Bringing Model-based Systems Engineering Capabilities to Project Management: an Application to PRINCE2

PRINCE2 is arguably one of the most adopted process-based methods for project management. Currently, PRINCE2 is defined in a textual specification, which describes the principles, the themes, and the processes that project managers should apply in their management activities. Although the specification is well structured and mature, the specification does not provide a browsable digital representation that can be interactively used for learning and/or for the specification application during project management activities. This paper aims to overcome these limitations with the application of a modelbased systems engineering approach to represent the PRINCE2 specification in a model-based format. This can bring several benefits to the specification, including the availability of a graphical, comprehensive and digitally browsable visualization of the PRINCE2 processes, their inputs/outputs, and the constituting tasks. The modelbased format has been obtained by a top-down mapping of the PRINCE2 specifications, beginning with the process architecture in IDEF0 down to the individual tasks, roles, and tools in BPMN 2.0. Besides supporting PRINCE2 understanding and application, the model-based format can also serve as a baseline for further exploitations, such as consistency verification of the PRINCE2 specification and model-based process simulation for the governance of the PRINCE2 processes and of the project management activities. Keywords—project management; business process; model-based; systems engineering.