What it is
PM² (pronounced "PM squared") is the official project management methodology of the European Commission. It was developed and is maintained by the Commission — originally inside DG DIGIT — and published openly as Open PM² so that any organisation, inside or outside the EU institutions, can adopt it free of charge. Its goal is to give the EU's institutions, agencies, contractors and national administrations a single common language and a single consistent way of delivering projects.
Crucially, PM² does not reinvent the discipline. It distils established global best practice — the PMI PMBOK Guide, PRINCE2, and Agile approaches — into one lightweight framework tailored to the realities of EU work: multiple stakeholders, public procurement, financial accountability, and projects that span several organisations. The methodology stands on four pillars: a governance model (who decides what), a project lifecycle (the phases), a set of artefacts (the templates and logs), and a set of mindsets (the behaviours that make the rest work).
How it works in practice
Those four pillars fit together as follows.
1. The governance model. PM² separates the project into a business side and a solution-provider side, then names the roles on each. The Project Owner (PO) represents the business and owns the business case; the Solution Provider (SP) owns delivery. Beneath them sit the Business Manager (BM) and the Project Manager (PM), supported by the Project Core Team (PCT). Strategic oversight comes from the Project Steering Committee (PSC) and, above it, the appropriate governance body. Responsibilities are mapped with a RASCI matrix so that for every activity it is unambiguous who is Responsible, Accountable, Supporting, Consulted and Informed.
2. The lifecycle. PM² runs four sequential phases — Initiating, Planning, Executing and Closing — with Monitor & Control running continuously across all of them. Between phases sit phase gates ("Ready for Planning", "Ready for Executing", "Ready for Closing"): formal approval points where the steering committee confirms the project is fit to proceed. This gating is what gives a public-sector project its auditable decision trail.
3. The artefacts. Each phase produces standard documents from a template library: the Project Charter and Business Case in Initiating; the Project Work Plan, schedule and management plans in Planning; the Risk Log, Issue Log, Decision Log and Change Log throughout. Because everyone uses the same artefacts, a reviewer or auditor moving between projects always knows where to look.
4. The mindsets. PM² closes with a set of mindsets — practical attitudes such as keeping the business case in view, applying the right level of governance, and being a good steward of public resources. They are the cultural glue that stops the templates from becoming box-ticking.
| Phase | Purpose | Key artefact |
|---|---|---|
| Initiating | Define the why: justify and frame the project | Project Charter, Business Case |
| Planning | Define the how, who and when | Project Work Plan + management plans |
| Executing | Produce the deliverables | Deliverables, status reports |
| Closing | Hand over, capture lessons, close formally | Project-End Report, lessons learned |
The EU angle is the whole point. PM² is the recommended methodology across the EU institutions and is promoted to member-state administrations through the open-source PM² Alliance and the EU's training programmes. It is designed to dovetail with EU public procurement and the Financial Regulation's demand for sound financial management, and it interoperates across Directorates-General so that a project spanning several DGs still has one coherent governance story. For genuinely iterative digital work, Agile PM² layers Scrum-style delivery on top of the same governance spine.
Common points of confusion
- PM² is not PMP/PMBOK, and it is not PRINCE2. It borrows the planning discipline of PMBOK and the governance and stage-gating of PRINCE2, but it is its own method with its own roles, phases and artefacts. Citing a PMBOK process group in a PM² question is a classic trap.
- "Open PM²" is not a different methodology. It is simply the freely published version of PM² (guide plus templates). The method is identical; "open" refers to the licensing and availability, not a lighter variant.
- PM² is phase-based by default, not Agile. Agile PM² is an extension for iterative delivery — the core lifecycle is still Initiating → Planning → Executing → Closing with gates. Treating PM² as inherently Agile misstates it.
Why it matters for EU project managers
For anyone delivering projects inside or for the EU institutions, PM² is the house standard — knowing its roles, gates and artefacts is the difference between a project that survives an audit and one that does not. For the EPSO/AD/429/26 Field 2 (ICT Project Management) competition it is foundational: expect scenario questions that hinge on who is accountable (PO versus PM), which phase gate applies, or which artefact captures a given decision. The exam tests whether you can apply the governance model, not whether you can recite it. Build that fluency with the full study pack: Prep for AD7 ICT Project Management on Prep4EU