PRINCE2 Issues Management – Part 6
Reporting a PRINCE2 Exception
Any given issue may cause stage or project tolerances to be forecast to be exceeded. As the project manager, if you have determined that no matter what action you take within your authority, you cannot adjust the running of the stage to finish within the limits of the tolerance, you must report this to the Project Board immediately.
The stage is now “in exception “.
The only action you should now be taking is to investigate the size of the problem and the scope of the actions and produce an exception report. The structure of the exception report was laid down within the communications management approach document.
It is important to realise that the exception report is not necessarily a document that may be a meeting, a phone call or an e-mail. Whichever makes most sense.
It is also worthwhile mentioning common sense. If the forecast deviation the tolerance is relatively small, then I would recommend immediately contacting the Project Board and discuss this with them verbally. Of course, first, you would want to think through what actions you would take and at that swift meeting get their buy-in to proceed.
It may be that the actions that you can take to bring the stage back within tolerance may have other impacts such as Business Case impact.
So, whenever an exception occurs, the project manager recommends how it should be dealt with, but it is the Project Board that must decide how it will be dealt with.
Concerning issues, and as part of assembling an Exception report, you would want to check out the Issue Register to determine the latest progress of this or any other issues being currently managed under formal control, and if it has already been created, the formal Issue Report itself.
The PRINCE2 7 Lessons Report
It is worth spending a moment considering the Lessons Report, which after all should be created at the end of each stage and at the end of the project. However, this is the minimum, and frankly, a Lessons Report can be created at any point during the project.
About issues and their inclusion within a lesson report, you should consider any statistics such as trends. The statistics may be helpful with resourcing similar future projects or future stages.
When detailing an issue within the Lessons Report, the following areas should be considered:
- What specific event led to the lesson – Or perhaps it was a constraint
- Did the issue lead to a good or bad impact? Do not forget that an issue may be a good idea rather than a problem or concern
- Lay down exactly what triggered the event that led to the issue and the lesson that was learned
- Were there any early warning indicators or signs that this issue was about to emerge
- What actions were taken to resolve or minimize the issue and what might be recommended if this occurred again?
I mentioned earlier that issues and risks were related, and it is here that you should mention whether the trigger event had been previously identified as a risk – either as a threat or an opportunity.
The Issue Register and follow on action recommendations
I do want to briefly mention that as the project comes to a close, you will be using the closing a project process. As part of that, you will want to close down the Issue Register.
Follow-on action recommendations are what the Project Board recommended for the organization to do after the project has finished.
But you may carry some entries forward into follow-on action recommendations, an example here is a good idea That you would recommend the organization to do after the end of the project.
Want To Pass YOUR PRINCE2 Foundation Exam and Practitioner Exam At First Try? Go HERE!
