Building the PRINCE2 7 Work Package Specialist Products – Part 1
Within PRINCE2, the specialist products are created using the Managing Product Delivery process. Here, it is the Team Manager who’s responsible for ensuring that the specialist products described within each Work Package are created within the constraints laid down.
For the Team Manager, things are very simple in terms of the PRINCE2 method as there are just three activities:
- Accept a Work Package
- Execute a Work Package
- Deliver a Work Package
Managing Product Delivery
These are shown in the diagram below and how the Managing Product Delivery process interacts with the Project Manager within the Controlling a Stage process:
A Work Package has several Headings but the concept behind it is very straightforward.
It is an instruction pack from the Project Manager to a Team Manager asking them to build the deliverable, which PRINCE2 calls a product, or perhaps more than one product if it makes sense to develop them together. The Work Package defines what products are involved and sets down any constraints and requirements for the way the work is being done.
This includes the basic obvious things like the requirements for progress reporting.
The PRINCE2 Checkpoint Report
The Checkpoint Report is a regular report sent to the project manager to report the status on one or more work packages and their products. The work package is created by the project manager and amongst other information, states how regularly the Checkpoint Report is to be issued (It may be a meeting or a document.
Do not think of a Work Package as more documentation and bureaucracy, because if PRINCE2 if used properly, is not bureaucratic, and the Work Package is a very valuable document.
Here’s why.
If something must be built, someone must define what that “something” is and if things like progress reports are required, it makes sense to set down the content needed and specify the frequency required.
Work Packages contained sensitive information, but as always kept to the minimum in balance with exercising sufficient control. In a very small project with only one team, the Project Manager may also manage the team, and although you are using the Team Manager role and responsibilities, both the Project Manager and Team Manager roles are being filled by the same individual.
In such a case where just one person is filling both roles, then the interface between Controlling a Stage and Managing Product Delivery processes now becomes very informal.
If you can imagine for a moment that you the Project Manager, are giving yourself, the Team Manager, a Work Package, then the whole matter boils down to you agreeing what work needs to be done and managed next and simply capturing it within a Work Package.
The PRINCE2 Work Package – unpacked!
The content of the Work Package is logical as you can see from the diagram below, so I will just quickly run through each section of the Work Package here:
Date
This can either be the date on which the Project Manager and Team Manager agree the Work Package, or it may be the date on which the Project Manager issues a Work Package to the team for work to begin. It may be both dates stated here as they are all from different points in time.
Team or person authorized
This gives names of who will build the products contained within the Work Package and which team the Work Package is going to
Work Package description
This is an outline description of the product or products included within the Work Package.
Techniques, processes and procedures
This describes how we will build a product and in some types of project, organizations and industries, an approaches or standards may be important. Where the Work Package is being given to a third-party, you may wish to leave this section blank.
Development interfaces
The interface is mentioned here tends to be communication interfaces where the specialist team must keep in touch with another team. It may be that products being created within this Work Package are closely related to another product in a different Work Package.
So, the development interfaces will be of a communication nature, such as keeping information up to date regards progress, issues, problems, change requests, risks and so forth.
If the project is using agile or scrum approaches to the development of products, then it is permitted for the scope of a time box to change if it gets delivered at the agreed point. In such a case, in such scope changes need to be swiftly communicated to the other team.
Operations and maintenance interfaces
This sets out the direct fit and function between the products in this Work Package with other products. You may need to specify a procedural interface, data interfaces, electrical interfaces, or even physical interfaces with something must physically fit dimensionally with and of the product.
Use of the same metrics could be important here such as using imperial or metric dimensions.
Configuration management requirements
If the project is being carried out within one organization, then this section need only point to those responsible for configuration management. In such a case, the tools and techniques of configuration management will already be known throughout the organization and its projects.
However this section is of importance when the project involves teams from different organizations as such teams are likely to have different configuration management procedures and product identification systems.
How version control will operate in the project is set down within the configuration management strategy, and so again, the reader of this section needs only to be pointed towards that document with precise details and the approach will be recorded.
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