The Deep-Space Oddity Project: STUDY PRINCE2 USING PRINCE2 FICTION

By Alexei Kuvshinnikov

Managing projects is an exciting profession that offers plentiful opportunities for having good fun.

But studying project management methodologies can bore one to death. Learning materials and study aids tend to be on the dry side. They often have a mind-numbing effect on the learners, making preparation for certification

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alexei Kuvshinnikov
• Release date: May 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9783950518702

Alexei Kuvshinnikov

Alexei Kuvshinnikov has practiced project management for some 20 years. Since some five years, he dedicates most of his time to conducting training in PRINCE2 Foundation and Practitioner. Alexei has delivered training in Vienna, Zurich, Geneva, Lausanne, Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg, Stockholm, Gent, Luxemburg, Madrid, Barcelona as well as to audiences in France, UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapour and Ethiopia. For explanation of PRINCE2 concepts and nuances, please visit his blog on https://www.flexilern.com/blog.

Book preview

Study PRINCE2® using PRINCE2® Fiction

THE DEEP-SPACE ODDITY PROJECT

Alexei Kuvshinnikov

Copyright © Alexei Kuvshinnikov 2021

Alexei Kuvshinnikov asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Austrian Federal Law on Copyright for Works of Literature and Art and Related Protective Rights (Bundesgesetz über das Urheberrecht an Werken der Literatur und der Kunst und über verwandte Schutzrechte (Urheberrechtsgesetz))

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Ebook ISBN 978-3-9505187-0-2

Print-on-Demand ISBN 978-3-9505187-1-9

All organisations, characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Material from Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2® 6th edition reproduced under license from AXELOS Limited. Copyright © AXELOS Limited 2022. All rights reserved.

PRINCE2® is a registered trade mark of AXELOS Limited, used under permission of AXELOS Limited. All rights reserved. The Swirl logo is a trade mark of AXELOS Limited. Used under licence from AXELOS Limited. All rights reserved.

For my Family - Mum and Dad who set me on this track, dearest wife Marina who spurred me on and on along it, and precious children Katia and Dimon who appeared reverently impressed with the result.

Contents

‘Oddsy One’ Rolling

Pre-Dawn Chat in the Bunker

Five Project Properties

Project Brief by Midnight

Project Brief Objectives

Lessons Log and Daily Log. Outline Business Case

Project Team Organisation. Complex Initiation

PRINCE2 Checklist for the Project Initiation Documentation

Combining Project Board Roles

Spirit of the Project Brief. Directing a Project Process

Mandate to Project Kick-Off in Eighteen Hours

Initiating a Project Process Starts with Agreeing Tailoring Needs

IAPI-C

Quality Theme Nuances

Change and Issue Control (CAPDI)

Seven Steps in Product-Based Approach to Planning

Setting Up Project Controls

Marrying Business Case to Benefits Management Approach

Ten to Two in Erzurum

Executive’s Choice – Pulling the Plug on the Project

Senior User Accountable for Post-Project Benefit Realisation

Rules of Project Team Organisation

A Benefit of Tailoring

Supplier Accountability for Product Quality

Project Manager’s Responsibilities in the Controlling a Stage Process

Breach of the Risk Tolerance

Managing Exceptions

Managing the Stage Boundary Process

Take it as a Checklist

Supplier Assurance

Team Manager’s Responsibilities in the Managing Product Delivery Process

Team Manager’s Double Reporting Lines

Application of the CAPDI Procedure to Change and Issue Control

Handling of Issues Caused by Breach of Tolerances

Executive’s Two Ways of Handling Breach of Tolerances

Overview of the Quality Landscape

Avoid Threats, Enhance Opportunities

A Handy Purpose of the PRINCE2 Guidance

Closing a Project Process: Prepare Planned Closure Step

Closing a Project Process: Prepare Premature Closure Step

Closing a Project Process: Hand Over Products Step

Closing a Project Process: Evaluate the Project Step

Closing a Project Process: Recommend Project Closure Step

About the Author

End Notes

1

‘Oddsy One’ Rolling

T

HE SHRILL RINGING of the phone jerked Hannah Rielke out of her sleep. The alarm clock showed 04:11. She had slept the whole of three and a half hours. There was no sense in getting into a foul mood, though. It was Hannah herself who had on purpose assigned this particularly unpleasant yelp to calls from the Operations Centre.

She swiped the screen with her finger. ‘Speaking,’ she said.

‘Good morning, Mrs Rielke. Sorry for calling you at this hour.’ The voice of the Duty Officer didn’t display any trace of an apology. ‘An alert has just come in. A previously unmonitored moving object was detected in sector Zulu-Bravo. Its flight path points at Earth.’

‘Could you notify EMERCOM members please.’ Hannah realised that her diction was blurred by sleepiness and switched to issuing instructions in short bursts. ‘Emergency Committee session. To start in thirty minutes. I’m on my way.’

‘Roger. Your security detail will ETA in three minutes,’ acknowledged the Duty Officer in a voice trained to eschew any emotion.

Hannah saw no reason whatsoever for being escorted to her office by the security. She rented a spacious apartment on a middle floor in a recently built high-rise that stood about 200 metres away from the Vienna International Centre - VIC. The floor-to-ceiling glass panel in the living room afforded her a slightly skewed view of her office windows some thirty floors below. It would take maybe five minutes to stroll leisurely across the plaza that separated her building from VIC Security Gate 1. At this hour, the plaza looked absolutely deserted and perfectly safe for such an adventurous move.

But there were protocols to follow. Rank provided perks such as living within a stone’s throw of the office. But it also prevented her from enjoying these perks to the full. Hannah wasn’t the sole master of her precious self anymore. She finished brushing her teeth and winked at her still sleepy face in the sink mirror, shrugging her shoulders in mock surrender.

Hannah Rielke held the number two slot in the UN hierarchy at the VIC. With a rank of Assistant Secretary-General, she was currently serving as the Executive Director of UNODSI, a five hundred staff-strong UN Office for Deep Space Issues. In VIC speak, ‘the oddsies’. Organisationally, it was located in the second tier of the UN Secretariat. Physically, its HQ occupied four floors in one of the ageing towers of the VIC.

On such nights – or was it mornings? – Hannah dearly wished that the ‘oddsy’ dress code allowed the wearing of fatigues. And a high-and-tight. Or even a burr cut. That would make things so much simpler. But no way. UNODSI was a profoundly civilian organisation and making things simple was hardly a part of its organisational culture.

Hannah took the express elevator all the way to L-3. When she stepped out of it into the damp dusk of the parking garage, on cue her security detail switched into action. Two shapes scanned the dark and silent reaches of the garage. The chase car switched the headlights on. The shape standing closer to her own car opened the rear door and Hannah slid inside in a smooth and practiced dive without as much as nodding her head in acknowledgement. She had learned to treat her security as office furniture. They didn’t seem to mind; after all, that’s what the protocol demanded and they were in no position to develop feelings about the protocol.

The UN Safety and Security Section’s close personal protection platoon based at the VIC served several top brass characters. Officers were assigned in accordance with rota as required and Hannah knew only a few by face, and even fewer by name.

‘Oddsy One rolling, ETA 75 seconds,’ murmured one of the guards in a tiny mic bar extending a couple of centimetres below the ear.

That was precisely how long it took them to complete the predictably uneventful journey from the third level in her underground garage to the gate that gave access to VIC underground entrances. The gate was open and they passed through like wind without slowing down, all in accordance with the protocol. Naturally. Hannah used to hate the aggressive driving style prescribed by the protocol but had given up hatred, together with most other emotions, quite a while ago.

The VIC looked empty but wasn’t silent. Member State flags in the Rotunda were rustling softly in the draughts that came from countless air vents. Floor cleaners’ machines could be heard buzzing in the distance. Security patrol radios were crackling from several corridors that Hannah traversed on her way.

Her suite of offices was dark and quiet. Assistants weren’t part of the emergency protocol. The fewer people got to know about the universe’s belches, the better for the common good. What I don’t know can’t kill me, right? That was the spirit of the protocol and a rare point on which protocol and Hannah agreed. She flipped on the lights in her executive office and poured herself a glass of water. 04:37, four minutes to spare.

Outside, it was still pitch dark. Nautical twilight loomed some three hours away on this November morning. Hard to tell yet whether it would turn out a fair day or the whole world would again be covered in a milky fog rising from the Danube and the wetlands that surrounded the VIC. Either way, Hannah didn’t expect to see much of it. She had precious little time for gazing at landscapes.

At 04:41 she gently pushed an unobtrusive door in a wall painted battleship-grey and stepped into the harsh lighting of the Bunker.

2

Pre-Dawn Chat in the Bunker

T

HE EXECUTIVE conference room was oblong in shape and laid out to seat some eleven people. But it felt cramped and depressing even for a group of five. Same battleship-grey walls on all four sides, devoid of any decorations or ornaments. A faint but nevertheless vile background smell of cheap plastic and glue. On occupying the office, Hannah had been adamant that something be done about that smell. Her assistants tried everything from basic magic trees to AI-powered scent vaporisers but to no avail. In desperation, they formed an uneasy alliance with the perpetually grumbling handymen from Building Maintenance, who replaced carpeting with imitation-parquet floorboards and brought in new furniture. The smell proved to be invincible and Hannah finally gave up in disgust.

A black screen used for teleconferencing took up much of one shorter wall across from Hannah’s chair at the top of the narrow table. It looked like a black hole to nether universes that gobbled up all light coming from tubes embedded into the ceiling. Low-backed chairs on spindly legs sported wafer-thin padding on imitation-leather seat cushions and backrests. They had gained notoriety among senior staff for beginning to cause sheer torture after as little as fifteen minutes. Table top and chairs were soot-black and seemed to devour the last crumbs of light left behind by the voracious screen.

On entering this monstrosity for the first time, Hannah couldn’t restrain herself from wincing and uttering ‘what a bloody bunker’ under her breath. She bit her lip but it was too late. The name stuck. So much so that, ever after, nobody called it anything but that.

Sure enough, Hannah was quick to realise that this torture-chamber atmosphere brilliantly served a darker purpose. It proved instrumental in keeping meetings short and to the point. No one wanted to stay there for a single moment beyond what was absolutely necessary to resolve the issue at hand.

Taking her seat, Hannah briefly nodded to the other four people already positioned around the table. On her left, her Chief of Office (EDCHOF) Luca Bernasconi. A Swiss diplomat in his late thirties, Bernasconi had only recently switched to the UN career track and felt a bit uneasy in his new skin. While his management style was more reminiscent of the intuitive Italian approach than of the clockwork precision one tended to be expecting from the Swiss, his personality was as solemn and cold as a mountain glacier.

Down the table, Bente Iversen, Director, Incident Management, an absolute Dane, looked her usual unperturbed and relaxed self. She was the only one among those present in the Bunker who didn’t show any resentment at having been dragged out of bed that morning. Sure enough, crisis response was part of their job descriptions. But most EMERCOM members still preferred incidents deemed worthy of their attention to occur from nine to five on weekdays.

Diego Martinez, a quiet native of Cartagena, occupied the table’s far end on Hannah’s right. He was living proof that Spaniards from the south could be very quiet and