PRINCE2™ MSP™

Cannonball Camper

enquiries — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 18:55:53 +0000

As you may already know, Aspire Europe Ltd have agreed to sponsor to sponsor an entrant in this years Cannonball Run 2009 to help raise funds for Zimbabwean Orphans.

They will keeping a diary as they wend their way across Europe and we hope they raise many thousands for charity

If you would like to contribute - here is the link http://www.justgiving.com/jasoncole and here is a picture of their van

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Benefits Management - why is the vocabulary so hard

enquiries — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 18:39:58 +0000

We’ve been working on an assignment relating to benefits and people are using such confusing terms that it is a real muddle.

When we wrote MSP07 we didn’t help the situation really. We had words like enablers and business changes lurking in the images.

This is going to be the subject of an article in the next few weeks, hopefully this will help in the sort term.

If you see the word “enabler” in benefits speak it is the same as “capability” in MSP speak.

If you see the expression “business change” in benefits speak it is the same as “transition” in MSP speak.

That clears up a lot of the confusion that people experience - keep it easy, keep it meaningful and keep it real

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Hear Bestpractice

enquiries — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 18:35:29 +0000

Aspire Europe are really proud to be involved in the launch of a fab new idea to develop and improve best practice. Rather than sitting there reading about it - why not listen to it in the car or on the train.

The OGC Best Practice publications lead authors, Sue Vowler, Andy Murray, Rod Sowden and Crag Kilford have worked together to produce a number of interviews totally over 10 hours at present.

These involve introductions to the products and provide helpful interpretations of concepts that will be of interest to newcomers and experts alike.

It will go live on the 23rd June 2009 - so check out www.hearbestpractice.com it you want to be in the know.

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Aspire Europe announce Risk Best Practice Showcase workshop event

enquiries — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 22:06:47 +0000

We face a huge challenge with our clients in the consultancy environment as we support them in the implementation of Managing Successful Programmes. We need to help them create specifically the governance strategies for programme and project management in their organisation, and that will include, often as the most critical and most urgent activity, the creation of a Risk Management Strategy.
In MSP we talk specifically about the need to adopt MSP in a way which copes with the culture of the organisation, and that all governance strategies should refer and defer to corporate policy and strategy.
In particular, what we find when we set out to adopt MSP in organisations is that we need to ensure that they have a robust Best Practice approach to Risk Management in place, and that before we can deliver a Risk Management Strategy at programme and project level, we need to make sure that Risk Management Policy, Process and Strategy, together with a Risk Register and Issue Log are properly in place for the organisation at a Corporate level.
We will provide an informed basis for discussion of this topic, based on our engagements with a wide range of public and private sector organisations, and willingly give and share our experience (without attribution to specific organisations), and pose the following questions

What is your experience of supporting the delivery of effective Risk Management into organisations
What are the barriers you have encountered
What solutions can you share

Aspire Europe announce Blueprint Best Practice Showcase workshop event

enquiries — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 22:04:03 +0000

Getting clients – or more often our client’s senior management, to understand the need for the formation of a blueprint before putting projects into place is a bit of a black art. Supporting them to work up a detailed picture of the future state, developed from a vision, particularly when we are reverse engineering Programme Management into place, can often be difficult to initiate. Once they engage in the process, its value starts to become evident, and very often this is the trigger for the acceleration of the adoption process. Using the blueprint process for the design of a Programme Office can be a way forward. We will explain how we have overcome these barriers with and for our clients in a number of scenarios.
We will provide an informed basis for discussion of this topic, based on our engagements with a wide range of public and private sector organisations, and willingly give and share our experience (without attribution to specific organisations), and pose the following questions

What is your experience of blueprint development in organisations?
What are the tools and techniques you have deployed?
What methods have you used to engage senior stakeholders?

MSP™ - Framework or Methodology?” - Best Practice Showcase Workshop

enquiries — Tue, 26 May 2009 16:12:50 +0000

We are pleased to announce out second Workshop topic for Best Practice Showcase on 23^rd June at the QEII Centre in London
Managing Successful Programmes is now well established globally and has come of age, it is currently a framework but could it become a method ? – a workshop hosted by Rod Sowden – Lead Author of the 2007 version.

It is only 2 years ago that MSP07 was being launched. Since then the momentum of adoption across many sectors has accelerated, and it has gained increasing credibility globally, with adoption from the United Nations to many national governments.
The current version is not without fault and there is always room for improvement, but as the process for the next update begins, is it time to take a leaf out of PRINCE2® 2009 and consider whether there is methodology lurking within MSP trying to get out, or should it remain a largely conceptual framework.
It is our experience that the current APMG qualifications and syllabus is very good at ensuring that training course delegates know the detail, but is this blinding us to the concepts and application of MSP™ in the workplace. �
Our P3M3™ work and assessments are tending to show that it is. In fact deployments of MSP™ seem to largely focus on the Themes rather than embedding the Transformation Flow, which is the backbone of the framework.
Due to elongated timescales of programmes, it may be that we are now only just seeing the lessons from users of MSP™ 2003 coming through.
We have seen extensive evidence that initial implementations of MSP™ appear to run into the same problems. That has led us to ask the questions as to whether more specific guidance in needed to help set direction and momentum.
This is a very complex topic, we have yet to see an easy programme !
Most of the Programme Management themes and concepts are now well established within MSP™, but maybe there is a need for more guidance on deployment.
This workshop is going to focus on:

Your experiences of when programmes have gone well and not so well?
What are the lessons to be taken from these successes and failures?
What would an MSP method look like?

Aspire Europe announce P3M3 workshop for Best Practice Showcase

enquiries — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:11:09 +0000

In a year P3M3™ adoption has gathered pace with extensive use across the UK and it’s reputation has gone global – the lead author will ask “So how has it been for you ?”

At last year’s Best Practice Showcase, version 2 of P3M3™ was launched, with the lead author, Rod Sowden, running a number of workshops to introduce it.
Along with the maturity model, a Self Assessment Tool was also launched, which gave the opportunity for a free assessment. This has been a highly successful strategy for deploying the model.
Unfortunately very little data has been collected to enable us to understand what the “norm” is for any industry or sectors.
Aspire Europe have conducted numerous formal and informal assessments in the last year, and we would like to find out if the results that we are getting back from our clients are similar to the ones you are producing yourselves
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With P3M3™ now going global, with research establishments as far away as Australia now planning to use it to underpin their assessments of organisations and industries, this workshop is going to ask:
“How has it been for you?”

Have you used the model and how did you find it?
Did the results make sense and were you able to interpret them?
What was good & what was bad when using P3M3™?

We will provide some case study examples of where and how P3M3™ and help you to interpret or use your results as part of, what we hope, will be a very interactive event.
As part of the workshop we would like to gather results from people who have used it from different sectors, so if you haven’t undertaken a self assessment yet, why not get a copy from and complete it so that we can include your results as part of the information gathering:
www.ogc.gov.uk/documents/p3m3_self_assessment.pdf

Best Practice Showcase - Aligning PRINCE2® and MSP™

enquiries — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:26:47 +0000

Aspire Europe are pleased to announce the first of the FIVE workshops

Peter Johnson and Rod Sowden will host a workshop on the following:

The new version of PRINCE2® offers greater opportunities for alignment with MSP™ - the Aspire Europe team have been working on this and are happy to host a discussion about the new opportunities and the old pitfalls

Aligning PRINCE2® and MSP™ has always been a bit tricky. There are a number of reasons for this, which include:

PRINCE2® was originally written before MSP™ was thought of�
MSP has undergone two major rewrites, both of which have been focused at providing increasing strategic context rather than focusing on the interface with projects, which to some extent was taken for granted.�
PRINCE2® has been focused on internal control whilst MSP™ has focused on the external environment, in effect they are looking in different directions�
Publication re-writes have tended to be out of sync, as the knowledge moves on.�

In the new version of PRINCE2® there has been much greater acknowledgement of the need to engage with stakeholders and that benefits don’t happen by mistake. These are key messages within MSP™, so PRINCE2® has a more naturally alignment.

We will provide an overview of how the new version of PRINCE2® offers you new interfaces to MSP™, and outline the hooks that currently exist within MSP that you may not be aware of.

So we will pose the following questions

What is your experience of the challenges of aligning programme and project management?�
Which area would you like to have seen changes to help with integration�

We will share with you how we believe the changes in PRINCE2® help with the alignment with MSP™. Some solutions may well exist and we can advise where you can plug gaps without the need for a new publication.

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Aspire Europe Ltd and the Cannonball Run Europe

enquiries — Tue, 26 May 2009 13:01:45 +0000

Each year we look for something a bit different to invest some sponsorship into.

Last year we put in place a partnership with Plymouth Argyle, along with a number of other companies, so sponsor free season tickets for young supporters to encourage them to go to the games early.

This year, it is something completely different, we are sponsoring one of the vehicles in the Cannonball Run (Europe) - this is a bit of a crazy cat event where teams drive around Europe for 6 days, trying to maintain an average speed of 61MPH. Just to make sure we were backing an outsider - we have sponsored one of colleagues to enter their VW Camper van. This is the first time one has been entered in the event - and we are sure it is going to be a lot of fun to be involved with.

http://www.cannonballruneurope.co.uk/

We also hope to raise a lot of money for charity, as it will be possible to sponsor the team and hopefully make a weighty contribution to a good cause.

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Best Practice Showcase - June 23rd

enquiries — Tue, 26 May 2009 12:52:47 +0000

It is nearly time for the annual jamboree for Programme and Project Management Best Practice enthusiasts.

If you are not already registered I’d suggest following this link ttp://www.bestpracticeshowcase.com/ demand for tickets outstrips even the Glastonbury Festival !

Aspire Europe will be well represented, we will be hosting a number of the “Birds of a Feather” events, which are fantastic. The format is a small audience with a consultant leading the discussion on a key topic.

We will be announcing our Birds of a Feather on this blog as we go along

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