The PRINCE2 7 Progress Practice in A Nutshell – Part 1
At first glance the PRINCE2 Progress theme can seem cluttered and complex, but this is just an illusion as there are effectively just five elements that are covered here:
- Tolerances and exceptions
- Management Stages
- Time-driven controls
- Event-driven controls
- Progress reports
So, roll up your sleeves and lets you and I dive into each one in turn:
PRINCE2 7 Tolerances and exceptions
You may recall that PRINCE2 considers there are six main project objectives that need to be managed and the diagram below will remind you of those:
Got those? Good!
It just so happens that those six project objectives are the same six that we can set parameters for as measurable Tolerance limits:
PRINCE2 7 Cost and Time Tolerances
These are set for Project Plans, Stage Plans, Work Packages and if used, team plans.
Cost and time Tolerances can be expressed in absolute terms, for example plus £4,000, and minus £3,000, or relative terms, for example plus 5 percent and minus 15 percent.
PRINCE2 7 Quality Tolerances
These have an entirely different context for products. Tolerance settings for products can either be set within the Project Product Description, or the individual Product Descriptions.
An example here could be a product with a quality criterion that that it must not exceed 6 inches in diameter, nor must it weight more than 10 ounces, but have an allowable Tolerance of plus or minus an eighth of an inch for the former, and plus and minus one ounce for the latter (to use imperial metrics).
Cost, time and quality Tolerances are the most often used particularly on small projects.
PRINCE2 7 Benefits Tolerance
This is any allowable Tolerance around the forecast of benefits within the Business Case, and would need to be monitored and acted upon if such Tolerances were forecast to be exceeded during the project.
PRINCE2 7 Scope Tolerance
This would most obviously take the form of a prioritized acceptance criteria for the project product, that could also encompass some other allowable variation in a single or set of products to be delivered by the Project Plan, Stage Plan, or Work Package.
Use could be made here of the MoSCoW approach to prioritization namely – Must have, Should have, Could have, Won’t have for now.
PRINCE2 7 Risk Tolerance
Typically, this involves the project board setting a Risk Tolerance limits based on a composite numerical scale derived from multiplying impact by probability. This would result for each risk, a measure of Risk Severity, so that any risk with a severity value greater than that limits would take the project into exception.
Tolerances can also be traded off against each other, for example, if we had a project where it was vital to the Business Case that we meet the end date, we would almost certainly have a plus zero project time Tolerance. But taking the same case, we might well be allowed a greater cost or quality Tolerance and normal to help us meet that all important time target.
PRINCE2 7 Sustainability Tolerance
The permissible deviation in the sustainability performance targets that is allowed before the deviation needs to be escalated to the next level of management. Sustainability tolerance is documented in the business case.
Setting and delegating PRINCE2 Tolerances
The diagram below shows the four levels of the management structure.
On the left-hand side, we are examining the setting and delegating of primarily time and cost Tolerances.
Do not forget that Corporate or Program Management are the sponsors of a project and provide us with our project mandate. So, it is especially important if the mandate is a formal one because our project is part of a Programme, and it is easy to understand that the Programme Board will not only set the overall time and cost budgets for a project, but also any Tolerances that need to be set around those.
Consider also, where a verbal mandate is given to the Project Manager and it has no metrics in it at all.
In such a scenario, we would have to talk to users about what they really want, so that we can prepare at least a draft of the Project Product Description containing measurable acceptance criteria.
It is highly likely that the Project Manager is not a specialist subject matter expert, and so we would need to gather information from relevant suppliers about how much such a product might cost and how long it might take.
These metrics could then be built into the Outline Business Case, and possibly put some suggested project-level Tolerances around them. All of this would form part of the Project Brief which of course is given to the Project Board at the end of the PRINCE2 Starting Up a Project process.
The Project Board would not be able to agree such metrics at this point in the project because they would have to go back to Business management who, as the project sponsors, not only provide the budget but also set any project level Tolerances for time and cost.
Once Business Management have set the overall project level Tolerances that they wish the Project Board to work within, it is easy to see in the diagram above that the Project Board will then set the stage level Tolerances that they expect the Project Manager to work within.
That would then enable the Project Manager to set Work Package and Team Plan Tolerances that the specialist team who will be creating the specialist products, will need to work within.
Jump On Over To Grab Part 2 of the PRINCE2 7 Progress Practice HERE!
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