Gershon roll out crowns Prince2

ILX owns the Prince2.com web domain which makes it the most natural destination for consultants looking to tick a box before applying for government work

Like it or not, the government is the single largest buyer of information technology in Australia, so when this ten thousand pound gorilla wants a certain type off banana, banana sellers appear magically to offer their services.

Such is the case with the always enthralling area of IT project management that used to enjoy a more or less even spread across enigmatically titled Prince2 approach and PMBOK. Since the federal government started the implementation of the Gershon Review in an effort to reduce the cost and improve the effectiveness of information technology projects demand for Prince2 courses has raced ahead.

Dimension Data Learning Services, one of the largest IT training organisations in the country, has experienced a 150 per cent increase in demand for Prince2 training over the past 12 months, driven by an increase in demand from government from a trend that has seen the approach adopted for smaller scale projects.

The increase in demand, however, has been largely sucked up by the arrival of the ILX Group, one of the world’s largest information technology training companies. Operating in 91 countries and delivering predominantly web-based courses to more than 5000 clients, ILX is ideally positioned to pick up on the increase in demand having played a major part in the rollout of services to the UK government as it was implementing its own Gershon review. ILX also owns the Prince2.com web domain which makes it the most natural destination for casual browsers and consultants looking to tick a box before applying for government work.

Smaller training groups, and those whose focus is on face-to-face rather than web-based training are finding it hard to keep up with the ILX marketing machine, and are losing business just at the time when they should be benefiting from the increase in demand.

There is also the distinct danger that this scramble for certification becomes a box ticking process rather than the cultural change at the organisational level that in fact is necessary for an approach like Prince2 to produce results. Prince2 practitioners warn that the approach is effective only if it involves both face-to-face and web-based training and a follow-up process of mentoring.

Simply having the certification clearly isn’t enough to make the approach work but it will set an industry standard and increase the number of consultant with both the certification and some degree of experience in the field and as a result could improve the success rate of IT projects.

And that can only be good for an industry that will always be blamed when things go wrong and rarely thanked when they go right.

BRW

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