Chapter 2

Outlining the Structure of PRINCE2

In This Chapter

Introducing the main structure – the processes

Outlining the themes

Setting down the principles

Explaining where project techniques fit in

The PRINCE2 method can seem a bit fragmented at first, especially in the 2009 edition of the PRINCE2 manual which doesn’t help too much. But when you see how all the parts fit together as you read this edition of PRINCE2 For Dummies then it’ll make sense. Parts II and III of this book look at the various elements of the method, but this chapter ranges across the whole of PRINCE2 at a higher level so that you can see how it all slots together.

You may need a little while to get to grips with all the detail, but the framework in this chapter is to help speed up that process by giving you a sort of map. PRINCE2 is very logical, so if you have any experience in projects at all, even limited experience, you’ll find you can predict to some degree what will be in the different parts of the method.

When you have the structure of PRINCE2 clear and then hang on the detail, it just becomes the way you run projects. You find that your concentration turns away from what the method is and on to how you’re going to use it on your next project (or if you react like some of the delegates on my courses, how you wish you’d run your last one!). And even if you have a lot of project management experience, you may still find the framework in this chapter helpful before you get into the detail.

Getting to Know the Process Model

The main part of PRINCE2’s structure is the process model, shown in Figure 2-1.

This model takes you through your project from the part before the project, known as Start Up or, to use the full PRINCE2 name, Starting Up a Project, through to closure. Seven processes walk you through the project and set down what you need to think about and do at each key point. The processes represent the chronology or time span of the project. You can think of the processes as the suggested ‘when’ of PRINCE2.

Processes, activities and actions. The seven main blocks are the processes that take you through the project and some run in parallel. Each of these has activities that give more detail on what’s going on. This is where some people start to draw back and think: ‘Oh no. My worst fears confirmed. You have to go through loads of steps.’ But when you use it intelligently, PRINCE2 just isn’t like that at all. Then at a third and final level below are the recommended actions for each of the activities.

Based on OGC PRINCE2 material. Reproduced under licence from OGC.

Beware of people who say you have to do absolutely everything on every project because PRINCE2 is a standard approach to projects. You don’t and it isn’t. Just pretend that you didn’t hear them and read on.

You can think of the activities within each process as a helpful checklist. When you do, suddenly the whole method comes alive. Just because something is on a checklist doesn’t mean that you have to do it. In fact, a checklist can be really helpful to show you what you don’t need to do as well as what you do need to do. You may be starting to see how PRINCE2 really can help you on your projects. The activities help you think through very rapidly indeed what you need to do, and so speed you up and bring clarity.

The processes set down the main progression through PRINCE2. But they aren’t linear, because you’ll use some in parallel and one set repeats. The repeating block is to do with the control of delivery stages and these cycle round for as many stages as you have in your project. Later chapters in the book go into detail on each of these processes.

Getting things going

The first two processes, and part of a third, are to do with getting the project under way, taking decisions about it (the work of the Project Board) and planning at three different levels of detail.

Starting up a Project

This is the part of PRINCE2 that comes before the project. It covers sketching out what the project is about in order to make a decision on whether going forward into full planning would be worthwhile. Sometimes a quick look at an idea reveals that it’s not so good after all and that the right thing to do is to stop immediately. Start Up also looks at roles and responsibilities, and normally you put the Project Organisation in place now. This includes the Project Board: the group of managers with oversight of the project, who decide if they should start the project and take it on into full planning. Start Up has six activities and Chapter 4 explains how they work.

Initiating a Project

This process drives the first stage of the project, the Initiation Stage, which is for project planning. The work covers the production of the project plans – in the broadest sense – which together form the Project Initiation Document (PID). This is not simply an activity plan. The PID includes elements such as the Quality Management Strategy, the Risk Register with the risk actions, and the whole package of things that define what the project is and how you’re going to control it. Chapter 5 explains all about it.

Directing a Project

Figure 2-1, the process model, shows that the process Directing a Project runs right through PRINCE2, from initiation to project closure. It covers the work of the Project Board, which in turn breaks down into two broad areas. The first covers the key decision points. I mentioned the first in the section ‘Starting up a Project. The board decides if the Project Brief looks promising and whether to start the project and do the detailed project planning – the Initiation Stage. But another activity runs right through the delivery stages and that’s giving ‘ad-hoc direction’, or advising the Project Manager whenever necessary. Chapter 10 tells you what you need to know about ad hoc direction, but briefly it’s where the Project Board functions as the Project Manager’s boss. Just like you may need to go and talk to your boss about something, so the board must be available to the Project Manager to give direction when needed.

Repeating as necessary

The next three processes repeat for as many delivery stages as you have in your project. The only exception is in the last stage of the project, where you trigger project closure (see the later section ‘Closing a Project’) instead of the Stage Boundary process to prepare for the next stage.

Managing a Stage Boundary

In PRINCE2 the stages are an extremely important control feature and the stage boundaries mark important decision points. At the end of each stage the Project Board has to decide whether to authorise the next stage and allow the project to continue, or shut the project down. The activities in the Stage Boundary process cover the work of the Project Manager in getting information ready for the Project Board so that it can make that decision. For example, the processes cover things such as getting the plan ready for the next stage and updating the Business Case to reflect the very latest information and projections of benefits.

You use the Stage Boundary process at the end of every stage in the project, including the Initiation Stage – the one where you plan the project in detail. The only exception is with the last stage because at the end of that you close the project down instead. For more information on the Stage Boundary work, dash ahead to Chapter 6.

Controlling a Stage

Although Controlling a Stage is the busiest process in terms of activities – it contains eight – it isn’t difficult to understand. The process represents the Project Manager’s day-to-day work during a stage (except for the final work of the stage to prepare the next one, because the process Managing a Stage Boundary covers that bit). The eight activities involve actions such as giving out work to Team Managers, checking progress and reporting to the Project Board at set intervals. Chapter 7 has more detail.

Managing Product Delivery

Managing Product Delivery is a small PRINCE2 process with just three activities, but a huge process in terms of project work. This is where all the specialist work to build the deliverables – or products – is done and also the testing. The process represents the work of the Team Manager in receiving instructions on a work assignment or Work Package, building the relevant products and handing the products back again. Each Team Manager works through a series of Work Packages within each stage, so the process cycles round a lot of times. Full information on the activities is in Chapter 8.

Shutting down: Closing a Project

The last of the seven processes covers closing down the project. This can be the planned close or an early or premature close. You may shut down early if, for example, business circumstances change and you no longer require the project.

The Closing a Project process includes reporting back to the Project Board for the board to confirm the closure. The activities cover things like checking that everything is done, making sure that products can move smoothly through into their working life and producing an End Project Report.

If the project is shutting down early, then you don’t need to make sure that everything is complete, because it won’t be. Instead, you check to make sure that you identify any usable stuff from the project to minimise waste. Chapter 9 covers closing a project.

Introducing the Themes

The second model shows the seven themes, which you can see in Figure 2-2. The themes are the suggested ‘what’ of PRINCE2 and are effectively project disciplines, or subject areas. You use them right through the project.

Based on OGC PRINCE2 material. Reproduced under licence from OGC

Understanding the themes

You will find a lot more about the themes later in the book – in fact there is a whole chapter on each one – so this is a quick overview to give you the general idea. As with the processes, you will see that they are not difficult and you can probably guess a lot of the content just from the title of each one.

Business Case

The Business Case is the main driver of PRINCE2. The project is not about having fun or occupying your time, but rather about delivering business benefit; well, usually. This theme sets down the suggested content of the Business Case, which you sketch out before the project begins, work into full detail in the Initiation (or project planning) Stage, and then keep up to date throughout the project. Chapter 11 has much more information on the Business Case.

Organization

PRINCE2 has very clear roles and responsibilities. Lack of clarity in this area is a common cause of project problems, so the fact that PRINCE2 is so clear is necessary as well as being really helpful. The word ‘role’ is extremely important in PRINCE2 because it opens the way to great flexibility in fitting the method around the needs of each individual project. On a small project, one person may have more than one role; so you may need fewer people involved in the management of the project than you may think. In fact, the minimum number of people needed on a full PRINCE2 project, including all the team work, is two people working part time. So PRINCE2 is suitable for very small projects right up to very large ones. Chapter 12 explains organization in more detail and explores why the minimum number of people is two.

Just in passing, and in case it looks odd to you, the 2009 edition of the PRINCE2 manual has standardised to use ‘z’ instead of ‘s’ in words such as organization. If you’re a reader from the USA, you can be pleased that in the UK we are flexible and our government’s project method has followed your use of the English language in this instance. But please be advised that we continue to fiercely resist driving on the wrong side of the road.

Quality

Quality is the vital third dimension of project management. You may focus on time and cost, but delivering sub-standard, non-functioning deliverables on time and within budget doesn’t get you anywhere. Your results need to meet the right quality level – so that they actually work!

I ordered a cooling unit with fans to put under my laptop computer. It was advertised as being very effective, with two super-quiet fans, and it was reasonably priced. The unit arrived surprisingly quickly and well before the promised date. However, one of the two fans vibrated and was far from super-quiet, and the other fan was indeed super-quiet as advertised – it didn’t work at all. If I’d only been concerned about time and cost, I’d have been happy with it.

Quality management is very realistic in the PRINCE2 method because it doesn’t insist that you go for the very highest quality in every project. This is sensible because not every project is a life or death situation. You may have a genuinely ‘quick-and-dirty’ project. PRINCE2 focuses on what quality is appropriate for this particular project and then helps you to deliver at that level.

Plans

A ‘product-based’ – or product-led – approach to planning is used in a number of different project approaches and is expected in PRINCE2. The product-based approach is where you first look at what the project is to produce; in other words the deliverables. Then you move on to the more familiar activity planning with techniques such as activity networks and Gantt Charts. Product-led planning is amazingly good and used to be explained in the PRINCE2 manual – albeit with some mistakes. Sadly, in the 2009 edition, it has been ‘dumbed down’ and the examples relegated to an appendix. Rumour has it that this is because some trainers had difficulty in teaching the technique and some didn’t see the point.

In training courses delivered by my company, we have always gone into full detail on product planning because it is extraordinarily powerful in planning but also for project control. Now some of the people I have taught are even more fanatical about the product techniques than me – hard to imagine I know! Product-based planning is arguably one of the biggest advances in business project management in recent years and even in courses on the 2009 edition of PRINCE2 we continue to teach the full detail. The good news for you even if, mysteriously, you don’t book one of my courses is that this For Dummies book will help you. It’s hard to overstate just how good the product-based approach is and Chapter 14 describes the techniques in some detail.

The method works at three levels of detail in planning. A project plan covers the whole project from the end of the Initiation Stage, where you do the project planning, until the end of the project. More detailed stage planning comes where you plan a stage just before the end of the previous one, using the very latest information available. And finally team plans for individual work assignments or Work Packages, where the Stage Plan does not provide enough detail. This may be where a Work Package is particularly complex.

Risk

It won’t come as a shock to you that PRINCE2 includes risk management as a theme. This is an essential part of project management and many projects have come to grief because they didn’t take risk management action to identify and then control things that could cause damage. The amount of risk management you do will vary according to the risk exposure of the project and how important that project is. PRINCE2 allows for good risks as well as bad and includes mechanisms for exploiting this ‘upside’ risk as well as controlling the ‘downside risk’. Chapter 15 covers the risk theme.

Change

A very common project problem is scope creep; uncontrolled change. You won’t have been too surprised then to see change control included as one of the seven themes. It covers change mechanisms and authorities but also touches on something called ‘Configuration Management’. That’s rather a mouthful and a slightly strange expression for most business users of PRINCE2. In simple terms Configuration Management is version control or versioning. Clearly, if a document or other project deliverable goes through changes, you want to know which edition is the latest. Depending on the product, if the latest one is badly wrong, you may also want to roll back to the previous version and have another go.

Progress

PRINCE2 has excellent ‘event-driven’ controls that kick in at certain points, but also a couple of ‘time-driven’ ones that take the form of reports. Progress control is particularly effective if it is based on delivery, strongly locking into the product-based planning approach as covered in this book. A common problem with progress control is that managers tend to do too much (control freak) or too little (you never see them). The method has an excellent mechanism in the stages that keep the Project Board in control, while at the same time giving the Project Manager some space to get on and do her job.

Working in Line with the Principles

PRINCE2 has seven principles, and allegedly you’re not running a proper PRINCE2 project unless you comply with all seven. Don’t worry too much about them if you’re reading this chapter before looking at the process and theme chapters. That’s because where each one comes into the method then PRINCE2 for Dummies, helpful to the end, clearly points it out. Just to make life easier if you’re using this list for reference, you can see that each entry has a cross reference to the chapter that’s the most relevant. For example:

1 Continued business justification (Chapter 11, Producing the Business Case).

2 Learn from experience (Chapter 4, Checking the Idea).

3 Defined roles and responsibilities (Chapter 12, Roles and Responsibilities).

4 Manage by stages (Chapter 17, Monitoring Progress).

5 Manage by exception (Chapter 17, Monitoring Progress).

6 Focus on products (Chapter 14, Planning).

7 Tailor to suit the project environment (Chapter 3, Getting real power from PRINCE2).

Appreciating the Six Control Variables

In the section earlier in this chapter, which was about the Quality theme, I made the point that project management isn’t just about time and cost. Quality is important too. But PRINCE2 goes on to show a total of six variables that need to be controlled and balanced. See Figure 2-3 below.

The areas interact so, for example, if there is pressure on time then you may need to re-balance cost or quality or both. The six control areas are referred to quite often in different parts of the method so you will be encountering this list again in later chapters of the book.

Fitting in Project Techniques

Finally, a bit about PRINCE2 techniques. There aren’t any. Instead the method says, like some others, that suitable techniques are well documented elsewhere. The PRINCE2 manual does include some panels listing suitable techniques but leaves you in the dark as to where to find them. Some techniques will be covered in later chapters of this book, but even we don’t have space to list the dozens of techniques that you can use. Try a search on the Internet for books and folders which provide a project techniques toolbox. Having said that, PRINCE2 does give a bit of information on two techniques in particular:

Product-based planning: Chapter 14 gives you an insight into the power of product-based or ‘product-led’ planning and explains four techniques to help you do it.

Quality Review: This technique uses a meeting to look for errors in a written product such as a report. It’s not solely a PRINCE2 technique – the older ones among us can remember quality walkthroughs long before PRINCE2 or even PROMPT II on which PRINCE2 was based. Chapter 13 offers more information on quality including Quality Review.

It also outlines a few more such as a risk technique that’s covered in this book in the risk chapter, Chapter 15.

Putting It All Together

You can think of the processes ‘calling in’ the themes when they’re needed, and they do this extensively. Then the process and themes are supported by the principles. Figure 2-4 gives a graphical view of the integration of these three areas.

Risk management illustrates the point of using a theme while you’re working through processes. You need the risk theme during Start Up to assess the overall amount of risk. If the benefits of the project idea are fairly small but the risk of the project is huge, then the project may not be worth doing. Then Initiation ‘calls in’ the risk theme. Initiation is more detailed project planning and risk analysis, and deciding on risk-management actions is very important at this point. During the project, you’re going to discover new risks and you certainly need to monitor the existing ones. So you use the risk theme over and over as you work through the processes. At the end of the project you may pass on some risk management actions back into the organisation if they’re needed in the working life of products, so it figures in your work in Closing a Project.

Based on OGC PRINCE2 material. Reproduced under licence from OGC.

The environment of a PRINCE2 project

Finally, you have the context of a ‘customer / supplier environment’. PRINCE2 expects there to be a customer side and a supplier side in a project, and it manages the potential conflict of interest between the two. For more on this aspect go to Chapter 12, Roles and Responsibilities.