People Management in Projects

The correct approach is to facilitate alignment discussions with key stakeholders to identify how the project can balance corporate priorities with departmental capabilities while addressing regulatory requirements through a tailored solution approach.

This answer best reflects PRINCE2 7 principles and practices because:

1. Tailor to Suit the Project: PRINCE2 7 emphasizes tailoring project management approaches to the specific context and environment. The scenario presents multiple legitimate but conflicting factors (corporate strategy, departmental culture, vendor solutions, regulatory requirements) that all need consideration.

2. Manage by Exception with Appropriate Governance: Rather than simply escalating conflicts or pursuing parallel paths, the project manager should actively facilitate resolution. This aligns with the principle of defined roles and responsibilities where the project manager is responsible for day-to-day management.

3. Focus on Products and Value: By seeking a balanced, tailored solution, the project manager ensures the project delivers value that satisfies multiple stakeholder needs while remaining viable.

4. Stakeholder Engagement: The Business Case practice requires understanding and balancing stakeholder interests. Facilitation brings stakeholders together to find common ground rather than treating their requirements as mutually exclusive.

Why the other approaches are less effective:

Escalating to a steering committee for a binding decision abdicates the project manager's responsibility to manage stakeholder relationships and find workable solutions. It also creates a win-lose scenario rather than seeking integration.

Focusing solely on corporate strategy while trying to adapt other groups' needs is too hierarchical and may fail to address legitimate concerns from IT and security perspectives, potentially compromising project viability.

Creating parallel workstreams for competing solutions is wasteful, creates unnecessary complexity, and delays critical decisions until late in the project when changes become more costly and risky.

The correct approach is to establish cross-functional working groups that bring together mobile developers, station operations staff, conductors, and frequent travelers to co-design the remaining features through iterative prototyping sessions held at actual station locations during peak travel periods.

This answer demonstrates the proper application of PRINCE2's 'Manage by Stages' principle and the Quality theme's focus on fitness for purpose. The core issue identified in the scenario is that key stakeholders (station personnel, conductors, and platform staff) who are critical to the operational success were excluded from the requirements gathering and design process. The result is a technically sound product that fails in real-world operational context.

The recommended approach addresses this fundamental stakeholder engagement failure by:

1. Including ALL relevant stakeholders in co-design activities - not just informing them, but actively involving them in solution development
2. Conducting prototyping in the actual operational environment (stations during peak periods) rather than controlled office settings, ensuring solutions are tested against real-world conditions
3. Using iterative development to incorporate feedback progressively, aligning with PRINCE2's emphasis on learning from experience
4. Focusing on fitness for purpose by ensuring the solution works for both end users (passengers) and operational staff who facilitate the service

This approach prevents repeating the mistakes of the first delivery stage for the remaining stages covering payment integration and season ticket functionality.

The second answer focuses primarily on communication and information distribution through newsletters and town halls. While stakeholder mapping is valuable, simply informing stakeholders about project progress does not address the root cause - these stakeholders need to be actively involved in designing solutions that they will operationally support, not merely kept informed.

The third answer suggests reviewing completed work against the business case and enhancing the interface based on marketing analysis. This perpetuates the original problem by continuing to rely on marketing department input rather than engaging operational staff who understand the redemption process constraints. It focuses on evaluation rather than collaborative design.

The fourth answer proposes a change control procedure where operations staff submit enhancement requests after features are designed. This is reactive rather than proactive, maintaining the separation between designers and operational users. It would result in rework and continued misalignment between technical delivery and operational requirements, rather than preventing these issues through inclusive design from the outset.

The PRIMARY approach should be to work with the Team Manager to establish regular synchronous collaboration sessions for the team to align on technical approaches, review integration points, and maintain consistency while preserving flexibility for individual work execution between these coordination points.

This is the correct answer because it directly addresses the root cause of the problems while balancing the PRINCE2 7 principle of 'Manage by stages' and the theme of 'Organization'. The situation reveals that while individual productivity is high, the team lacks coordination, leading to:
- Inconsistencies in coding standards
- Duplicated effort
- Integration problems
- 35% increase in rework

PRINCE2 7 emphasizes that the Team Manager role includes ensuring effective team collaboration and coordination. The approach of establishing regular synchronous sessions for alignment on technical approaches and integration points provides the necessary coordination mechanism without abandoning the flexibility that team members value. This balanced approach:
- Maintains the benefits of asynchronous work for individual execution
- Creates critical coordination points for technical alignment
- Addresses quality issues through collaborative review
- Supports the Project Manager's responsibility to ensure Work Packages are delivered to specification
- Aligns with the 'Focus on products' principle by ensuring consistent product quality

The second option is incorrect because mandating pair programming and simultaneous work hours is too rigid and would eliminate the flexibility benefits that are working well for the distributed team. This overreaction doesn't align with PRINCE2's emphasis on tailoring approaches to the project context.

The third option focuses on more detailed specifications and individual checkpoints, which addresses symptoms rather than the underlying coordination problem. Increasing documentation and individual reviews may actually slow down delivery further without solving the collaboration gap that's causing integration issues.

The fourth option of restructuring into time-zone-based sub-teams with independent modules and standards would create greater fragmentation and potentially worsen integration problems. This contradicts the need for consistent standards and approaches across the platform, and doesn't address the quality assurance concerns about rework.