Issue Management – The Strengths of Prince2™

Issue Management – The Strengths of Prince2™ (#10 in the series How PRINCE2™ Can Complement PMBOK® and Your PMP)
By Jay Siegelaub – MBA, PMP, PRINCE2

One core principle of quality management is that important information should not get lost; PRINCE2™ also reminds us that management of Issues is critical to any quality system. PMBOK® makes reference to the existence of issues that need to be managed, but no mechanism or approach for managing them (it considers an Issue Management system outside of the PMBOK®’s scope).

PRINCE2™ recommends the use of a Log showing details of each Issue: description, evaluation, decisions about it and status. For the “when” of Issue management, PRINCE2™ particularly recommends identifying, updating and reviewing Issues during the execution process (“Controlling a Stage”) and at the completion of each Stage (“Managing Stage Boundaries”). No project methodology could qualify for “maturity” without an Issue Management process in place.

Jay Siegelaub has over 30 years of professional experience delivering and supporting projects in information technology, insurance systems, banking, and nonprofit strategic planning, as well as in the pharmaceutical, financial service, consulting, and consumer products industries. As a recognized educator he has trained thousands of project managers over the past 23 years, including 13 years as the Project Management tutorial instructor for the Drug Information Association.

Jay’s recent responsibilities included leading the North American Change Management and Training practices for a UK-based management consulting firm, training corporate consulting professionals in project and program management, and supporting clients in managing the “people” issues of their business change initiatives. He has authored articles on training, project management and information technology for various publications, and often presents at conferences, including the PMI North American Congress (1999, and 2004 – 2007), ProjectWorld and ProjectSummit.

In addition to his PMP® certification, Jay has his MBA in Organization Management from New York University’s Stern School of Business, and is an accredited PRINCE2™ Practitioner, Instructor and Examiner. He has taught and consulted in PRINCE2™ in North America for 10 years (the first US-accredited PRINCE2™ instructor), and worked for the company (and with the authors) that wrote the PRINCE2™ Manual for the UK government.

He has provided Change Management and Project Management consulting and training (including PRINCE2) to companies such as Sun Microsystems, NATO, the United Nations Development Programme, Bechtel, IBM, Philip Morris, Credit Suisse, JPMorganChase and Diageo.

Jay also consults in Organizational and Professional Development.