Tailoring for a Small Charity
A small charity with 14 staff is running a 4-month project to replace its donor database. The project manager has downloaded a full PRINCE2 template pack and produced a 90-page PID, a 40-line risk register, a communication management approach listing 11 stakeholder groups, and a project board of six people including two external trustees. The charity's director is the Executive and also the Senior User and also the Senior Supplier, because the charity is buying a cloud product and has no internal IT team. The project manager insists on weekly highlight reports and a formal change authority for every change. The project is now two weeks behind because of documentation. The director asks whether PRINCE2 is 'too heavy' for them.
1. Is PRINCE2 too heavy for this charity? Answer using the tailoring principle.
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No - the implementation is too heavy, not PRINCE2
PRINCE2 explicitly requires tailoring to the project's size, complexity, importance, capability and risk. A 4-month, 14-person, cloud-based project is low complexity and should be run with a light touch. The problem is that the project manager has applied the full template pack without judgement.
What tailoring should look like here
- Principles are never tailored - they still apply (continued justification, defined roles, manage by stages, manage by exception, focus on products, learn from experience, tailor).
- Themes can be simplified: a short PID (perhaps 10–15 pages), a risk register with the top 5–10 risks, a communication approach with 3–4 stakeholder groups, a light quality approach.
- Processes can be combined: starting up and initiation can be compressed; stage boundaries can be fewer; highlight reports can be monthly.
- Roles can be combined where the organisation is small, but the Executive must not also be Senior User and Senior Supplier without recognising the conflict.
Judgement
The director is right that the current implementation is too heavy, but wrong to conclude PRINCE2 is unsuitable. The remedy is tailoring, not abandonment.
2. The director is Executive, Senior User and Senior Supplier. What are the risks and how should this be handled?
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The conflict
These three roles represent different interests:
- Executive - accountable for the business case and overall success; focuses on value for money.
- Senior User - accountable for specifying users' needs and realising benefits; focuses on fitness for purpose.
- Senior Supplier - accountable for the supplier's commitment and technical integrity; focuses on deliverability.
Holding all three means the same person is judging whether the product is fit for purpose, whether the supplier can deliver it, and whether the investment is justified - with no independent challenge. In a small charity this may be unavoidable, but it must be recognised and mitigated, not ignored.
Mitigations
- Separate the supplier interest - even without an internal IT team, the cloud vendor's account manager or a technical contact should act as Senior Supplier, or a trustee with relevant experience.
- Independent assurance - appoint a Project Assurance role (a trustee or external adviser) to challenge the business case and quality.
- Separate the Senior User - a staff member who will use the donor database should be Senior User, so user needs are represented independently of the director.
- Record the conflict in the PID and risk register, and require board decisions on changes and stage boundaries to be minuted with the conflict noted.
Judgement
Combining roles is permitted in small organisations, but the board must ensure the interests are still represented and challenged. The risk is groupthink and an unchallenged business case.
3. The project is two weeks behind because of documentation. What specific tailoring changes should the project manager make, and what must not be cut?
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What to cut or simplify
- PID: reduce to a short document covering business case, roles, plans, controls and tailoring decisions. Reference rather than duplicate.
- Risk register: keep it focused on the top risks with owners and responses; drop empty categories.
- Communication management approach: reduce to the stakeholder groups that genuinely need different communication; 11 groups is excessive for 14 staff.
- Highlight reports: move to monthly, or by exception.
- Change authority: delegate a threshold (e.g. changes under a defined cost/time limit approved by the project manager), reserving larger changes for the board.
- Stage structure: fewer stages, but at least initiation plus one delivery stage.
What must not be cut
- The business case - even short, it must state benefits, costs and why the project is justified.
- Defined roles - including the separation or mitigation of the director's combined roles.
- Manage by stages - at least one stage boundary with a board decision.
- Manage by exception - tolerances must be set, even if generous.
- Focus on products - product descriptions for the key products, even if brief.
- Learn from experience - lessons should be captured, even informally.
Judgement
The two-week delay is a symptom of applying templates rather than tailoring. The project manager should record the tailoring decisions in the PID so the board can see what was simplified and why. Cutting documentation is fine; cutting the principles is not.