Initiating a Project in PRINCE2
The PRINCE2 Starting Up a Project process occurs pre-project and before the initiation stage, and its two management products; the Project Brief and Initiation Stage Plan, need to be approved by the project board so that the initiation stage (the first stage of any PRINCE2 project), can start.
The process Initiating a Project stage, is used during the initiation stage to assemble all of the information contained within the Project Initiation Documentation is created.
Therefore, the main purpose of the initiation stage, is to determine the work that needs to be done to deliver the project products and establish solid foundations of the project before committing to the significant spend of the stages that follow the initiation stage.
The PID in the initiation stage
It is important that all stakeholders must be clear on what the project is intending to achieve, why the project is needed, how the outcome will be achieved and what the stakeholder responsibilities are, so that there can be a genuine commitment made to project delivery after the initiation stage.
Therefore, the added value of the initiation stage is to avert the problem of proceeding directly into the creation of the specialist products without first fully understanding how the project objectives will be achieved. You can see quite clearly that without the information contained within the project Initiation Documentation, that the project board would be simply taking a leap of faith.
The Initiation Stage Plan created by the project manager within the Starting Up a Project process, will have included how the project board will review and approve the management products created during the initiation stage.
The initiation stage will ensure that there is a common understanding of the reasons for doing the project, the benefits expected and the risks associated with the project along with their responses. In addition, this process will determine precisely what the scope of the project is, how the project’s products will be delivered, when they will be delivered, and at what cost.
This process will also determine who will be involved in making project decisions, how will the required quality will be achieved, how baselines will be established and managed, how risks, issues and changes will be managed, the monitoring and controlling of progress and the project’s Communication Management Strategy.
These are the main activities and key PRINCE2 documentation within the Initiation Stage
After the Project Board use the activity Authorize initiation, the initiating a project process is used within the initiation stage and the main deliverable here is the PID itself. The activities within this process echo the contents of the project initiation documentation. It makes sense to first determine the various strategies needed within the project before detailed planning takes place.
The Risk Management Strategy document is created in the initiation stage and the Risk Register is set up to capture and manage any risks throughout the project. Any risks which exist already on the Daily Log would now be transferred to the Risk Register. The Risk Management Strategy defines HOW resource will be managed throughout the project.
The Quality Management Strategy document is created in the initiation stage, and the Quality Register is set up. This register will typically be empty at this point, as this will contain the planned dates of all quality management activities for the creation of the specialist products, and such dates will not be known until the second Stage Plan is created.
Planning Products during the initiation stage process
This second stage that follows the initiation stage, is always the first delivery stage, so-called because this is the first stage (and possibly also the final stage for small simple projects) where specialist products are to be created.
The word specialist products refers to the type of project, for example if the project end product is a new office building, then the specialist products would be for example, the building frame itself, roof and walls, water and electricity services to be implemented, heating and lighting products, office equipment and so on. These should not be confused with the PRINCE2 management products such as the Project Brief, Project Initiation Documentation, reports, and so on.
So you can see that the Quality Register will have the actual dates of the quality checking activities entered during a typical delivery stage.
It is worth mentioning that PRINCE2 does not consider a specialist product as complete, until it has had an independent quality check and an appropriate authorization. As part of the PRINCE2 product based planning technique, a product description for each specialist product is written as part of planning for a particular delivery stage. This Product Description will contain the method and the appropriate measurements required for the product to have ensure the pass its quality check.
The Configuration Management Strategy document is created in the initiation stage, and the Issue Register is set up. In PRINCE2, an issue can be advice of a new risk, a problem or concern, or a change. There are two types of changes: a request for change which typically comes from the customer and it is a request for a change to what was originally agreed. The second type of change is called an off-specification; typically this would come from the supply side and covers some aspect of the project that although agreed, cannot now be met.
Configuration management may be thought of as version control and as such is closely aligned with how change control (mentioned above) is to be implemented. Typically configuration management will be supplied by the project support role, and will be set up and agreed within the initiation stage.
The final strategy is the Communication Management Strategy, and is created last because the first three strategies will have communication needs and these can be included at this point. As you can see, all four of the strategies are HOW-TO documents and form part of the project initiation documentation all created within the initiation stage.
The PRINCE2 Project Plan can now be created within the initiation stage, and in parallel with setting up the various PRINCE2 controls and change control that will be needed throughout the project. Typically 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. The Communication Management Strategy contains information on how Highlight Reports are to be created and used. This document is also created in the initiation stage.
As with all plans, the PRINCE2 Project Plan is a document, is created in the initiation stage, and will use the PRINCE2 product-based planning technique.
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 PRINCE2 Project Plan is created within the initiation stage.
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 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 within the initiation stage, the Project Product Description may now need 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 using the refine the business case activity, as it will use timescale and cost information derived from the Project Plan. This detailed Business Case is created in the initiation stage, and will be used throughout the project in particular 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 within the initiation stage, and is based upon some information contained within the business case, and it is called the Benefits Review Plan. As the name suggests, this contains a description of each future benefit, its timing, measurement, and the resources required to carry this out. The Benefits Review Plan is kept separate from the Project Initiation Documentation as it will be used after the project has finished to continue and track the remaining benefits until their eventual realization.
All of the above can now be assembled within the initiation stage, 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 where the reporting stage end will be used within any PRINCE2 project (as the initiation stage is always the first management stage in a PRINCE2 project).
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