Revising the Managing Product Delivery Process

The process covers the work to deliver the product or products involved in a particular Work Package. The Work Package is simply a work assignment from the Project Manager. It may be to build a single product, or perhaps two or even more, when it makes sense to build those products together.

As you revise, make sure you’re clear on what a Work Package is. For the Practitioner exam in particular, check that you know what the individual headings in the Work Package are all about. If you think any explanations in the manual are unclear, make some short notes on the manual pages so you can look at your reminders during the exam.

You can’t take any PRINCE2 reference material at all into the Foundation exam. For the Practitioner-level exam, you can take in your copy of the PRINCE2 manual complete with any notes you’ve written onto the manual pages. However, you can’t take in separate notes in any form, even sticky notes stuck to the pages of the manual.

‘Managing Product Delivery’ is part of PRINCE2, of course, which in turn is all about project management. So, the activities in this process are not about doing the teamwork but about managing the teamwork. In fact the biggest part of the project is here because, in terms of PRINCE2, this is where all the team products are built and tested, but in management terms it’s all very easy.

The three activities in the process can be summed up as ‘get the Work Package, build and test the product(s), and then hand the product(s) back’.

Revision checklist – Foundation

For the Foundation exam, run through this list to make sure that you’re familiar with each area. If you’re unsure of anything, don’t tick it off until you’ve revised it again.

Appreciate that the activities cover the work of the Team Manager, not the Project Manager (unless the project doesn’t have any Team Managers).

Understand that each team may work, sequentially, on more than one Work Package in each stage, so each Team Manager may use the Managing Product Delivery process several times in a stage.

Understand that the Work Package provides instructions to build the one or more products covered by the package, and includes a copy of the relevant Product Description(s).

The use of the Work Package as an instruction pack, but also as the authority which is the trigger for the Team Manager to start the work. Team Managers don’t just do project work when they feel like it. The Work Package is a Project Manager control mechanism.

The purpose statement and objectives for the process.

The three activities, and the fact that the middle one, ‘Execute a Work Package’, is not only where team products are built but also where all the testing is done. It’s too late to start testing products in the third activity when they’re being returned.

Following on from the last point, that Quality Review is a type of test (typically of a printed product such as a technical specification or plan). If the technique is to be used for a specialist product in a Work Package, as required in the Stage Plan, it will be done in the ‘Execute a Work Package’ activity.

That the results of a Quality Review go into the Quality Register, just like for any other test.

Team Plans are optional. If the Work Package is straightforward, the Team Manager may be able to control it with the detail set down in the Stage Plan, and so won’t need to produce a Team Plan.

Checkpoint Reports, at the frequency set down in the Work Package, and with the content specified there too.

Appreciate that the team doing the Work Package may be from outside the customer organisation, and its Team Manager may not even know that the project is running under PRINCE2, because the Work Package gives the information that the Team Manager needs to do the job.

Revision checklist – Practitioner

For the Practitioner exam, make sure that you’re still familiar with the Foundation-exam areas in the previous section, then check these additional ones:

Work Packages – when they are created, what they’re all about and what each heading means.

The Quality Register, and that you understand that it will be kept up to date with the results of tests. If something fails a test and needs to be re-worked and then re-tested, that new quality activity (the re-testing) will be entered into the Quality Register.

The detail of the Checkpoint Report. Are you clear enough on the headings and the use of each one, so that you can pick out wrong entries in an example with errors?

How the activities work and can be adjusted to fit the project. For example, adjusting the first activity ‘Accept a Work Package’, depending on whether a Team Plan is needed. That includes feeling confident to spot where the activities have not been used sensibly in the scenario project in the exam.

The management products involved in the process – what they are, how they are used in the process and by whom:

Checkpoint Report – to report progress on the Work Package

Configuration Item Record – to record changing information such as ‘draft’ and ‘final’ states as the work progresses

Issue Report – may be created by a knowledgeable PRINCE2 Team Manager rather than just sent as a free-form issue

Product Description – one or more are included in the Work Package

Quality Register – to keep track of quality actions and also to enter any new ones that become necessary (such as re-testing of products which initially failed a test)

Work Package – the ‘instruction pack’ to build one or more products and, as a Project Manager control mechanism, to control the flow of work to teams

The fit of the principles and themes with the process (there’s more on this in Chapter 19).