As I said, I can see how the Directing guide could be useful. I certainly have spent a lot of my time in project management explaining to board members the responsibilities of the roles they are taking on, and why they are important.

It may just be a reflection of the specific people involved, but I’m not completely convinced a Directing guide would have made much difference to this. But, I may just be being too cynical, and a chronological guide could indeed be a useful tool for project board members – maybe if more of them understand before getting involved that project management involves more that just a project manager, we’ll all have better projects!

I’m looking forward to getting my hands on the two manuals – certain aspects of the refresh sound very interesting. Good luck with the launch!

It will be really interesting to see how the new Directing guide gets used. We created it based on the Public Consultation in response to the question “what else would you like to see in PRINCE2?”, lots of people requested guidance targetted at Project Boards.

The feedback from the pilots was that for some project board members a 120 page guide is still 119 pages too long, but others found it really useful.

We took a different approach to the structure of Directing compared to Managing in that while we expect a PM to know the method front to back and only occasionally refer to it, we do not expect Project Board members to read the Directing guide front to back but to dip into it at key times in their projects. That’s why the guide is chronologically ordered (as far as possible).

The feedback from the pilots also highlighted that PMOs/COEs were using the Directing guide to coach Project Board members or as part of their assurance role.

By the way, I’d like to correct the statement that we have split the current manual into to. The new Managing guide is equivalent to the old managing guide in that it still has the Directing a Project processes and all the project board role descriptions. It’s just that we have added to the method by creating an essential role specific guide.

Thanks once again for prompting some useful debates about the upciming release!

Kind Regards
Andy
PRINCE2 Lead Author

I can absolutely see the Directing guide being some great ammunition for a project manager. It will certainly make the briefings I seem to give on every project a little easier, and if nothing else, that makes the Directing manual useful!