PRINCE2 7 Study Guide – Part 4
The Project Plan can now be created in parallel with setting up the various controls there will be needed throughout the project. These controls focus on those needed at project board level for example end stage assessment timing, and the frequency of their regular Highlight Reports, while at project manager level for example, the formality or otherwise of issuing Work Packages and the frequency of the regular Checkpoint Reports.
Highlight Reports cover progress within the management stage, and Checkpoint Reports cover the progress of specialist product creation within a Work Package.
As with all plans, the Project Plan is a document and will use the PRINCE2 product-based planning technique.
Product-based planning
Traditional project planning would start with the brainstorming of the various activities. But one of the principles of PRINCE2 is product focus.
What this means is that the product based planning technique starts with the identification of products, initially at the highest level within a project, by creating the Project Product Description, but then going on to create a Product Breakdown Structure which is a hierarchical diagram of the products within a given project.
The next step would be to create Product Descriptions for all appropriate lower level products, including their quality criteria. The final product based planning step is to create a Product Flow Diagram, which shows the sequence of creation of the products.
In case you are confused, an activity would normally be described with a noun and verb such as ‘create report’, whereas a product would be described with a noun or outcome for example ‘specification document’.
Within PRINCE2, the next steps cover traditional planning techniques, first identifying the activities needed to create each product, then estimating such activities, creating the schedule or sequence of such activities (usually shown as a network diagram or Gantt Chart view).
Then going on to identify risks, their associated response activities, and finally adding the narrative of the plan document.
Because of this, new Product Descriptions along with their quality criteria will be created along with (optionally) a Configuration Item Record (CIR) for each product. This record forms part of the data and the status for each product held within configuration management.
Also at this point the Project Product Description may now needs to be further refined, for example, as better data is understood for the acceptance criteria of the project end-product.
The detailed Business Case can now be developed as it will use timescale and cost information derived from the Project Plan. This detailed Business Case will be used throughout the project at the end of each management stage where it is updated and used as a basis to proceed or otherwise by the project board.
A new management product is now created based upon some information contained within the business case, and it is called the Benefits Management Approach.
As the name suggests, this contains a description of each future benefit, its timing, measurement, and the resources required to carry this out. This will be updated if needed at the end of each stage and the project itself.
All the above can now be assembled and forms the Project Initiation Documentation. The project manager will now request that the project board authorize the project.
They will use this named activity within the Directing a Project process (DP), and this will always be the first end stage assessment within any PRINCE2 project (as the initiation stage is always the first management stage in a PRINCE2 project).
As previously mentioned there is another important document that the Project Manager needs to create, and it is called the Benefits Management Approach. This document sets out how and when the project will be reviewed regarding the stated benefits.
Such benefits may not come on-stream until some time off to the project has completed. The Benefits Management Approach will also call out what resources are needed to carry out the measurement work of these benefits.
The Benefits Management Approach is kept separate from the Project Initiation Documentation as it will likely be used after the project has finished to continue and track the remaining benefits until their eventual realization.
PRINCE2® 7 Foundation and Practitioner
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