PRINCE2 7 Study Guide – Part 3
It is the Directing a Project process, covering the work of the Project Board, in which the first decision of “authorize initiation” is made. If the Project Board are happy with the content of the Project Brief and the initiation Stage Plan, then the first stage of any PRINCE2 project, the initiation stage, can begin.
The initiating a project process is used within the initiation management stage and the main deliverable here is the PID itself.
The activities within this process echo the contents of the Project Initiation Documentation. It makes sense to first determine the various strategies needed within the project be for detailed planning takes place.
The Project Initiation Documentation
The process “Initiating a Project” is used within the initiation stage to assemble the Project Initiation Documentation (PID). It is the Project Manager who is responsible for creating the PID. This important key document is created by expanding and refining the information contained within the Project Brief.
As its name suggests, the PID is a collection of documents, and contains the following information:
- The Project Plan describing the major products and activities including the resources required to create them. It also includes how the project will be divided into management stages.
The Project Plan can be high level because more detailed planning can be left until just before a stage is authorized. This lower level of detail is contained within the PRINCE2 Stage Plan - A set of four Approach documents that sets out how the project will be managed about risk, change, quality, and communication
- The detailed Business Case
- Information on the project management team
- Information regarding how the project will be delivered. This is called the Project Approach
- A project definition that gives information on the background to the project, the project’s objectives, and the project’s scope
- Information on how the project will be controlled including how to monitor project progress and what reports are required
- Information on how the PRINCE2 method will be tailored for this project
The Risk Management Approach document is created and the Risk Register is set up to capture and manage any risks throughout the project. Any risks which exist already on the Daily Log would now be transferred to the Risk Register. The Risk Management Approach defines how resource will be managed throughout the project.
The Quality Management Approach
The Quality Management Approach document is created and the Quality Register is set up. This register will typically be empty at this point, as this will contain the planned dates of all quality management activities for the creation of the specialist products, and such dates will not be known until the second Stage Plan is created.
This second stage is always the first delivery stage, so-called because this is the first stage (and possibly also the final stage for small simple projects) where specialist products are to be created.
The word specialist products refer to the type of project, for example if the project end-product is a new office building, then the specialist products would be for example, the building frame itself, roof and walls, water and electricity services to be implemented, heating and lighting products, office equipment and so on.
These should not be confused with the PRINCE2 7 management products such as the Project Brief, Project Initiation Documentation, reports, and so on.
So, you can see that the Quality Register will have the actual dates of the quality checking activities entered during a typical delivery stage.
It is worth mentioning that PRINCE2 7 does not consider a specialist product as complete, until it has had an independent quality check and an appropriate authorization. As part of the PRINCE2 product based planning technique, a product description for each specialist product is written as part of planning for a specific stage.
This Product Description will contain the method and the appropriate measurements required for the product to have ensure the pass its quality check.
The Issues Management Approach
The Issues Management Approach document is created, and the Issue Register is set up. In PRINCE2, an issue can be advice of a new risk, a problem or concern, or a change.
There are two types of changes: a request for change which typically comes from the customer and it is a request for a change to what was originally agreed. The second type of change is called an off-specification; typically, this would come from the supply side and covers some aspect of the project that although agreed, cannot now be met.
However, in addition, there are three types of Issue:
- A problem or a concern
- An external project event
- A business opportunity
Configuration management may be thought of as version control and as such is closely aligned with how change control (mentioned above) is to be implemented. Typically, configuration management will be supplied by the project support role.
The final approach is the Communication Management Approach, and is created last because the first three strategies will have communication needs and these can be included at this point. As you can see, all four of the approaches are “how-to” documents.
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