FOREWORD

When I wrote the foreword for the first edition, I said that I thought PRINCE2 Agile^® was an oxymoron. How could it be possible to combine the flexibility that Agile brings with the structure and approach of PRINCE2^®? Agile focuses on the issues on the left of the Agile Manifesto¹ – the importance of people collaborating to produce a working product in small iterations whilst responding to inflight changes. I associate PRINCE2 with the other, right-hand side of the Agile Manifesto – with managing projects using processes and tools, sticking to a plan and providing comprehensive governance documentation. Moreover, Agile is not a project governance tool, and PRINCE2 does not provide an approach for getting the business change, IT service, or other product actually built, delivered, and implemented. How could these seemingly contradictory approaches work together?

The popularity of PRINCE2 Agile has shown that many do not share this view.

Some organizations have a great need for implementing changes quickly and effectively, but a requirement to still maintain sufficient governance to satisfy boards, regulators and financial markets. This is where PRINCE2 Agile is ideal. It provides a logical and flexible framework for those organizations wishing to develop a realistic balance between the forces of Agile and the need for structured governance. In my opinion, the PRINCE2 Agile approach is far better than many of the other cumbersome attempts to place project management and governance controls on top of Agile methods.

The PRINCE2 Agile^® Practical Implementation Guide – Step-by-step advice for every project type, second edition provides a very useful explanation of the PRINCE2 Agile framework and guidance on how to implement it – especially for those who need a readily available reference source to supplement the official PRINCE2 Agile guide. This book provides practical advice on how to adopt – and adapt – the PRINCE2 Agile approach to the needs of your organization’s project – whatever its size or complexity. The new chapters and updated text make it even easier to apply this framework to existing PRINCE2 organizations and to those without formal governance structures, to organizations who have delivered traditional waterfall projects as well as those experienced in Agile methods. I will be adding this new edition to my toolkit and would urge you to do the same.

Christopher Wright BSc (Hons.), CISA, MAPM, formerly CSM, CPFA, MBCS.

Agile Governance and Audit Author, Consultant, Trainer and Scrum Master.

¹ For more information, visit: https://agilemanifesto.org/.