The PRINCE2 7 Progress Practice in A Nutshell – Part 3
PRINCE2 7 Management Stages
Stage boundaries are crucial decision points on a project and is used by the project board to assess whether we have the PRINCE2 Principle of Continued Business Justification.
Management Stages act as a form of “firebreak” to ensure that the project does not just carry on without anyone ever asking whether we should be carrying on.
Within a PRINCE2 Project, there must be a minimum of two stages – The initiation stage plus one delivery stage.
However, on larger projects, a decision about what stages to have will normally be driven by the nature of the specialist or technical work. As an example, you might need three further stages after initiation – one stage for initiation, another stage for design, and a further two for build and install.
How many stages do we need?
There are several factors that can influence the decision on how many Management Stages to be included on a project. These factors will need to be considered and decided upon during the Initiation Stage when creating the Project Plan document.
The factors that can influence are decision are:
- If any stage would be longer than say, three to six months, we might divide the project into more stages to ensure a sensible time horizon for detailed planning. The important thing here is to balance management overhead with the level of risk and let these factors help to make the decision
- If there was a major risk point on the project it would be sensible to make that a stage boundary so that we have an easy premature close point
- As an example, if we were going ahead with the risky project using say, leading edge technology, but some legislation was being discussed half-way through the design stage that if not passed would invalidate our Business Case, we would split that stage in two. In other words business factors would override technical ones when deciding how many stages to have
- In those periods of a project that a complex and risky we might choose to have more shorter stages, therefore more boundaries to keep tighter control, and we would probably tighten up a Tolerance for those stages as well
- Another aspect to consider here, is the emergence of agile and the use of that method to manage and run projects. Indeed, the author is currently creating a brand-new PRINCE2 7th Edition Masterclass course using the PRINCE2 Agile Method
One of the factors that need to be considered when using agile, is that it is quite normal practice that technical or specialist stages such as design and build do in fact overlap. This makes it even more important to acknowledge that Management Stages do not overlap.
This is because we must have definitive management stage boundaries at which point all products have been approved, so that they can act as clear points at which are progress to date can be used to forecast forward the rest of the project.
Consider what would happen if one or more major Work Packages overlapped a stage boundary, then we would have no clear idea of a progress at that point.
For this reason, it is vital that the technical stages are somehow divided up so that we still have clear management stage boundaries.
In an agile environment, the duration of each “sprint” is usually between one week and one month and this is likely to be too short for it to act effectively as a stage boundary. In such a situation, then some other rationale would have to be used in choosing Management Stages.
PRINCE2 7 Time-driven controls
There are only two time-driven controls in PRINCE2 – these are Checkpoint Reports and Highlight Reports. The term time-driven refers to the fact that these reports are produced at predefined intervals.
Such intervals are typically weekly and monthly – but be aware that this is not a fixed rule, in fact the formality and regularity of both Highlight and Checkpoint Reports is determined by the amount of risk and complexity of the stage and Work Packages respectively.
It is important to remember that we should not be having progress only meetings with the project board when we already produce Highlight Reports.
But if a Work Package happened to be a particularly high risk one, involving for example, a new external supplier and complex high technology products, a Checkpoint Report could take the form of a formal meeting which might be weekly.
But at a risky point within the project, this formal meeting could even occur daily.
As a way of contrast, if you are working directly with a single team member or a low risk, simple Work Package, you may want to keep it very informal and just get them to phone or e-mail you once a week on their progress. Such information could be noted within the Project Managers Daily Log.
Checkpoint Reports are good examples of how you need to tailor PRINCE2 – using simple common sense.
PRINCE2 7 Event Driven Controls
Apart from the two reports mentioned above, ALL the other controls in PRINCE2 are event-driven. The term event-driven means that they are triggered by non-periodic events.
The most obvious events that trigger various controls to come into play are a stage boundary or even the production of an Exception Report.
PRINCE2 7 Progress Reports
There are four progress reports within PRINCE2:
Checkpoint Reports
These are produced by the Team Managers During the process Managing Product Delivery and contain a summary of products worked on and/or completed since the last Checkpoint. The Checkpoint also contains a forecast of what is planned for the next reporting period, a tabular summary of the Work Package progress, and the Tolerance situation in terms of actual and forecast time and cost plus and updates on any major issues and risks.
Highlight Reports
These are produced by the Project Manager during the Controlling a Stage process and contain a summary of products and Work Packages that were issued and worked on, or completed, since the last Highlight Report was sent.
The Highlight Report also contains a forecast of what is planned for the next period, a tabular summary of the stage, and project progress and the Tolerance situation in terms of actual and forecast time and cost, along with an update on any major issues and risks.
End Stage Reports
These are produced by the Project Manager during the managing a stage boundary process.
An End Stage Report contains a summary of the stage and project progress, an update on the Tolerance situation in terms of actual and forecast time and cost, and an update on any major issues and risks.
End Project Report
This too is produced by the Project Manager but done during the PRINCE2 process Closing a Project.
The End Project Report contains a tabular summary of the project performance against the original objectives for time, cost, etc., the formal acceptance records, a lessons report, and details of any issues and risks that will need to be addressed after the project has closed.
The End Project Report will also contain any follow-on action recommendations for example any unfinished business that needs to be managed during operational life of the project end product, but was not appropriate to be done during the project.
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