How the Praxis Framework maps to GovS 002
The UK Government through departments such as the CCTA, OGC and latterly, the Infrastructure Projects Authority (IPA), has a proven track record of innovation in project delivery standards.
This began with the purchase of the PROMPT II method for managing projects in 1989, which was quickly updated to become PRINCE2. This was followed by Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) in 1999 and Management of Portfolios in 2011. Despite the quality of these publications they have suffered from two main problems. Firstly, they are often incompatible in their use of terminology. Each standard is produced by an independent team that does not work to a common lexicon.
Secondly, it is recognised that the focus on processes and method is only half the story for managing projects, programmes and portfolios. The guides make many references to the functions and practices that are needed to execute the processes but do not describe them. For that reason, these guides need to be paired with something like the Association for Project Management’s Body of Knowledge (APM BoK) to derive a complete picture.
This creates a further problem in that it introduces another variety of terminology and, sometimes incompatible, overlaps.
Since the sale of the government’s joint venture AXELOS to the Cyprus based certification company PeopleCert, the sole source of government wide project delivery guidance is the IPA. This organisation has recently published version 2 of the Government Functional Standard ‘GovS 002: Project Delivery’*.
GovS 002 is not written at the detail of the previous guides but has the big advantage of integrating projects, programmes and portfolios in a single integrated guide. It is a high level ‘policy document’ that depends upon more detailed material (such as PRINCE2 and the APM BoK) to describe the discipline of project delivery – that brings us back to the problem of incompatible terminology, structures and overlapping, incompatible content.
That’s where the Praxis Framework comes in. It covers the full extent of project delivery and includes the same scope of content as PRINCE2, MSP, MoP and the APM BoK combined in a single integrated framework. It also addresses issues around implementation and embedding of good practice with all content being freely available at praxisframework.org.
How the Praxis Framework maps to GovS 002
Praxis Framework have created a detailed document, which explains how it maps to GovS 002. Section by section.
You can download GovS 002 from gov.uk. It’s worth noting that this standard uses the umbrella term ‘Project Delivery’ to represent the management of projects, programmes and portfolios.
