At the commencement of the study, Frank was the Operations Manager but after the second restructure, he was appointed as the IT Manager reporting directly to the Managing Director. Frank had been at OABC for fourteen years.
Attitudes and Motivation
He was doing the PRINCE2 course as he was asked to attend. He was sceptical about the adoption of the methodology by OABC stating that “unless the rest of the business was on the same page, you kill yourself for nothing” (Frank, Pre- Training). His view was that unless the whole organisation adopted the methodology from the top down, then it would not work. He had concerns that
the methodology “may be too hard and restrictive for them (OABC) and it would be by-passed. It is the nature and the culture of the place”. (Frank, Pre-Training)
Personal Qualities
In the pre-training interview, Frank said that to be a good project manager one had to set expectations as to the roles and responsibilities involved in the project.
The signs of a successful project manager would be one who kept communication channels open through reporting and face to face meetings ensuring that everyone was on the same page. It was important to be consistent in reporting and in holding meetings with the project team:
If you are going to inform people, you have to be consistent. You have to have reporting. Have consistent meetings and not to let them slip. With any sort of project you have to juggle resources and you have to be organised to do that. (Frank. Pre-Training)
The most important personal quality was having good organisational and administrative skills, which were his strength.
Frank did not work more than his standard hours of work of 9am to 5pm and did not take any work home. As soon as he left the organisation at 5pm, he would ‘switch off’.
General Observations
Frank was made the Project Officer for the newly founded Project Management Office (PMO) which was to be located in IT. He was sent to further his training and passed the PRINCE2 Practitioner course some months later. He was tasked to develop a standardised methodology based on PRINCE2 for OABC’s projects together with the templates to be used. The PMO was formed in April 2013 but
was dismantled the following year with the resignation of the Head of IT. Frank then took on the role of IT Manager but he did not implement the PMO:
…we never implemented a PMO – it was all in discussion when Ho left (Frank, Post Training ++).
After PRINCE2 Training
Six months after the training, Frank was not using PRINCE2 despite being the custodian for OABC’s project management framework and PRINCE2-based document templates as Project Officer of the PMO. He commented that he had not seen any documents used in the organisation and that anyone wishing to implement PRINCE2 methodology to their projects “would struggle with it” (Frank, Post Training 5+).
According to Frank, the application of PRINCE2 principles and methodology amidst the changes happening at OABC was “out of the window – it does not even exist” (Frank, Post Training ++). He clearly stressed that it was impossible to apply these principles in an uncontrolled environment.
For this reason he did not invest the time needed to plan the projects properly using PRINCE2. His reason was that the business culture was not conducive to implementing PRINCE2. For example:
There are various parts of the business that is agreed to implementation date agreed to in week 14 and we start planning for week 14, then all of a sudden it becomes week 6. How does it happen? Everyone is in agreement that we will deliver week 14 and here is the formal document we have and now we have brought it forward by 2 months. How is that possible? (Frank, Post Training ++)
Frank is an example of a participant who despite passing the PRINCE2 Practitioner, did not do any extra work or have any desire to apply the PRINCE2 methodology to workplace projects. Frank’s main reason was that citing that the OABC business culture was not conducive to its implementation. Although
he was earmarked as the custodian and ‘lead’ for the PRINCE2 methodology in OABC, in practice he had no desire to apply it to his projects. He did the day to day work of being IT Manager but when managing projects of which there were between three and eight running at any one time, he would not spend the time undertaking planning to produce the required PRINCE2 documents such as the Project Brief and Business case.
Since becoming IT Manager, he was still trying to understand the leadership dynamics at OABC which he described as an uncontrolled environment not conducive to the adoption of PRINCE2:
Still trying to find my feet so far as understanding the dynamics of the senior management team. I think I understand the landscape now. It is a challenge. We are going through business challenge. We cannot apply those (PRINCE2) principles in an uncontrolled environment.(Frank, Post Training ++)