Comparing PRINCE2\'s Agility with Scrum within the TFS2010 ALM. By Vincent THAVONEKHAM www.thavo.com. Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010 / ALM Trainer

1. Team Foundation Server 2010
BLENDING METHODS TO SUCCEED
-
COMPARING PRINCE2’S AGILITY WITH
SCRUM WITHIN THE TFS2010 ALM
Author : Vincent TAVONEKHAM
Website : www.Thavo.com
Date : 13 March 2011
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2. TFS 2010 ALM AS A TOOL FOR PRINCE 2
Team working
•Roles,
•Onshore, near/off shore,
•Doc. and code sharing, Following everything
•Centralizing information.
With « Work Items »
•User‟s requirements /
Request for change stories (Business Case),
•Feedbacks or Bugs,
•Branching and merging •Request for change,
•Changeset and tracking. •Workflow for validating
PRINCE2 and TFS 2010 offers the change...
similar “components” and workflow
of processes to lead to project
Configuration Management
success. Planning
•Source control,
•Versioned and backed-up •Estimating,
documents, •Reports,
•Reporting. •Integrating / sharing with
other tools.
Risk and Quality management
•„Reporting Services‟,
•„Build‟ reports,
•Integrate additional tools (quality,
doc generation,…),
•Automating tasks and tests,
•Delivery automation.
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3. OVERVIEW OF PRINCE 2 Best practices based
on thousands of
succeeding projects
Official OGC definition of PRINCE2
“PRINCE2 is a generic, tailorable, simple to follow project Business Value
management method. It covers how to organise, manage and Driven
control your projects. It is aimed at enabling you to continuously Managed by
successfully deliver the right products, on time and within stages
budget. As a Project manager you can apply the principles of
PRINCE2 and the associated training to any type of project. It
will help you to manage risk, control quality and change Learning from
effectively, as well as make the most of challenging situations experience No guarantee
and opportunities that arise within a project.
to succeed, but
fails quicker
• A PRINCE2 project has the following characteristics:
• Continued business justification
• Learning from experience Defined roles and
• Defined roles and responsibilities Responsability
• Managed by stages Generic and no tool
• Managed by exception recommendation
• Focuses on products and their quality
Tailored to suit the particular product environment Focused on product /
PRINCE2 does not cover all aspects of project Quality
management. Areas such as leadership and people
management skills, detailed coverage of project management Managed by
tools and techniques are well covered by other existing and tolerances
proven methods and are therefore excluded from PRINCE2.”
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4. PRINCE 2 AND TFS 2010
 Nikolaj Raahauge, PRINCE2 Practitioner and Approved Trainer (7 July 2009):
 “I'd very much like to point out that tailoring PRINCE2 to the individual project and
organizational environment is far more important than going off the bureaucratic cliff and
implementing PRINCE2 full scale”
 “in the case of Software Development projects, this is where SCRUM, XP or what not
comes in”
 Martin van Borselaer, PRINCE2 Coach and Senior Project Manager,
(White paper on PRINCE 2):
 “The new PRINCE2 2009 manual states explicitly that templates other than the official PRINCE2 ones
can be used for reporting, as long as you report what is important to your customer. It is a good idea to
use specific Scrum information like release planning based on Velocity and Product Backlog,
Lessons Learned based on Sprint Retrospectives”
 “Within PRINCE2 the delivery process is a black
box, (since it) is all about managing the project‟s
process. The Scrum process is all about delivery.
Fast and effective delivery is key.”
 “This makes Scrum a natural fit to the
PRINCE2 „Managing Product Delivery‟ process”
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5. AGILITY IN PRINCE2 AND SCRUM (1/2)
 Usually people do not notice the large amount of similarities between PRINCE2
and SCRUM. Rather than presenting them all in detail, here are some few
examples:
 BY DEFINITION
 PRINCE2 and SCRUM are mature and based on practical feed backs of thousands of
successful project worldwide,
 Neither PRINCE2 nor SCRUM could be used alone, they have to be blended to other
technics,
 Neither PRINCE2 nor SCRUM should be fully used “from the book”, they have to be
adapted to the company,
 CONTROL
 [PRINCE2] Stage and decision boundaries  [SCRUM] Sprint iteration of fixed length
and Spring Review
 [PRINCE2] Driven by the Business' needs  [SCRUM] Driven by User Story and
prioritized by Business values
 Shall we carry on ?
 [PRINCE2] End Stage Assessment  [SCRUM] Sprint iteration review
 Regular reports :
 [PRINCE2] highlight reports {by Project manager} [SCRUM] Daily stand up
meeting {by the team + Scrum Master}
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6. AGILITY IN PRINCE2 AND SCRUM (2/2)
 TECHNIQUES
 Assumes that changes will occur (detailed and big design up-front cannot predict
all)
 [PRINCE2] Change Control  [SCRUM] Reprioritizing User Story before the
start of a sprint, and reprioritizing technical tasks during a sprint
 Decompose user‟s needs to visualize the problem and feeds that back to the
users :
 [PRINCE2] Product Break down structure [SCRUM] Epic (=Big User story)
> sub-User stories > related tasks > related sub-tasks
 PLANS
 Quality boundaries : Agreed and strict tolerance at many levels
 [PRINCE2] Project {program management}, stage {project board} and
product {project manager} [SCRUM] “Definition Of Done” : Program
{program management}, End of sprint iteration {project board}, User Story
{Product Owner}, Tasks {Team / Scrum Master}
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7. WHICH TOOL FITS PRINCE2 ?
 FAQ from http://www.prince2.com
 “PRINCE2 makes no recommendation on which tools you should use to assist you manage your projects
but it does recognise that such tools are widely used. PRINCE2 will sit quite happily alongside a paper-
based planning system or any other tool which you find to be effective in your environment”
 Based on “Work Items”, a solution to implement
PRINCE2 could be TFS 2010. Indeed, it is flexible
enough to handle the entire Application Life Cycle
Management (ALM) of two opposite project
process templates :
 A lightweight project process template (Scrum,
Agile),
 A heavy weight project process template (CMMI,
Sogeti TMAP process template certified, …)
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8. SOURCES AND REFERENCES
 Thoses slides are continiously getting improved; up to
date information on TFS, PRINCE2, PMBook and AGILE
on the author‟s blog
 www.Thavo.com (Vincent THAVONEKHAM)
 The author will further detail those slides into a
whitepaper that will be freely available on this
blog,
 PRINCE2 official Web site : http://www.ogc.gov.uk
 http://www.borselaer.org/index.php/2010/03/whiteboo
k-prince2-combined-with-scrum/
 You can freely use and modify
these slides, as long as you keep
the copyright footer mentioning
www.Thavo.com and Vincent
Thavonekham.
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