When it's too expensive

Have you ever heard something like, “No, we don’t use PRINCE2^® because we’re a small company and it’s too expensive for us.”?

It would be too expensive if it wasn’t tailored to suit the company. When tailored properly, though, it should help you save costs, improve your reputation, and more.

So, how do we tailor a project management system?

As an example, in PRINCE2, team leaders should send checkpoint reports to the project manager at predefined intervals. PRINCE2 calls that a management product rather than a document, simply because it doesn’t have to be a document. If it’s a large or complicated project, you may decide to have formal, written documents, but if not, even a phone call is enough. The only thing that’s necessary is to have an understanding that those phone calls should exist at certain intervals and the required information communicated. When you decide about how you want to form your checkpoint reports in a methodology like PRINCE2, you’re tailoring your system.