PRINCE2 Tailoring Initiating a Project
When tailoring the initiating a project process, its activities may be combined, split or run concurrently to suit the projects circumstances.
The initiating a project process contains many management products that need to be created, but this is not always the case, and so this section on tailoring will be of use in honing and tailoring these products.
At the start of the initiation stage it may not always be obvious what the relevant factors are when attempting to tailor this process. The main reason for this is that the project is in its early stages and there may not be enough information available.
It therefore follows that tailoring needs will emerge as the initiation work progresses.
For the above reason, it is better to start ‘simple’ and then elaborate as needed, rather than creating a management environment suitable for a complex project.
Some projects are just too complex to be able to define the project’s final products during the initiation stage. If this is the case, it is common to have a project lifecycle with many investigative stages to look at options and choose a solution.
For such complex projects, the initiating a project process is only used at the start of the first stage, to set up the management and controlled environment.
Tailoring PRINCE2 products in the initiating a project process
Just because PRINCE2 has separate management products in the initiating a project process, it does not mean each management product is reflected as a discreet and separate document, or even a document at all, where information and collaborative systems are used.
There are a set of baseline management products which are created in the initiating a project process:
- Project initiation documentation (PID)
The PID may be a single document which includes all the components, or it may be a set of separate documents, or any combination of documents and data - Detailed business case
- Risk management
- Quality management
- Change control
Change control may be known by other names in some industries/environments, as an example, it could be called asset management or parts management - Communication management
- Project plan
The project plan may be informal or formal, depending on the context. It may be a single document which includes the project product description, product descriptions and benefits management approach.
The project plan may include components in any format commensurate with the complexity of the project, with views ranging from a simple list of accountabilities, products, activities and dates, Gantt charts or product backlog. The plan may be held totally or partially within a planning tool - Project controls
- Tailoring of PRINCE2
- Benefits management approach
The benefits management approach may be combined with the detailed business case, either in the body of the document or as an appendix
Guidelines for tailoring records management products in the initiating a project
Record management products consist of the three main registers:
Risk register
The risk register may be part of a workbook containing issues, assumptions and decisions
Issue register
The issue register may be part of a workbook containing issues, assumptions and decisions
As issues do not all result in changes, the issue register may be split into a change register for recording and tracking change requests, and an issue register for all other issues, such as suggestions, concerns or queries. Similarly, ‘off specification’ issues may also be held in a separate log.
Quality register
The amount of information included in the quality register can vary considerably, depending on the extent to which quality metrics, for example ‘defect counts’, need to be analyzed for process improvement purposes
Tailoring roles in the initiating a project
The PRINCE2 Manual shows the creation of these management products as a responsibility of the project manager. Project support may be responsible for some supporting documents, but in all cases the project manager is responsible to the executive for how the project is run.
The project manager may therefore assign whoever is appropriate to the tasks, often support may be provided by a high-level program office or similar.
Initiating a simple project
Initiating a simple project is likely to be less formal than for a larger project, with management products combined into a small number of documents. The project manager may also be acting as team manager for one or more work packages.
Initiating projects when using an agile approach
At the very start of the project, it may not be certain that an agile delivery approach is appropriate – either for some, or all of the specialist products.
It is during the initiating a project process that the decision is likely to be made on what parts of a project are best approached using agile and which parts are not.
Agile is more likely to be appropriate when the end-product needs to be developed iteratively, provided the project management team understand the approach, and implement a control system which deals with the more volatile agile environment.
The project product description and the business case, should be defined with more focus on how the outcome can be described so that the outputs (specialist products) can evolve during the project.
If the project product is based only on the solution, there is more likely to be a focus on this, rather than the value to be delivered.
Product descriptions can be written in the form of epics or user stories if they meet the requirements of the product description outline. It is these that then represent the project’s ‘requirements’
The mapping of existing agile roles to the PRINCE2 roles should be defined and understood, an example here is how should the team manager role be filled?
Levels of uncertainty need to be explicitly stated as these may affect the choice of agile techniques such as the use of prototyping, spikes or experiments and the choice of how long to make the management stages and their Timeboxes within them.
Initiating a project from a supplier perspective
Some of the Initiating a Project process activities will be undertaken pre-contract as the supplier will need to formulate the approaches, plans and controls to assess the viability and desirability of undertaking the proposed contract, together with the costs and prices of the solution being proposed.
The initiating a project process is not completed however, until contract negotiation has concluded and the customer’s project board authorize the project
Initiating a project within a programme
All the guidance provided above is also applicable to a project within a programme.
The main difference is that the programme manager may prescribe or constrain the project managers choices.
In some cases, the PID (or parts of it, such as the detailed business case), might be produced by a member of the programme team, and may even exist in detail prior to initiating the project or be included within the program’s business case.
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