Revising the Managing a Stage Boundary Process

There are two product-related areas of work for the Project Manager in the process. The first is producing new management products, notably the Stage Plan for the next stage. The second area is to update ongoing project documentation such as the Project Plan and the Project Approach.

As you revise the process, watch out for poorly named activities. The most misleading is the activity ‘Update the Project Plan’, which actually covers much more than updating the Project Plan. It involves checking the Project Initiation Documentation (PID) and updating anything that needs it, including the strategies. In the list of recommended actions for the activity, the manual gives a few examples of changes that may be needed, but be aware that the changes can go wider than the examples given. [Manual 17.4.1]

Those who already know PRINCE2 appreciate the need to update the PID on the stage boundary anyway, so in practice it doesn’t cause too much of a problem. The manual is very much harder to follow if you’re learning PRINCE2 and you find the text hard to follow or find that it assumes prior knowledge. If you get confused, try PRINCE2 For Dummies, where the style is more relaxed than the official PRINCE2 manual can be and there’s more explanation. [P2FD Ch6, Understanding the Process of ‘Managing a Stage Boundary’]

A second activity with a rather misleading name is ‘Update the Business Case’, which indeed performs that update, but also the related product, the Benefits Review Plan. For good measure, the activity can update a couple of registers as well: the Risk Register and the Issue Register.

Revision checklist – Foundation

Scan down this revision checklist and, if you can’t tick any item confidently, that warns you to look at the point again as part of your revision:

The purpose and objective statements for the process – predictably

The two triggers of a stage boundary – this is an important point, and there’s more on it in the section ‘Clarifying Some Key Points’

Understanding that the process is not used at the end of the last stage in the project – the Closing a Project process is used instead; there’s more on this in Chapter 19

The activities of the process and the suggested sequence of them – as shown by the arrows in the process model

Who’s doing what in the activities – it’s mostly the Project Manager

What management products are being input into the process and what products are being created – in the manual, the activity summary tables, one for each activity, make a good reference

That an Exception Plan may include an adjusted Project Plan, and possibly Team Plans, as well as a revised Stage Plan

That where the process is happening part-way through a stage because of an exception, work done to date is not re-planned and included in the Exception Plan – instead it’s closed down and there’s an End Stage Report for it

The interaction of Managing a Stage Boundary with PRINCE2 principles and themes

Revision checklist – Practitioner

For the Practitioner exam, make sure you’re clear on the points in the Foundation checklist above, then add these four areas to your revision check:

The exact way in which PRINCE2 themes are called into play on a stage boundary – this is fairly intuitive, but make sure that you’re clear.

What products are created and updated on a stage boundary, and why; as noted in the Foundation revision checklist, you’ll find the products listed for each activity in its activity summary diagram in the manual. You’ll also find a reference panel at the end of the relevant chapter in PRINCE2 For Dummies, which lists the major products and explains why they’re updated or created [P2FD Ch6 Checking out the major stage boundary products].

The content of the products used on a stage boundary – that you know what each section of each product is about and can spot errors in ‘critique’ questions.

How the process can be adjusted to suit different situations in a project – but don’t get too worried about this, because the exam doesn’t expect you to be able to deal with a complex project situation.