Creating the PRINCE2 plan document
Okay, so you have followed the four steps Of the PRINCE2 Product Based planning technique – Now what?
Plans are not diagrams – They are documents, either print-based or electronic.
It’s time to move on to activity planning.
Using each product as a starting point, you will now decide what activities you need to build it. You will want to liaise with other people such as suppliers, team specialist and team managers to brainstorm the various tasks or activities.
But beware of being too simplistic. If you have a product called “Coffee machine “, avoid just adding an activity called “Build the coffee machine” It is rarely as simple as that.
Typically, each product will need several activities to be carried out in sequence and/or parallel, and these should include Activities such as design, Build, test, and the all-important product approval task.
Help – I need to estimate!
Yes, I’m afraid so, the PRINCE2 Method Does require you to carry out estimation. You will need to estimate resources, work Efforts, duration and risk activities.
Estimating is probably one of the hardest parts of project planning, and unfortunately, the PRINCE2Official Manual only mentions it in Passing by listing a few techniques.
My intention here is not to take you through Detailed estimating techniques as I have created articles on that topic elsewhere on this website.
But I will give you a brief overview:
There are two basic approaches, Top-down estimating which you can do across the whole project, and the more detailed Bottom-Up approach, when you have the detailed activities in stage planning and can estimate one and adding together to get a total
Most estimating will be based on historic data and people’s experience of similar activities that have been carried out before. Beware of using experts to produce such estimates, and then pushing less experienced specialists to carry out the work.
The reasons for this all of us, in that the novice specialists will tend to make mistakes, where the rework consumes more time and effort, and because they are novice, it will take them more time to carry out the work in the first place.
I have a question for you.
Does your organization store historic information on such activities?
If it does not, you are not alone, many organizations are bad at storing historic information.
Probably an exception to this, is the civil engineering or construction industry – whose architects have been diligent in storing such data.
My most powerful advice here, is always to start by estimating the work effort needed on each activity, and only then consider what resources are needed, and available, before estimating the task duration.
In fact, I would go further. You never estimate task duration, as the duration is merely a consequence of the resources available and the work effort required.
Which brings me nicely to the next step.
PRINCE2 Scheduling and Resourcing
This topic has a high degree of iteration with estimating.
Consider a typical task or activity.
It has at least four potential variables:
- The work effort
- The resources available
- The knowledge skills and experience of human resources
- The task duration
If you took my advice Above, and all was started with the work effort, you will want to record that amount against each task.
Why?
Because before you can get even close to creating a Schedule, you will need to establish exactly what resources are available. You will remember this old chestnut:
“If it takes five men to dig a hole in one day, how many hours will it take eight men”
I just made those numbers up of course, but you will instinctively see that it is not just a case of extrapolation.
Can eight men fit in the hold at once to dig it?
Will the number of men slow down the digging process because of limited space?
Do all eight men Have the same level of skills and fitness?
Nevertheless, you do need to come up with a set of resources, both human and nonhuman, from that, estimate the task duration, and the cost involved.
You will need to arrange the tasks in a network diagram and a Gantt chart. This will give you the sequence, the critical path information, Start and finish dates for the activities, And the earliest finish time of the project.
Again, I have described the critical path and resource levelling in detail elsewhere on this website, and so I will not go into detail to gain here.
It is worth mentioning however, that resolving resource conflicts by techniques such as resource leveling and resource smoothing will also need to be carried out.
PRINCE2 Risk Activity estimates
When Identifying and analyzing risks, you will want to follow the PRINCE2 Approach when choosing risk actions.
While thinking through project risk, you will want to consider both external or business risks, as well as those internal to the project.
Project risk may include things like multiple points in the project where you need advice on legal matters, and that the advice may take time to arrive and some delay the project.
After adding resources, you may notice that project staff are needed within a confined timeframe.
This is where leveling and smoothing will be needed – Almost certainly causing some delays.
It is quite normal for risks to be identified during task estimation. This should be encouraged, as it can Discover risks that may not have been Identified.
It also encourages those who are estimating to think through strategies for reducing or removing the risks.
The PRINCE2 Plan Text
The last thing to do with the plan is to add textural Explanation. This may include other elements that the project requires such as a finance plan.
Do remember the audience who will read the plan, and some of these individuals may not have a technical background, yet need to understand the information within the plan.
Such individuals may be members of the project board or operational managers who need to provide resources for the project.
PRINCE2 Finance Demystified
It is strange that the PRINCE2 Manual mentions little about financial planning
I have created a brand new “Finance Demystified” Video Masterclass called “Finance for non-financial Professionals”
At time of writing, it is a few weeks away from launch. I Anticipate many of your colleagues will want to get their hands on it – Probably because financial and business and knowledge is the Fastest Way To gain promotion and salary increase!
However, you will want to draw up a budget for the project and then monitor project spending and compare it with that budget.
Most people use a spreadsheet for the budget as this allows you to show the cost to governance of the plan, the actual costs you have so far, and the variance between planned and actual costs involved.
Another option is to use a planning tool such as Microsoft project – If you want to Fast-track your expertise on this bleeding edge planning and control tool, then check out this article HERE!
I do not intend to go into details of the three levels of planning within a PRINCE2 Project, but it is worth reminding you that the contents of this article apply equally at project plan, stage plan and team plan levels.
If you want to FastTrack your PRINCE2 Career and Become a PRINCE2 Practitioner at your first try, then check out my PRINCE2 Masterclass HERE!
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