Appreciating It’s More Than Just Progress

Just in case you thought you were misunderstanding something, the Progress theme covers a lot more than progress. Before the 2009 edition of the PRINCE2 manual, the theme used to be called ‘Controls’, and I can’t begin to imagine why the authors changed the name for the 2009 edition. I mention that because ‘controls’ is a better description and it gives you a much clearer picture of what’s involved. The theme does indeed cover progress control, but more besides. The full content is as follows:

Progress control

Types of stages – management stages and technical stages

Management stages as the key PRINCE2 control

Factors to consider when choosing management stages – including risk, planning horizons (how far can you see clearly ahead), Project Board preference, maximum limits on time and cost (for example, no stage to be longer than three months)

Exception management (a control that has much wider application in PRINCE2 than just progress)

Reporting (again, more than just progress reporting) – what each report is, what its sections are and why it’s needed

The Work Package as the Project Manager’s control for work flow

The use of logs in the method