PRINCE2 Issues Management Masterclass – Part 5
The PRINCE2 Highlight Report
The Highlight Report is not supposed to be a huge complex report. Rather, it should be straightforward and at the right level of detail suitable for the Project Board to absorb quickly.
The Highlight Report is an important progress reports that the Project Board will find vitally important during the stage as they are managing by exception. I make the point again that the highlight report should be simple and take not much more than an hour of the project manager’s time to create.
You will be aware of the social change that has occurred due to the proliferation of faster Internet connections and smart phones. We have all become skimmers rather than readers. We want to view information that is relevant and concise. The Project Board are no different. So do not create complicated and time-consuming reports because the Project Board may never read because of their complexity. They will not thank you for booking the hours that you rack up while creating long and complex reports either.
One particular section of the Highlight Report is called “Key issues and risks “.
Be careful not to go into too much detail here, the Project Board do not need to know that you are capable of dealing with the issue, only that you are bringing it to their attention and that you are currently managing it.
As an example, going into glorious detail about the technical matter that is being resolved within the specialist team may not be appropriate here.
Never forget that the Project Board are using the PRINCE2 Principal of management by exception.
This means that they assume the project manager has everything in hand unless it is escalated formally or informally to them . In this way, their regular highlight report should be for information only, and not alerting them to some crisis that they are not yet aware of.
The message here is to include key issues within the highlight report of significant Issues only, not a mass of routine detail.
When an issue needs stage correction
If the stage is going off track, then the project manager needs to react with actions that bring it back on track.
The project manager will first learn of such a deviation from the plan when checking the status of the stage. It is important to check with regard to issues, where you are in order to see if you have the capacity to absorb the issue impact of any action, or whether you need to escalate the matter to the Project Board.
The activity you would use there is called “Review the stage status “and it is used to carry out a thorough check on the progress of the whole stage, including any forecasts, to see whether or not you are still likely to finish the stage within its tolerance limits.
The stage tolerances were set down by the Project Board at the beginning of the stage.
Just for completeness, do remember there is another activity within the Controlling a Stage process called “Review work package status “. Although this too Provides a progress check, but it is only done for each work package, and don’t forget you may have several work packages to completed during a stage, and often to or more of them may be executed in parallel.
The relationship between issues and risks
I have already given you a simple definition of an issue and of a risk, and they are clearly different. But did you know that one can cause the other?
If someone raises an issue, as part of carrying out issue analysis you may determine that this particular issue has an impact on one or more risks. The issue could make a risk more likely or less likely, the impact greater or less , or the impact areas may now be different .
It works that way when managing the risk too. When carrying out risk analysis a new or modified issue may be discovered. Also, as part of resolving A risk, you may only be able to minimize its impact rather than remove it completely. This remaining impact that for now, you can do nothing about, In and of itself could give rise to a new issue.
The PRINCE2 Business Case
When managing the details within a stage, it is easy to forget that any issue that is being analysed may have an impact on the Business Case. I’m not just talking about benefits here, but also other aspects of the Business Case such as risks, constraints, timescales and cost.
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