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PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam Principles and Themes 

 September 5, 2020

By  Dave Litten

Dave Litten Prince2 Coach
[ Ceo &Amp; Prince2 Trainer ]
Dave Litten – PRINCE2 Practitioner

Following my first blog about the PRINCE2 Principles and how understanding these will help you breeze through your PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam lets look at Principles in more detail. I hope this makes sense and makes it easy for you to Read.

Absorb.

Apply.

Pass.

Dave Litten

PRINCE2 Principles and the Plans Theme

The plans theme helps to implement all seven principles. The plans should clearly show how to create the products that will be used to deliver the outcomes and benefits forecast in the business case, so the first principle that the plans theme helps to implement is the continued business justification principle. A key concept of planning is always to consider any useful experience that might improve the plans, which helps to implement the principle of learn from experience. A minimum requirement of the plans theme is that the project team is clear on who will take on the various planning responsibilities, which helps to implement the principle of defined roles and responsibilities. 

The project is broken up into a number of management stages; the project manager creates a plan for each stage; and the project board authorises a stage at a time – all of which help to implement the principle of managed by stages. The last three principles are also all implemented in many way by the plans theme. If the project gets into an exception situation, the project board might request that the project manager creates an exception plan to show how to recover from the exception. This helps to implement the principle of managed by exception. Product based planning helps to implement the principle of focus on products. Finally, the plans theme can be adapted to work in different situations – such as an agile project or a project operating within a programme – which helps to implement the principle of tailor to suit the project. 

PRINCE2 Principles and the Quality Theme

In many ways, all seven principles contribute to implementing the quality theme; however, the three principles that are most important are focus on products, defined roles and responsibilities, and learn from experience. Throughout the project, the project management team is focused on products. They create a project product description and product descriptions to clearly define what will be created, and then use these management products to verify and review that the correct outputs have been created. The quality management approach will define who is doing what about quality activities so that the defined roles and responsibilities principle is implemented. This principle is also implemented by the creation of product descriptions, as they state which people will be involved with reviewing, producing, and approving the products. Throughout the process model, PRINCE2 advocates learning from experience to ensure that the activities of quality planning, quality assurance, and quality control are carried out in the best possible way. Quality control also involves eliminating causes of unsatisfactory performance, so it could include looking at the process is used to manage the project and seeing if they could be improved. 

PRINCE2 Principles and the Risk Theme

In many ways, all seven principles contribute to implementing the risk theme; however, the three most important principles are the continuous business justification, defined roles and responsibilities, and learn from experience. PRINCE2 sees a strong connection between the risk theme and the continued business justification principle. This is because every project is an investment for the commissioning organisation. When making an investment, one of the key things would be to consider any risks and hence uncertainty. Given the amount of risk involved the decision might be made to invest with the project in another area. So just as when we invest in shares, when an organisation invests in a project, they want to ensure that risk is managed as effectively as possible. In PRINCE2 terms, we say that effective risk management is a prerequisite to help implement the principle of continued business justification.

It is more straight forward to see the link between the risk theme and the principles of defined roles and responsibilities and learn from experience. To do effective risk management, it needs to be clear who is doing what with regards to risk. The project management team will find using prior experience makes any risk management approach more effective. For example, when trying to spot new risks, rather than starting with a blank sheet of paper, you could look back at previous risk registers from similar projects in the past. 

PRINCE2 Principles and the Change Theme

In many ways, all of the seven principles contribute to implementing the change theme; however, the four principles that are most important to this particular theme are: 

  • continued business justification
  • defined roles and responsibilities
  • learn from experience
  • focus on products

During the controlling a stage process, the project manager must carry out an impact analysis on each issue that arises.

The most important impact to consider is how the issue might affect the business rationale for the project. Therefore, the change theme helps continually review the business justification for the project.

The change control approach must describe, at a minimum, the roles and responsibilities that are associated with managing issues and changes, such as who must capture an issue, who must be involved in assessing issues, and who can authorise different levels of issues.

In this way, the change theme helps to implement the defined roles and responsibilities principle.

The project management team must also consider any useful experience that would help them identify and/or manage issues. This helps to implement the learning from experience principle.

Finally, the change theme is fundamentally about controlling and managing change to the project’s products, which helps to implement the focus on products principle.

PRINCE2 Principles and the Progress Theme

In many ways, all seven principles contribute to implementing the progress theme; however, the three that are most important are:

  • manage by exception
  • manage by stages
  • learn from experience

As an absolute minimum, the project management team must set tolerances for each level of management that clearly defined that level of management authority. Then, the level above them.

This approach follows the management by exception principle. 

Another minimum requirement is that the project be broken up in two stages and that the project board authorises one stage at a time for the project manager to deliver. This is implementing the manage by stages principle.

Finally, at a minimum, the project management team must consider useful experience when determining how to control the progress of the project. This applies the learn from experience principle. 

PRINCE2 Principles and the Directing a project, controlling a stage, managing a stage boundary, and the manage product delivery processes

Here, I want to discuss the seven PRINCE2 principles that are used during the middle of a project:

Continued business justification

 The project manager updates the business case at the end of each stage.

The project board uses the updated business case to drive their decision about whether to authorise the next stage of the project.

The project manager considers the impact on the business case of any new risks or issues that arise during a stage.

Learn from experience 

Previous experience is always considered when carrying out any of the activities in the controlling a stage, managing a stage boundary, and managing product delivery processes.If appropriate, the project manager includes a lessons report with highlight reports and end stage reports.

Defined roles and responsibilities 

The project manager ensures that the roles and responsibilities for the project management team are up to date for each stage in the managing a stage boundary process.

Manage by stages

 The project board authorises the project manager to manage the project one stage at a time.

The project manager uses the managing a stage boundary process to prepare information for the project board to decide whether to authorise the next stage, and then uses the controlling a stage process to manage each authorised stage.

Manage by exception 

The project board defines stage tolerances within which the project manager must manage each delivery stage.

The project manager has authority to manage each stage unless they forecast that these stage tolerances will be breached, in which case the project manager must escalate the situation to the project board.

In a similar way, the project manager sets the work package tolerances that the teams creating the products within the managing product delivery process must work within.

Focus on products 

The project manager creates stage plans and exception plans using a product-based planning approach to ensure that product descriptions are available for each product to be delivered within the stage.

The project manager gives the teams the product descriptions to ensure that they deliver products to the correct specifications within the managing product delivery process.

Tailor to suit the project environment 

The project manager plans how to apply the project’s approach to tailoring PRINCE2 when planning each stage during the managing a stage boundary process.

PRINCE2 Principles and the Closing a Project Process

All seven PRINCE2 principles are used to some extent at the end of the project, but the three main ones are as follows:

  • Focus on products The project manager ensures that acceptance is obtained for the final outputs of the project and that the products are reviewed against their acceptance criteria as described in the project product description. 
  • Learn from experience The project manager creates a final lessons report and passes it to the project board, which, in turn, passes it to the group that is focused on organizational improvement. this will typically be operational managers within the user’s community. 
  • Continued business justification The project manager ensures that the forecast benefits are reviewed and that post project benefit reviews are planned 

PRINCE2 Roadmap Video

As a PRINCE2 Coach, Trainer (and ex-examiner!), I have developed an amazing PRINCE2 Roadmap, 30-minute video that will jet-power your PRINCE2 process knowledge. 

It will open your eyes to exactly how PRINCE2 works:

Prince2 Roadmap 2020
PRINCE2 ROADMAP INFOGRAPHIC

The PRINCE2 official manual will now make much easier reading!

You are now on your way to become a PRINCE2 Practitioner!

Here at Projex Academy we have a rich set of professional project management-related training video courses.

Dave Litten


Dave spent 25+ years as a senior project manager for UK and USA multinationals and has deep experience in project management. He now develops a wide range of Project Management Masterclasses, under the Projex Academy brand name. In addition, David runs project management training seminars across the world, and is a prolific writer on the many topics of project management.

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