Lesson 02: Planning the Project
We talked about starting up a project in the previous lesson. In the end, the Project Brief and a plan for the next stage were prepared. How do you think we should proceed?
Based on AXELOS PRINCE2® material. Reproduced under licence from AXELOS. All rights reserved.
Note: PRINCE2 2017 edition is now called PRINCE2 6th edition.
- 00:11 – The second process is the Initiation Process, also known as the Initiation Stage
- 00:17 – I also call this the Planning Stage as 80% of the work here is planning
- 00:23 – So where are we?
- 00:24 – Well, the SU process has just ended
- 00:27 – The Project Manager has just asked the Project Board to make their first decision
- 00:32 – So what will the Project Board check?
- 00:34 – Well, they will check the Business Case, the benefits, and perhaps the impact and the strategy of the organization
- 00:42 – If the decision is no, the project management team will be disbanded and the reasons should be documented
- 00:49 – The Project Manager can then move on to a new project and evaluate a new idea and that may turn into a project
- 00:57 – If the decision is yes, then this project can continue
- 01:02 – So let’s say the decision is yes, and the Initiation Stage can now start
- 01:07 – Also, the project has now officially started with this first decision
- 01:13 – So, a common question is actually, “When does a project officially start?”
- 01:17 – And the answer is, it starts with this first decision by the Project Board
- 01:23 – And before that, we had the Pre-Project Process or the SU process
- 01:28 – The full name of this process is Initiating a Project
- 01:32 – I use IP for short, and the Project Manager runs this IP process and the User Stage Plan to do this
- 01:41 – The role here of the Project Manager is to facilitate the IP process
- 01:45 – So, organize meetings, decide on which documents to use, set up the log files and registers, and so on
- 01:54 – One of the first things a Project Manager wants to do is to get a good idea of the scope of the project
- 01:59 – So they will invite users or senior users and team specialists and business analysts to one or more workshops
- 02:08 – And they can use Post-Its or Mind Maps or other tools to try to get a better idea of the scope
- 02:14 – So they do a product breakdown
- 02:16 – Actually, the name of this diagram is Product Breakdown Structure
- 02:21 – They identify the products in the project and they can then assign a name and an ID number
- 02:27 – They can also start to describe the products and create what we call Product Description Documents
- 02:33 – So these are requirements documents, and the business analysts and team managers should help to extract this data
- 02:41 – So what kind of information do we gather in each Product Description Document?
- 02:47 – Well, we should gather the purpose; so, why we need this product?
- 02:52 – The components, so the main components of the product, the quality criteria
- 02:57 – So these are mainly requirement specifications
- 03:00 – And quality testing, so how can the teams prove that the work is done?
- 03:08 – We call these requirements documents then product descriptions as I have already mentioned
- 03:13 – And we can have a product description for each item in the product breakdown structure diagram
- 03:20 – The Project Manager can organize many workshops
- 03:23 – but you don’t need to identify and document 100% of the products before the project starts
- 03:31 – For example, in software projects, you are lucky if you get 40% of the product descriptions done
- 03:37 – The rule here is just document what you can
- 03:41 – The other product descriptions can be filled in later when more is known about the project and users will start to see some deliverables
- 03:50 – So they will get a better feeling of their own requirements
- 03:54 – If you try to document all the requirements now, you are just guessing
- 03:59 – And this can be very harmful and dangerous as you will create products that nobody will use
- 04:06 – Next, the Project Manager will start to think about the effort required to create the products
- 04:12 – So who do you think will help to do this?
- 04:16 – Well, it has to be people with experience creating such products
- 04:20 – And this will be the team manager as they have the knowledge
- 04:24 – The team manager will start to define activities for the products
- 04:29 – And then look at the dependencies between the products and then an estimate for each product
- 04:35 – Again, this is all based on their experience
- 04:39 – The team manager can help the Project Manager and should help the Project Manager to complete the Project Plan
- 04:45 – They will calculate the effort and the cost for each product where possible
- 04:50 – And then the project manager can have an estimate for the project
- 04:55 – So actually, when do we know the full cost of a project?
- 05:01 – We don’t know actually until the very end of the project, just before the budget is shut down
- 05:07 – So up until then, we are always estimating
- 05:10 – And this is the first time here we do a good estimate after the Project Plan has been done
- 05:16 – A common risk here, if user interest and effort to give requirements is low
- 05:22 – Then there will no real ownership of these requirements
- 05:25 – So the project will create products that nobody wants
- 05:28 – So that’s an important risk to watch out for
- 05:32 – The name of this plan is the Project Plan
- 05:35 – It is a high level plan for the whole project
- 05:40 – So that’s it for the Project Plan
- 05:42 – This will be kept up-to-date during the project
- 05:45 – Next, we can focus on the next big document for the IP process, which is the Business Case
- 05:53 – Remember, the outline Business Case was created in the SU process
- 05:59 – And this was part of the Project Brief
- 06:01 – The outline Business Case is normally a wild estimate
- 06:05 – But now we have much more information on the cost as we have just completed the Project Plan
- 06:11 – So the Project Manager will use some information from the outline Business Case to create the Project Plan
- 06:18 – And then use other information from the Project Plan and update the return on investment calculation
- 06:24 – The Project Manager can also add benefits information and a summary of the major risks
- 06:31 – So the main two outputs of the IP process are the Project Plan and the Business Case
- 06:37 – Remember that the Project Plan also includes the product descriptions, which are the requirements documents
- 06:44 – There are other documents and these will be discussed later
- 06:48 – The majority of the documents from the IP process then become part of the PID
- 06:53 – And this stands for Project Initiation Documentation
- 06:57 – So, all the documents from the Initiation Stage
- 07:01 – So, see the PID as just a collection of documents
- 07:05 – This can be put into a map or it can be shared on a shared folder
- 07:11 – Next discuss is the benefits
- 07:13 – The Project Manager here will ask the following question to the senior user
- 07:19 – “What are the expected benefits of this project over the next years?”
- 07:25 – And then the Project Manager should write these down as it helps to hold the senior user accountable
- 07:31 – Otherwise, then they over-exaggerate to help to make sure that their project is prioritized over others
- 07:39 – So, write these down
- 07:42 – The benefits are added to a document that we call the Benefits Management Approach Document
- 07:48 – And we can have the benefits over the next couple of years
- 07:50 – So the benefits for year 1, year 2 and year 3
- 07:54 – And the kind of benefits we can write down are like sales increases, cost reductions, customer retention and so on
- 08:03 – The Project Manager will also set up a number of register files
- 08:07 – And this is normally done at the start of the IP process
- 08:11 – So, for example, Issue and Risk Register
- 08:13 – And they can also use a spreadsheet for this; this makes it easy
- 08:17 – Remember that up to now, we stored issues in the daily log in the SU process
- 08:24 – but these can now be transferred to these register files
- 08:29 – So the three register files are the Risk Register, the Issue Register and the Quality Register
- 08:35 – And organizations can have their own formats for these registers
- 08:40 – These are the main documents from the IP process
- 08:43 – The Project Manager is now ready to think about the plan for the next delivery stage
- 08:48 – And this is where the teams will start to deliver the products
- 08:53 – Remember, the Project Plan is a high-level plan for the whole project
- 08:57 – But the Project Manager needs a plan for each stage
- 09:01 – This would be a more day-to-day plan that they can use and we call this a Stage Plan
- 09:08 – It’s best to see the stage boundary process like a timeout between stages
- 09:14 – So here the Project Manager will review the last stage and plan the next stage
- 09:19 – The team manager will help the Project Manager to create the stage plan for the next stage
- 09:25 – And the Project Manager will report on the last stage
- 09:30 – The IP process is now complete
- 09:32 – Next, the Project Manager asks the Project Board for permission to continue with the project
- 09:38 – So the Project Manager will give all the documents in the PID to the Project Board
- 09:45 – So this is the second decision then by the Project Board
- 09:49 – They will look at the Project Plan, the Business Case, the expected benefits and major risks
- 09:55 – And if the decision is yes, then they will allocate a budget for the whole project
- 10:01 – Note, they don’t give all the money at once to the Project Manager as they give out money stage by stage
- 10:08 – The Project Board will then be asked to make a third decision
- 10:11 – This is to allow the next stage to continue
- 10:14 – So the last decision was to allow the whole project to continue or the rest of the project to continue
- 10:20 – But this stage is just the next stage
- 10:23 – So the Project Board will review the stage plan and if yes, they will release the budget for this stage
At this point, the project is planned, and we’re ready to start developing the product. We’ll talk about product delivery stages next. Do you have any ideas on how they should be?
Quiz
- What’s the name of the first stage in the project?
- To know the product, we break it down into its building elements. What’s the name of this concept?
- How do we explain the building elements of the product?
- What’s the name of the high-level plan we create for the whole project in the initiation stage?
- What’s the name of our detailed plans?
- In which document do we explain the justification of the project, and when do we create it?
- What’s the name of the package that contains most of the plans, management strategies, and other basic documents that we create in the initiating stage?
- What are the 3 main outputs of the initiation stage?
- What registers do we create for the project?
- What are the second and third Project Board decisions about?
- Initiation stage
- Product Breakdown Structure
- Using Product Descriptions. Product Descriptions explain the scope and quality of each element.
- Project Plan
- Stage Plan. Remember that we prepare the stage plans one stage at a time, not all in the beginning.
- Business Case. It’s first outlined in pre-project (starting up a project process), and then refined in the initiation stage (initiating a project process)
- Project Initiation Documentation (PID)
- PID, next Stage Plan, Benefits Management Approach
- Risk Register, Issue Register, and Quality Register.
- The second one is about checking the PID and approving the project. The third one is about checking the next Stage Plan and authorizing the stage to begin.
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