - DAY1

Today was my first day taking the PRINCE2 Practitioner course at ESC  Lille. Quite intense to sit and listen all day to a teacher. Absorbing instead of producing. Haven’t done that for … well, …. at least 15 years. But so pleasurable !
After a lengthy and interesting intro on PRINCE2, we got started with the first of the day’s 2 main subjects : Roles and Products

Roles  basically follow a human figure shape :

• A head composed of the project board
• A sternum / chest for the Project manager
• On the left hand side, project assurance while on the right stands project support (I wish I had one of those sometimes)
• Below, around the lower belly region, stands the Team Manager who manages the team (the legs)
• This human has a big head, in fact three heads, it’s more like an hydra than a human now. The three heads are composed of the Senior User, the Executive and the Senior Supplier.

Having stated these roles, the trick is now to know : who is doing what and when ? The project board got it easy as they only manage by exception. The project support does all the boring work (documentation management, archives, helping with the planning, …). And for the other roles refer to the PRINCE2 manual.

The afternoon was focused on products as PRINCE2 is a product based approach to projects.  There goes product descriptions, product checklist (optional), product breakdown structure and product work flow.

All very interesting tools and concepts that are not so difficult to grasp if explained as well as they were today. A lengthy way of saying that Sarah, our teacher is doing an incredible work of making all this rather complex subject, seem easy and straightforward.

My only regret so far is that the week will fly by so quickly.

Anyway off to bed to have a rested brain tomorrow.  With the PRINCE2 manual under my pillow off course.