PRINCE2 7 Plan – Exam Essentials
The PRINCE2 7 Plan Management Product
In the PRINCE2 method, there is only one management template to cover all the plans, whether you wish to create a project plan, a stage plan, an exception plan, or a team plan. These all use the standard plan management product – or template if you will.
PRINCE2 recognizes that the team plan content and structure needs to be much more flexible and in this regard, the PRINCE2 method says that the use of the standard management plan template is not mandatory.
Of course, it may also be that the team plan is being created by a third party and that the team manager role is being filled by their project manager. In such a case, it is quite reasonable that the third party will use their own template or planning standards.
And being used on simple projects, the team plan may just the company a work package, and as such, it may just consist of a simple list of products, activities, and key dates.
Remaining with a team plan, PRINCE2 expects that this may be created in parallel with the project manager creating the next stage plan, and once the next stage is authorized, and the time has come to carry out the work packages contained within a given team plan, it is at that point that the plan is agreed, usually quickly, with the team manager.
A PRINCE2 plan will indicate the work needed to create and deliver the project’s products, what resources and people are needed, and when the work will be carried out. In addition, it also describes the products that are to be delivered.
Each plan will use the PRINCE2 product-based planning technique. The plan will also show the activities needed to create the products as well as the supported activities such as quality control and general management to check that the product is fit for purpose.
Other activities contained within the plan will cover the supporting activities such as controlling and monitoring, and these include capturing actual information, comparing this with the plan, determining the variances, and carrying out any corrective action.
Also, included in the plan are activities to come a configuration management to track the status of the products, and risk and issue management.
The early sections of a PRINCE2 plan contain details such as assumptions being made, prerequisites that must be kept in place before the plan starts, and the product descriptions for the products within the scope of that plan.
The composition of a PRINCE2 Plan
The purpose of the plan is to provide a proposal that outlines the what, where, when, how, and by
whom the project as a whole (or a subset of its activities) will be performed. When approved, a plan
provides a baseline against which progress can be measured and issues assessed.
Scope: description of the plan’s scope (project, stage, team, and exception)
Dependencies: external products or activities on which the plan depends
Planning assumptions and prerequisites: assumptions on which the plan is based and any
fundamental aspects that must be established or remain in place for the plan to succeed
Lessons incorporated: details of relevant lessons from previous similar projects, which have been
reviewed and accommodated within this plan
Products to be delivered: the product breakdown structure, product flow diagram, and product
descriptions that fall within the scope of the plan
Work to be performed: the work in the scope of the plan shown by way of a work breakdown
structure and the associated work package description(s)
Budget: the project costs, including the risk budget and change budget
Schedule: a representation of the project stages and activities, their durations, and sequence, such
as a Gantt chart
Targets and tolerances: the performance targets and the permissible deviations for scope, cost, and time at the level of the plan. Stage plans and team plans may also include sustainability and risk tolerances
Monitoring, control, and reporting arrangements: description of how the project will be monitored and controlled and of reporting procedures and responsibilities.
I will now describe each of the above sections in detail and will use a fictitious scenario based on you adding an extension to your home.
PRINCE2 Plan Description
This should give the reader an idea of what the work in this plan covers and what type of plan this is, for example, a stage plan. The plan description should clarify the scope of the work entitled and an example is:
“This plan covers the Project work to build, decorate and furnish an extension to my house. The work within the plan will cover the installation of all electrical and plumbing activities, decorating the extension and installing bathroom facilities plus furniture and fittings”
Plan prerequisites
The definition of a prerequisite is something that must be in place before the work of the plan can begin, and must remain in place for the plan to be successful.
As an example, a prerequisite for the house extension is that the health and safety officer has signed off on the safety of the extension and that it is being designed for human habitation.
Beware of any prerequisite statements that either don’t stop the project from starting or are just delayed.
A true prerequisite would stop any work from starting and completing.
External dependencies
The definition of an external dependency is a product that will be needed for the work described within the plan, but will be created outside the scope of the plan.
To clarify this, of the project manager will not delegate work to anyone to create an external dependency as another group or project would be creating the external dependency product.
It might also be a dependency even if the product already exists. In such a case, the dependency would be the availability of such a product.
In the example of my house extension, an external dependency might be tender responses from potential builders or the availability of an accredited gas fitter to install the main heat source of the extension.
The dependency product in the latter example above would be called “installed gas fire”.
External dependencies can also be activities that are being done outside the scope of the plan, but need to be done to carry out some of the activities of the plan. An example here might be clearing the site before the foundations of the extension are laid.
Planning assumptions
Planning assumptions are those that have been made when forecasting for work in the plan. As an example, for the house extension project, an assumption might be that the gas fitter mentioned above is not overbooked and is available at the right time to install the gas fire without delaying the project.
Lessons incorporated
This section describes any previous relevant experience that has been considered when porting the plan together.
In the case of the house extension, lead us as you that this is not the first extension to a property that the owner as had carried out, and that he learned you should apply for planning permission at least three months before work is to start to reduce the risk of delays.
Monitoring and control
The old saying “those who fail to plan, plan to fail” is true here. Also, that “you can´t control what you can’t measure” The plan acts as a reference point to continually compare the actual progress against the plan progress so that the project manager can quickly tell if the work is behind schedule.
If that is the case, then the project manager will need to take corrective action to bring the project back on track.
There are many examples of what type of information statements should be included under the heading of monitoring and control – and here are a few of them to help you understand:
- Review the stage plan at the end of each diary to compare for cost work against actual work
- Request a product status account from project support to track the progress of the stage products
- Produce a Highlight Report every two weeks and send it to the project board and any other recipients as detailed within the Communication Management Strategy document (this forms part of the Project Initiation Documentation (PID)
- Instruct all teams in their work packages to produce a weekly checkpoint report and that the report should be sent to the project manager to track their progress
Budgets
There are four potential Sets of monetary information that may be included within this section:
- The amount of money budgeted for the planned work
- The amount of time budgeted for the plans work
- The amount of money set aside to fund changes to the plans products or scope. This is called a change budget
- The amount of money set aside to fund countermeasures to deal with risks. this is called the risk budget
Tolerances
This describes the plan’s time, cost, and scope tolerances.
Tolerances are usually given as a plus and minus deviation from Any or all the three tolerances mentioned above.
The use of tolerances within the plan is important, and this relies upon those setting the tolerances, that rely on following the PRINCE2 Method. Too often management just claims plus or minus 10% on time and cost just as a habit rather than something carefully thought through.
After all, the main purpose of tolerance is to give an area of deviation that those setting a tolerance are content to accept at the same time giving some leeway to those managing the plan in allowing reasonable deviations without having to alert and bother the next management level.
Product Descriptions
I will remind you here, that PRINCE2 assumes the use of its product-based planning technique – and quite right too, as this is a very powerful planning approach.
A product-based planning approach ensures that the project management team is very clear about what products will be created before they start to plan what activities and resources are needed.
As part of product-based planning, PRINCE2 Plans also contain a product description for each product that will be delivered within the scope of the plan.
Each product description contains detailed and measurable specifications for a product together with a description of how the specifications will be checked and who should be responsible for signing off on each product.
This section within the plan may also contain any product descriptions for products that are external dependencies for this plan.
Knowing exactly what the definition is for such products, even though the project is not responsible for creating them, can be very helpful in managing the smooth introduction of such products back into the project.
Using the home extension example, an external Product Description could be the design criteria for a fitted kitchen within the extension.
Schedule
This describes why activities are needed to deliver the products described as per the preceding section. It will also show the sequence of those activities, what resources will be needed, which people or other resources are needed to carry out the tasks, and what dates the different tasks are forecast to start and finish.
The schedule could be displayed in a variety of formats such as a Gantt chart, a calendar, or simply a list of tasks with dates with people’s names next to them.
PRINCE2 does have a management product that is extremely powerful both for this section of the plan, and as a tool for managing and forecasting project progress.
It is called the Product Checklist.
The product checklist shows a list of the products to be delivered within the scope of the plan together with relevant key status dates for each product. These could include the forecast delivery date, actual delivery date, and cost approval dates.
In addition, the product checklist could include other key dates such as testing or quality checking.
The remaining steps of the content of a PRINCE2 plan relate to the product-based planning technique and I will elaborate on that in another article.
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