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All Access Applying the PRINCE2 7th edition plans practice
PRINCE2 provides a flexible approach to apply the planning technique to a variety of projects.
Plan organizational context
Project planning is often influenced by organizational context, including policies, procedures, and support. For example, the project budget may need to be prepared according to procedures for handling capital investment expenditures.
Projects in governmental or other public organizations may need to comply with regulatory requirements and ensure transparency in record keeping. For projects that are part of a programme, the programme management team may take a major supporting role or even lead the planning for its projects.
The programme may have dedicated planners who can provide templates for management products and assist the project manager in preparing and maintaining the project plan and stage plans.
The number and length of stages will be influenced by the programme plan. It may be desirable or necessary to align stage reviews to programme milestones, for example, at the end of a tranche.
The programme may even define a set of standard stages with which all projects within the programme comply. The programme delivery plan will detail which of the project products are being used by other projects within the programme. Any such dependencies to or from the project should be incorporated into the project’s plans.
Plan commercial context
For projects in a commercial context, the role of suppliers is an important consideration. Many projects rely on external suppliers to deliver work packages.
This is one reason why it is useful to align work packages with their responsible suppliers, whether external or internal. However, when an external supplier is responsible for a work package, this arrangement may be reflected through a formal agreement such as a contract.
It is recommended to ensure that the agreement requires the supplier’s plans to provide clear traceability to the applicable elements of the user’s project plan.
The agreement should require alignment with the acceptance criteria and quality specifications approved by the project board. This approach is often referred to as a back-to-back agreement.
The agreement should state how these plans are to be produced and what rights of inspection and audit the user has. The supplier’s plan should have sufficient activities or milestones for the user’s project manager to maintain their plans.
Both the user’s and supplier’s plans may be confidential to the other party as they may contain other information, such as dependencies to or from other client projects or subcontractor costs. Therefore, it is beneficial to prepare non-confidential versions of the plan that can be shared while omitting private information.
Plans need to include procurement-related milestones such as purchase orders and milestone payments aligned with each stage.
Plan Delivery method
The PRINCE2 planning techniques can be applied in both linear-sequential and iterative-incremental projects.
For linear-sequential projects, most planning effort is applied upfront in the processes of starting up a project and initiating a project. This is because these projects are often characterized by well-understood products and mature delivery activities.
The example of similar projects helps establish the planning horizon and suggests the necessary products, work packages, and stages. Duration, level of effort, and costs can be estimated with a high level of confidence.
The estimates in the project plan is refined into stage plans, and team plans and product descriptions are further detailed in subsequent stages, but the project plan usually does not change unless there is a project-level exception.
On the other hand, iterative-incremental projects focus on how much can be produced over a fixed period (such as a sprint or a timebox). This is to deliver an initial product quickly and refine and improve it iteratively.
When an iterative-incremental approach such as agile is being used, a common planning approach would consist of:
- setting tolerances for each iteration that effectively fix time and cost and enable more flexibility in scope
- producing the project product description in terms of expected outcomes and benefits
- developing the user stories, epics, and product backlogs
- instead of product descriptions determining the length of releases or timeboxes and defining these as stages estimating the resource requirements for each stage and preparing the project budget
- combining the product backlog and workflow in a collaborative planning tool, such as a Kanban board. A Kanban board may be used instead of a team plan and is developed as a joint effort by the whole development team.
- The iterative-incremental approach lends itself to the review and update of the plan as part of each cycle, just as in the preparation of stage plans in a linear project. However, it reflects the updates in a collaborative planning tool.
Plan Sustainability
Plans can address sustainability in at least three different ways:
product sustainability: in identifying and describing the required products, it is useful to determine the environmental impact of the product through its full lifecycle, including disposal where appropriate.
delivery sustainability: projects often face choices in planning work packages and stages that can affect the climate impacts of the delivery activities. Agreeing to sustainability tolerances is an effective way in which the project manager and project board can keep things like fuel consumption and production wastes aligned with the organizational strategy.
benefits sustainability: projects often deliver benefits long after they have been closed. Projects also sometimes fail to achieve the expected benefits because there are only limited means to sustain these benefits.
For example, ongoing training and user support are not considered when defining the project’s scope. An effective way to avoid this problem is by identifying requirements to ensure benefits sustainability.
Plan Scale
The PRINCE2 planning technique supports a wide range of projects. Although product-based planning always applies, the level of effort involved in planning can easily be scaled up or down based on the characteristics and needs of the project.
Aspects of project scale that affect planning include:
duration: the longer a project’s lifecycle, the more likely that project plans will need to adapt to changes in both the external environment and internal project delivery activities. Duration should be considered in organizing work packages and stages, as well as in estimating the change budget. In addition, multi-year projects will likely see changes in the project team, including key roles such as the project manager. Project plans should be prepared to aid orientation, and continuity, and reduce the impact of turnover.
size of the project team: large and dispersed project teams will generally need more project support and benefit from easily accessible project planning and reporting tools and documentation.
complexity: projects with a small number of products and work packages can be planned with relatively simple documents and tools. For example, the project schedule could be a list of major milestones or a presentation slide. However, as the number of products and work packages increases, the use of specialized tools such as a project scheduling application will make it much easier to analyse and incorporate changes.
novelty: if the products or delivery method are new to an organization, it may be difficult to rely on experience or similar projects to capture requirements or estimate schedule and costs. Therefore, plans incorporate a high degree of uncertainty and the use of risk mitigating techniques (such as prototyping) or an iterative incremental approach may be justified.
cost: project planning is one of the most prudent ways to reduce the risk of project failure. Therefore, it is sensible to ensure that the level of effort in project planning is in line with the overall cost of the project. The cost of project planning and support will depend on the importance and complexity of the project. In some cases, it could be ten per cent or more of the overall cost of the project.
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