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Blog posted by: Emma Arnaz-Pemberton – Wellingtone Project Management, 06 December 2018.

Emma Arnaz-Pemberton, director of consulting services at Wellingtone Project Management put herself and her team through the new PRINCE2 Agile® Foundation course with the support of Logical Model.

What’s your principal role?

I run a team of consultants and focus on PMO consulting, Microsoft Project Online implementations and developing new products to help organizations develop their PPM maturity.

Companies we work with are now talking more about agile methods though most of them still want to work in both a traditional and agile way. I recently certified our entire team in PRINCE2 Agile Foundation because I believe it will help us support our clients better.

What changes have you observed in recent years that make an agile certification relevant to you now?

I’m a PMO specialist and, historically, agile methods had a reputation of getting rid of all governance. While that can scare a PMO, they need to understand agile and can learn a lot from it. For example, it would be beneficial to do agile-style retrospectives and have stand-up talks with the team once a day regardless of the methods applied to deliver the project.

What made you want to return to a PRINCE2-related certification after certifying in PRINCE2 before?

I have lived and breathed the PRINCE2 principles but PRINCE2 Agile Foundation has refreshed them with an agile twist.

How well do you think PRINCE2 and agile methods fit together in this format?

They fit together very well: organizations are now starting to build a project approach based on how it’s going to succeed. Therefore, most need a traditional approach to start with, then might introduce Lean before moving into agile methods and change management. PRINCE2 Agile Foundation really gets people to focus on this transition process without having to be experts in everything.

How do you think PRINCE2 Agile Foundation will complement different methods and ways of working?

Businesses want to be more agile and work more effectively. The days of pure waterfall, agile or lean are gone and savvy professionals see that projects succeed by taking a more pragmatic look at the range of available skills rather than going down just one route. This is the right thing to do and we’re now saying to our clients that PRINCE2 Agile will help them too.

What elements of the certification do you think will be most useful to existing project management and agile practitioners?

Customers want more for less, more quickly and with fewer problems and project managers and PMOs need to meet these demands. So, PRINCE2 Agile Foundation gives project professionals enough knowledge and exposure to understand agile without becoming Scrum Masters. It creates a common language and takes away any fear of engaging with the methods day to day. And it works both ways: agile and PRINCE2 can learn a lot from each other and that’s why the blend is good. So, for agile practitioners, it will help them justify the business case more regularly.

In our experience one of the biggest issues is culture change and having this certification gives people the ability to talk about agile more confidently.

Read more AXELOS Blog Posts in this series

PRINCE2 Agile Foundation: a practical approach to project success

Viewpoint: PRINCE2 Agile Foundation certification