Initiation Stage in PRINCE2 7
The PRINCE2 Starting Up a Project process occurs pre-project. Before the initiation stage, its two management products, the Project Brief and Initiation Stage Plan, must be approved by the project board so that the initiation stage (the first stage of any PRINCE2 project) can start.
The Initiating a Project process is used during the initiation stage to assemble all of the information in the Project Initiation Documentation.
Therefore, the primary purpose of the initiation stage is to determine the work needed to deliver the project products and establish solid foundations for the project before committing to the significant spending of the stages that follow the initiation stage.
All stakeholders must be clear on what the project intends to achieve, why the project is needed, how the outcome will be completed and what the stakeholder responsibilities are so that a genuine commitment can be made to project delivery after the initiation stage.
The PID in the initiation stage
The Project Initiation Documentation will be presented to the project board via the Directing a Project process and its activity ‘authorizing a project’ for them to decide whether or not the project is sufficiently aligned with corporate or programme management objectives to authorize its continuation.
Therefore, the added value of the initiation stage is to avert the problem of proceeding directly into creating the specialist products before fully understanding how the project objectives will be achieved.
Without the information in the Initiation Documentation, the project board would be simply taking a leap of faith.
The Initiation Stage Plan created by the project manager within the Starting Up a Project process includes how the project board will review and approve the management products made during the initiation stage.
The initiation stage will ensure a common understanding of the reasons for doing the project, the expected benefits and risks associated with the project, and their responses.
In addition, this process will determine precisely the project’s scope, how the project’s products will be delivered when they will be provided, and at what cost.
This process will also determine who will be involved in making project decisions, how the required quality will be achieved, how baselines will be established and managed, how risks, issues and changes will be managed, the monitoring and controlling of progress and the project’s Communication Management Approach.
These are the main activities and critical PRINCE2 documentation within the Initiation Stage.
The PID Approaches
After the Project Board use the activity Authorize initiation, the initiating a project process is used within the initiation stage, and the main deliverable here is the PID itself.
The activities within this process echo the contents of the project initiation documentation. It makes sense to determine the various strategies needed within the project before detailed planning takes place.
The Risk Management Approach document is created in the initiation stage, and the Risk Register is set up to capture and manage any risks throughout the project. Any risks already on the Daily Log would now be transferred to the Risk Register. The Risk Management Approach defines how resources will be managed throughout the project.
The Quality Management Approach document is created in the initiation stage, and the Quality Register is set up. This register will typically be empty at this point, as this will contain the planned dates of all quality management activities for the creation of the specialist products, and such dates will be known once the second Stage Plan is created.
Planning Products during the initiation stage process
This second stage, which follows the initiation stage, is always the first delivery stage because this is the first stage (and possibly the final stage for small, simple projects) where specialist products are to be created.
The word specialist products refers to the type of project; for example, if the project end product is a new office building, then the specialist products would be, for example, the building frame itself, roof and walls, water and electricity services to be implemented, heating and lighting products, office equipment and so on.
These should be distinct from the PRINCE2 management products, such as the Project Brief, Project Initiation Documentation, and reports.
So, you can see that the Quality Register will have the actual dates of the quality-checking activities entered during a typical delivery stage.
It is worth mentioning that PRINCE2 only considers a specialist product complete once it has had an independent quality check and appropriate authorization. As part of the PRINCE2 product-based planning technique, a product description for each specialist product is written as part of planning for a particular delivery stage.
This Product Description will contain the method and the appropriate measurements required for the product to ensure it passes its quality check.
The Change Management Approach document is created in the initiation stage, and the Issue Register is set up. In PRINCE2, an issue can be advice of a new risk, a problem or concern, or a change. There are two types of changes: a change request, which typically comes from the customer, and a request for a change to what was initially agreed upon.
The second type of change is called an off-specification; typically, this would come from the supply side and covers some aspect of the project that, although agreed, cannot now be met.
Configuration management may be considered version control and, as such, is closely aligned with how change control (mentioned above) is to be implemented. Typically, configuration management will be supplied by the project support role and will be set up and agreed upon within the initiation stage.
The final strategy, the Communication Management Approach, is created last because the first three strategies will have communication needs, which can be included at this point. As you can see, all four approaches are HOW-TO documents and form part of the project initiation documentation, all created within the initiation stage.
The PRINCE2 Project Plan can now be created within the initiation stage and in parallel with setting up the various PRINCE2 controls and change controls needed throughout the project.
Typically, these controls focus on those needed at the project board level, for example, end-stage assessment timing and the frequency of their regular Highlight Reports, while at the project manager level, for instance, the formality or otherwise of issuing Work Packages and the frequency of the periodic Checkpoint Reports.
Highlight Reports cover progress within the management stage, and Checkpoint Reports cover the progress of specialist product creation within a Work Package.
The Communication Management Approach contains information on how Highlight Reports will be created and used. This document is also created in the initiation stage.
As with all plans, the PRINCE2 Project Plan is a document created in the initiation stage and will use the PRINCE2 product-based planning technique.
Traditional project planning would start with brainstorming the various activities. But one of the principles of PRINCE2 is product focus.
What this means is that the product-based planning technique starts with the identification of products, initially at the highest level within a project, by creating the Project Product Description, but then goes on to create a Product Breakdown Structure, which is a hierarchical diagram of the products within a given project. The PRINCE2 Project Plan is created within the initiation stage.
The next step would be to create Product Descriptions for all appropriate lower-level products, including their quality criteria. The final product-based planning step is to create a product flow diagram, which shows the sequence of product creation.
If you need clarification, an activity is generally described with a noun and verb, such as ‘create report’. In contrast, a product would be defined with a noun or outcome, for example, ‘specification document’.
Within PRINCE2, the following steps cover traditional planning techniques:
- Identifying the activities needed to create each product.
- Estimating such actions.
- Creating the schedule or sequence of such activities (usually shown as a network diagram or Gantt Chart view).
Then, we will identify risks and their associated response activities, and finally, we will add the plan document’s narrative.
Because of this, new Product Descriptions and their quality criteria will be created along with a Configuration Item Record (CIR) for each product. This record forms part of the data and the status for each product held within configuration management.
Also, at this point within the initiation stage, the Project Product Description needs to be further refined, for example, as better data is understood for the acceptance criteria of the project end product.
The detailed Business Case can now be developed using the refine the business case activity, using timescale and cost information derived from the Project Plan. This full Business Case is created in the initiation stage. It will be used throughout the project, particularly at the end of each management stage, where it is updated and used as a basis to proceed or otherwise by the project board.
A new management product is now created within the initiation stage and based on some information in the business case. It is called the Benefits Management Approach.
As the name suggests, this describes each future benefit, its timing, measurement, and the resources required to carry this out. The Benefits Management Approach is kept separate from the Project Initiation Documentation as it will be used after the project has finished to continue and track the remaining benefits until their eventual realization.
The above can now be assembled within the initiation stage, forming the Project Initiation Documentation. The project manager will now request that the project board authorize the project.
They will use this named activity within the Directing a Project process (DP), and this will always be the first end-stage assessment where the reporting stage end will be used within any PRINCE2 project (as the initiation stage is always the first management stage in a PRINCE2 project).
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