PRINCE2 Practitioner – Introduction to Themes

14. Theme No 6 Change Part 2

But at the same time, we must ensure that we still have a project that is compliant with Prince Two. And just to stick the obvious, I hope we don’t want to tailor down to the absolute minimum every time, because one reason is it can actually take extra time and money to do that. But also, by tailoring to the absolute bare bones, we can recycle some quite beneficial aspects of the Prince Two framework. But it’s just we need to have a line drawn in the sand that we’re not going to cross so that we still have the Prince Two project. And so in relation to the Prince Two Chains Theme to be following Prince Toy, a project must at minimum define its chains control approach.

This approach must minimally cover how issues are identified and managed. Assessing whether identified issues might have a material impact on the business justification of the project. Prince Two’s continued business justification principle the roles and responsibilities for change control. Prince Two’s defined roles and responsibilities principle including a defined change authority. Define how product baselines are created, maintained and controlled. Maintain some form of issue register to record identified issues and decisions relating to their analyst analysis, management and review. Ensure that project issues are captured, examined, managed and reviewed throughout the project lifecycle.

Use lessons to inform issue identification and management that’s Pinstri’s learn from Experience principle printstreet requires that the following products are produced and maintained. Issue Register Captures and maintains information on all the issues that have been formally managed. Change Control Approach Identifies how and by whom the project’s products will be controlled and protected. The project’s controls for issues and change will be identified and established during the initiating a project process, then reviewed and if necessary, updated towards the end of each management stage by managing a stage boundary process. That’s the Prince Two guide.

 Page 140 please study Table 11. 2 responsibilities relevant to the Change theme on page 141. Because you’ll find it in the examination, they frequently ask questions about basically who is responsible for this, and so on. Change Budget the customer and supplier must decide to create a change budget for avoiding numerous requests for small payments from the budget. They may also decide to place a limit on the amount that could be drawn for a single change to avoid one or two large changes depleting the entire budget. It can also help trap large changes that are to fly onto the radar disguised as a small change by breaking it down into lots of little bits.

15. Theme No 6 Change Part 3

But rather to check that they’re genuinely necessary and if they are necessary, and to get them approved and implemented in a controlled manner. As we have seen with the other themes, as a project is a temporary organization within the main organization, you will need to adopt the overarching procedure of the main organization, in this case, a change control procedure. In the case of a project, there may be a change control procedure. It’s especially for program management and in which case you’ll work within them.

And note for the exam that the questions often assume that you’re following the Prince to recommended procedure. Please revise figure 11. 1 Issue and Change Control Procedure, which is as following step One capturing Issues Firstly, when the issues have been captured, the Project Manager will perform an initial analysis and then decide the next steps. It may be that the issue is simple or very low severity and can be dealt with informally and recorded in the daily log. Many, if not most, will probably fall within this category.

The Project Manager will then deal with those that need to be dealt with formally and entered into the Issues Register with unique identifier. The purpose of distinguishing between issues that can be managed informally and those that need to be managed formally is to ensure decisions are made at an appropriate level within the project management team. Avoid the project board being inundated with too many issues and therefore downloading the time it has available to deal with the key issues affecting the project reduce the administrative burden on the project management, dealing with the day to day issues that may arise.

Issues being managed formally should be entered in the Issues Register and given a unique identifier. The Daily Law can be used to record issues being managed informally and that’s from the Principal Guide, page 143. Step Two assessing Issues this is done by means of an impact analysis, but the project Manager should be confident that issues can’t be dealt with informally because of the time, cost and effort of the analysis. The impact analysis should consider the impact of the issue has or will have on the project performance targets in terms of time, cost, quality scope, including whether there are any other products that are within the project scope that will also be impacted by this issue the project business case especially in terms of the impact and benefits any other dependent products produced by the project the Risk Management Profile ie.

The impact on the overall risk exposure of the project and please remember that there are three areas that can be impacted and must be considered during an issue I e. The bus which I’ve mentioned before bu s business user and supplier. Step Three proposing corrective actions in a similar way to how options for the entire project are considered and the one chosen then represents the best value for money. A number of options for corrective actions should be proposed to enable a selection.

Step Five deciding on Corrective Actions select the corrective action that represents best value for money, taking into consideration the time, cost and risk of implementing it, and please be wary of a corrective action which may cause the project to exceed a stage tolerance. Because the project manager will then need to seek advice from the project board, please study Table 11. 3 project Board Decisions on page 146.

Step Six Implementing Corrective Actions the project manager will either take the necessary corrective action, which might include updating effective products, work packages, plans and registers, or create an exception plan for approval by the project board. In both cases, the project manager will update the issues, register with the decision, and inform all interested parties. That’s from Princetic IP. One, four, six.

16. Theme No 7 Progress Part 1

Provide a forecast for the project objectives and the project’s continued viability and control any unacceptable deviations. That’s from the Principal Guide, page 148. In the video Introduction to Themes I said that each theme answers one or more questions. The Progress theme answers the questions where are we now? Where are we going? And should we continue? And it pretty sure that if I were to ask a group of project managers what questions they’re most frequently asked, I think you’d find these questions pretty high on the list. One thing to be wary of is focusing on just one or two performance targets CG time and cost. We need to measure progress across the whole range of performance targets, which are time, cost, quality, scope, benefits and risk.

This information is used to make decisions such as whether to approve a management stage or work package, whether to escalate deviations, and whether to prematurely close the project and to take actions as required. Progress can be monitored at Work package, management stage and project level. That’s from Prints to guide page 148. I’m sure that you can see a connection between the Progress theme and the principles of Managed by Exception, because if the progress is within tolerances, then nobody really wants to know. It reminds me of cars fitted with an audible speed alert. If you’re driving with the speed limit or within tolerance, you don’t want the car to keep saying what the speed is, who cares? But if you exceed the limit, you would want to know about it right away.

As usual, we will have a look at the minimum requirements for the theme. Prince. Two is requirements for managing Progress. To be following Prince Two, a project must at a minimum define its approach to controlling progress. In the Pit, the PID be managed by stages. Principles Managed by Stages principle set tolerances and be managed by exception.

Against those tolerances. Principles Managed by Exception principle review the business justification when exceptions are raised. Prince Two’s continued Business Justification principle learn lessons prince two’s learn from Experience principle and that’s from Prince Two Guide, page 148. And we see the importance of the Progress theme because it ties in with four principles and as we have seen a number of times and other themes that non prescriptive nature prints to the Progress theme allows you to employ any process that meets your needs. Please revise all of page 150 in the Print stock guide.

You will find that we have covered this information in the video on the Principles Managed by Exception principle defines two types of controls event driven and time driven. I’ve seen these appear in a number of exam questions in various formats event driven Controls these take place when a specific event occurs and could be, for example, the end stage assessment or the end of a management stage, the completion of the paid or the creation of an exception report. It could also include organizational events that might affect the project such as the end of a financial year. Time driven controls. These take place at predefined periodic intervals, which could, for example, be producing monthly highlight reports for the project board or weekly checkpoint reports showing the progress of a work package.

Monitoring and reporting requires a time based approach, whereas control decision making is an event based approach. It probably sounds obvious, but the level of control in the plans defines a level you can control progress. For example, if you’re using a monthly report from the project, you can’t control progress on a weekly basis. We come to now establishing baselines for project controls. The following management products assist the project manager in establishing baselines for progress control. Project plan includes the project level, performance targets and tolerances. Threats to the project level tolerances need to be escalated to the project board, which will seek advice from corporate program management or the customer for corrective action.

Stage plan forms the basis of the day to day control of the management stage and detailed stage level tolerances. Exception plan may be requested by the project board after considering an exception report during the directing project process. Work package forms an agreement between the project manager and team manager as the work to be completed within defined tolerances. That’s from the principal guide. Page 151. Please note that a project plan is not just a project schedule. This is one of the most basic errors made by Fledson project manager and seven senior consultants. The Project Glossary defines the project plan as a high level plan showing the major products of the project, when they will be delivered, and at what costs.

17. Theme No 7 Progress Part 2

We covered establishing baselines for project controls in the last video, so now we want to look at actually reviewing the progress. Adhere Prince team warns us to be on the lookout for trends. For example, time and costs may be tracking nicely, but the issues register may show a buildup of unresolved issues or risks occurring on a project I was managing in the Philippines. My project support person helping to able to record all the issues on the online issues register to save me time and I would check them at the end of each day. I was surprised that there were only a few issues for me to check on a daily basis because there were a lot in the first week in the project, but I was pleased because it meant the project was obviously going well. However, I was called into a meeting one day with many people complaining angrily about me ignoring their issues.

It turned out I had caused a problem through not understanding something of the local culture. In my first week in the project I had complained to my support person. I was unhappy to see so many issues necessary in the project and I was going to be kept really busy by them. My support. Project person wanted to make me happy. And so each day after entering the issues in the register, he would scans with them and look for ones that he thought weren’t critical, which is actually most of them, and mark them as completed.

And completed once didn’t show on my view of the register, I understood that it had been done out of respect and concern for my happiness, but explained gently I needed to know how things were happening so I could control the project. The following management products assist in reviewing progress the issue Register contains details of all the formal issues raised during the project. Project Status Account provides a snapshot of the status of products within the project management stage or particular area of the project. Quality register records all planned and implemented quality activities and risk register records identified risks. You’ll find that in the Printery guide, page

150 and please remember to look at the outlines product descriptions for these products in appendix to where all product descriptions live. You will find the above four products in a twelve, a 18, a 23 and A 25 respectively for minorities that can be treated informally. As you’ve mentioned before, they can just be recorded in the daily log. Reporting Progress the frequency of reporting should reflect the level of control required and it is likely to vary during the project. For example, if the team is highly experienced, the less frequent reporting may be appropriate, whereas for an inexperienced team the project manager may wish to increase the frequency reporting until sufficient confidence has been gained on the capability of the team.

The following management products can be used for progress reporting checkpoint Report provides the project manager with details of progress against the work package and is typically produced by the team manager. Highlight report provides the project board with details of progress for the whole project or management stage. The project manager produces this report. End Stage report provides the project board with details of progress towards the end of each management stage except for the final stage, including information on the progress to date, the overall project situation, and together with the next stage plan, sufficient information to ask for a project board decision on what to do next in the project.

The report is produced by the project manager. A project report provides the project board with information needed to evaluate the project and authorized closure. It is produced by the project manager towards the end of the project. That’s from the Principal Guide page 152, one, five three please study table 12. 2 the responsibilities relevant to the progress theme on page 154. All these sorts of tables are very important for the examination. And in page one, five five, please read examples of progress evaluation techniques.

18. Tailoring the Themes part 2

The first reason is that Princeton can fit in with any organization. Organizations are good at what they do, and over the years they will have developed governance structures, policies and procedures for supporting projects. And they would have spent significant amounts of time and money training, management and staff in these systems. One day the organization realizes that to remove in competitive in the marketplace, they must improve how they manage their projects, and so they must consider using a project management method.

However, if that method negated all of the training and skills of the project management teams and required the organization to restructure the governance, rewrite all their policies and procedures and in considering the expense and the risk involved, plus all of the lost productivity while adapting to the new method, this is most likely lead to them rejecting the method. And it would quite rightly blame the method. Prince Two does not expect the organization to adapt to the Prince Two method. Instead, Prince Two adapts to the organization as the organization adopts Prints Two. This means aligning Prints Two to the organization’s governance and the HLR finance and program management systems already in place.

Tailoring Prince Two can even be changed in the Prince Two terminology to match the organization’s terminology to assist acceptance by the management and staff. The other main reason for tailoring is to ensure that the method does not overburden the staff. I was traveling on the freeway in a police car one day, and though I hadn’t been arrested, I was working on a project with the police and another car passed us. I could see on the screen in the police car that the other car was driving at more than the speed limit. The police officer did not chase after it. When I asked why, the officer said with the idea of the paperwork I would have to write up, it’s just not worth it. I go after them if they’re driving dangerously or doing more than 10% of the limit. And so when you are trying to manage projects efficiently, you don’t want to have your staff say to you that’s way too much paperwork to write up, it’s just not worth it.

You will always need controls on the project, but they must not burden the staff more than absolutely necessary. Or as Princeton puts it, project controls are appropriate to the project’s scale, complexity, importance, team capacity and risk e. G the frequency and formality of the reports and reviews. And secondly, effective project management requires information not necessary, documents and decisions, not necessarily meetings. That’s from the Principal guide, page 27. The main tailoring for the themes occurs in just two areas the organization theme and the plans theme. Tailoring the organization theme is centered on role descriptions. Princeton says role descriptions should be tailored and supplemented to include information that specifies the responsibilities, goals, limits of authority, relationships and skills, knowledge and experience required. And in the plans thing, tailoring is really very light because it’s only really centered on the customer supplier situation. And they talk about the contract, just making sure that there’s provision in the contract for proper plans to be put in place.

And also it talks about the rights of inspection and order that the customer has that’s related to what if you’ve created products on your site, the customer being able to come along and have a look at the products and make sure they agree the specification. And as you’ll see later, most of the tailoring actually occurs within the seven principal processes and very little in the themes. And we’ll cover all of the process tarot later on in detail.