Authorize Initiation in your PRINCE2 Project
The initiation stage is where the Project Initiation Documentation is assembled and created as well as planning and preparing for the next (second) stage. This may well represent a significant spend and resources as well as significant costs. It is therefore important that these activities should be planned, monitored and controlled. It is also where the authorize initiation activity takes place…
The activity ‘ authorize initiation’, is used by the project board to ensure that such investment is worthwhile. The project manager gives a request to initiate a project, and the project board must now make a decision whether or not to allow the project to proceed by using the authorize initiation activity.
This decision to authorize initiation can be made at a formal meeting, but as long as all of the project board members are in agreement, then the executive can advise the project manager to proceed with the initiation stage.
It is important that customer, user, and supply side of the project are involved in reviewing all draft documents as well as being involved in any discussions and contributing to the document creation where appropriate so that their views can be taken into consideration as part of the authorize initiation activity.
Where suppliers have yet to be appointed, it may be a good idea to have an individual who represents them, such as a purchasing manager (who would possibly be involved in negotiating and setting up any third party contracts) so that when authorize initiation takes place aspects such as supplier resources have been taken into consideration.
The project board is also responsible for providing project assurance and they may delegate this to other individuals, and it is these individuals that may undertake to carry out the reviewing and assessing the project brief and initiation stage plan as part of the authorize initiation activity.
Authorize initiation Actions
The actions that needs to take place in the activity’ authorize initiation’ are:
- Review the project brief including the project definition and project approach.
- Confirming the appointment of the project management team and ensuring that all members have agreed their roles.
- Review the Project Product Description and confirm that the customer’s quality expectations and acceptance criteria are satisfactory
- Ensure that the outline Business Case determines that the project is viable and worthwhile
- Review the plan for the initiation stage and ensure that the resources, risks, time-frame, tolerances, and reporting and control mechanisms are acceptable
All of the above needs to be approved by the project board using the authorize initiation activity, and stakeholders informed that the project is being initiated. The final action of the project board in this activity, is to authorize the project manager to proceed with implementing the initiation stage.
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