Are PMP and Prince2 practices complementary to each other?

I started my project management journey decade back and despite the experiences, it was really a rewarding activity to be certified and become a Prince2 practitioner later on. During my journey of quest for knowledge, I came across various methodology which helped me to implement existing frameworks and create few new ones in on-going projects to achieve various objectives. Be it PMP, Prince2, Agile, scrum, CPM, PRiSM, Kanban, Six sigma, Lean, or crystal method of Project Management the ideas and literatures are great source of learning and enhances the viability of project success. Specially the “Project Management Body of Knowledge” (PMBOK) published by PMI and “Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2”, published by Axelos remains among the foremost references for enhancing Project Management knowledge and project success rate.

PMP (Project Management Professional) and Prince2 (Projects in Controlled Environments 2) are the Big two practices whose credentials have worldwide recognition and are valid across industries. Axelos claims that Prince2 is the world’s most widely-adopted project management method though they don’t publish the official figure. As of March 2018, there are more than 833,025 active PMP certified professionals globally.

PMP is a STANDARD and more generic; Prince2 is a METHODOLOGY and more specific. PMP is based upon PMBOK and contains processes and ‘generally accepted’ techniques of project management, it is therefore more theoretical, a reference guide. Prince2 has detailed process model and templates. It gives a step by step guidance on how to organise and run a project. It is more a manual than a reference guide, thus making it more practical than PMP but Prince2 focusses on just a limited set of techniques as compared to PMP. PMP focuses on Project manager while the PRINCE2describe and detail the role of every individual involved in the project, including the project manager. PMP followsknowledge-based approach and a descriptive framework driven by the requirements of the customer, Prince2 follows process-based approach and a prescriptive framework driven by the business cases. Prince2 is structured to deal with When, what and whom, while integrating the set of 7 themes and7 processes along with 7 mandatory principles. PMP is structured along 10 Knowledge areas, which can be referred to in isolation to master a specific project management knowledge and deals with “how” of the project management. Both practices bring great value and an organisations will gain unprecedented value as the benefits of the combined knowledge are profound. So I don’t see both the practices as supplementary but complementing.

Prince2 was originally developed in the UK and becomes de facto standard across Europe, Australia and rest of the world, while PMP was developed in the United States and is predominant in the US, America, Canada, Middle East and Asia. Today organisation around the globe are looking to building systematic project management practices to improve the ways to manage the projects. In an organisation which is implementing various projects simultaneously, as per the customer location and project needs PMP or Prince2 practices are decided and applied to a project.

Thus in a way, PMP and Prince2 are actually complementary to each other.