Solving agile project management challenges with PRINCE2 Agile

Esther Amunga – IT and Project Support, Vivo Energy Kenya

Esther Amunga has handled IT and Project Support for Vivo Energy – a Kenyan company which sources, distributes, markets and supplies Shell and Engen fuels and lubricants through 4,200 service stations, serving two million customers daily across 29 markets.

Certified in PRINCE2 Agile (Version 2) – launched in 2025 – Esther, in this article, highlights the principal agile project management challenges she faces in her work and how guidance from PRINCE2 Agile has helped her address them:

Working as a project manager, I deliver complex projects on time and within budget, using skills including project planning, risk management, budgeting and stakeholder collaboration.

When it comes to managing agile projects, the top challenges I have faced are:

- Inadequate role clarity and ownership – creating lack of prioritization and slower decision making.

- Governance and reporting using traditional metrics – creating friction and reducing agility.

- Agile structure but not always agile thinking – adopting ways of working but without the true agile mindset.

- Too many agile teams, not enough alignment – agility becoming fragmented without cross-team visibility or strategy alignment.

Taking each of these challenges in turn, this is how guidance from PRINCE2 Agile (Version 2) has helped:

Inadequate role clarity and ownership

I used PRINCE2 Agile's "Manage by Exception" principle to fix this; working with stakeholders to set clear tolerances (time, cost, scope) at each level of the team, so people knew exactly what decisions they were empowered to make without escalating.

I also clarified role boundaries by separating the product owner's authority for backlog priorities from the project manager's authority for overall project tolerances. This removed the guesswork, cut unnecessary escalations, and let the team prioritize and decide faster on their own.

Governance and reporting using traditional metrics

Using PRINCE2 Agile's approach of tailoring governance to fit agile delivery means not forcing agile teams into traditional reporting.

I replaced heavy, output-focused status reports with lightweight, frequent updates, burn charts and a simple red, amber, green (RAG) status against tolerances; reviewed at short, regular checkpoints rather than lengthy formal stage boundaries.

I also worked with the project board to agree on which metrics actually mattered for their oversight – for example, progress against tolerances and benefits realization – versus traditional metrics that added reporting overhead without adding decision-making value.

This kept governance meaningful while letting the team stay focused on delivery rather than paperwork.

Agile structure but not always agile thinking

Adopting PRINCE2 Agile's behaviours shifted the team from just following agile ceremonies to genuinely thinking in an agile way; focusing on transparency, collaboration, and self-organization, while using retrospectives to ask: "Did this actually help us decide better?" rather than "Did we tick the box?"

Too many agile teams, not enough alignment

PRINCE2 Agile's focus on effective governance and stakeholder engagement has helped me to tackle this. The core issue was that operations held critical solution knowledge but had no formal role in the project's decision-making structure, so their input surfaced only at cutover – when an organization switches from an old to new system – instead of during design. This same, silo gap meant business requirements drifted from what was actually built, with mismatches caught only once the solution hit production.

Using PRINCE2 Agile’s "Senior User" role, I was able to bring operations into the governance structure formally from the start, not just as a stakeholder to consult but as an accountable decision-maker with sign-off responsibility at each stage boundary.

Therefore, their proposed solution needed formal review, not just an informal suggestion that could be easily deprioritized. I also used PRINCE2 Agile’s stage boundaries (End Stage Assessments) as mandatory checkpoints to validate that what was being built still matched the original business requirements, catching drift early rather than at go-live.

This created cross-team visibility by design rather than relying on ad hoc communication between siloed teams.

Improving the management of agile projects

By providing me with both the flexibility of agile and a defined framework, PRINCE2 Agile (Version 2) has transformed the way I manage agile projects.

I now use checkpoints to keep what's being produced in line with what the business truly requires, define clear boundaries up front so teams can make decisions quickly without always escalating, and involve important teams like operations early rather than after go-live.

Because they only intervene when it truly matters, this has resulted in quicker decisions, fewer surprises later in the project, and better use of the leadership's time. All things considered, it has made project delivery easier while maintaining the agile method of operation.

Complementing other project management approaches

Studying and certifying in both PMP and PRINCE2 Agile has given me a perspective on both approaches. For example, instead of treating structured governance that PMP offers and agile delivery as distinct techniques, PRINCE2 Agile (Version 2) offers a useful option to combine the two.

While PMP provided me with a solid foundation in the more general project management knowledge areas of scope, risk, stakeholder management, and integration, PRINCE2 Agile enables flexible, iterative delivery within a controlled framework, using tools like stage boundaries, tolerances and defined roles to keep agile teams accountable and moving quickly.

When combined, they allow me to adapt my delivery approach to the project circumstances, utilizing agile methods for speed and flexibility when necessary while maintaining rigorous governance.