Creating The PRINCE2 7 Project Product Description – Part 1
Let me cut to the chase here. The product or project product are things that are being produced in the project – in other words the deliverables.
The two categories of product in PRINCE2 are management products and specialist products. The management products are things like the Risk Register and Project Initiation Document that are being used to manage the project.
The specialist products are mostly what the team build, although if you may be obtained from outside the project. For specialist products, PRINCE2 incorporates a very powerful product-led planning technique.
The first time that the PRINCE2 Project Product Description makes an appearance is within the project brief that is created during the PRINCE2 Process “Starting up a Project “.
Starting from the very beginning, it is the Project Mandate that triggers the start of the PRINCE2 method. All of this happens pre-project.
The Project Mandate triggers the appointment of the project management team, the Daily Log, the Outline Business Case, and the Lessons Log – all of which lead to the creation of the PRINCE2 Project Product Description.
The customer quality expectations define what you need here for quality and gives an idea of the overall level for this particular project.
On one hand, the project may be safety critical where people’s lives depend on the quality of deliverables, and the quality related work, including quality planning, is considerable and rigorous.
On the other hand, the project may be “quick and dirty “And justifiably exempted from the normal minimum quality requirements in organizations projects.
Putting the PRINCE2 Project Product Description within in the Project Brief can be helpful in two ways:
First, some people find it hard to grasp all projects are them about, but if you could say clearly what the project will deliver, their needs in the understand.
Second, two people can talk about the same project idea but have very different ideas about what the final deliverable may be. In either or both cases, this section makes the outcome clear.
Producing the PRINCE2 7 Project Product Description
Be very clear, before the outline business case can be created, PRINCE2 actually requires something else before starting work on it. That is, to define what is the project is going to deliver. That definition is documented within the Project Product Description.
To make sense of this part you need to take on board that PRINCE2 focuses on project deliverables, or “products “.
It is also important that you do not confuse the PRINCE2 Project Product Description with regular product descriptions. These are created as part of the product based planning approach within PRINCE2.
Writing a product description for each deliverable or product is important to define what the product is, what quality criteria that must reach, and how it is to be tested to make sure that it does.
Contrasting with that, the Project Product Description although basically the same, is for the whole project and some of the content is slightly different.
Let me also be clear about the importance of the end-product acceptance method. History is littered with failed projects and wasted money based on arguments and litigation when it finally comes to the point to the customer must accept the end product.
Clearly, stating and agreeing the acceptance method upfront would have avoided all these problems – as would using the PRINCE2 product based planning approach.
The information contained within the PRINCE2 Project Product Description is sensible – but is intended to be tailored in any direction that makes sense to suit a specific project.
You can add extra sections in a more complicated project environment, or take some out of it if you do not need them. If you do need to add anything, to remember that you’re in the pre-project Starting Up a Project process at the moment and try to keep things simple as you can always adjust it a bit within the initiation stage when you do the full planning.
It is important to remember that all four of the strategy documents created within the initiation stage, that is, Risk, Quality, Configuration management, and Communication management approaches, are derived from the information contained within the project brief – and that includes the Project Product Description.
The project manager must consult with the Senior User and Project Board Executive in order to define what the project is to deliver, and create the Project Product Description. Although it is the project manager’s responsibility for creating the PRINCE2 Project Product Description, it should be reviewed by all members of the project board including the senior supplier and project assurance.
… to be continued …
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