PRINCE2® processes: Free ebook

This study guide describes the PRINCE2 processes. It’s the third in a series of three study guides designed to prepare you for attending the PRINCE2 Foundation course. The other two - the PRINCE2 Principles and the PRINCE2 Themes - are available to download as ebooks. They are all based upon the 2017 version of PRINCE2.Read on to learn all about the PRINCE2 processes and prepare yourself for the Foundation exam.

PRINCE2 processes

Processes describe who is responsible for taking decisions and when. Processes are where the principles and themes of PRINCE2 are applied.There are 7 processes in PRINCE2:

1. Starting up a project

PurposeThe purpose is to answer one simple question: “is the project viable and worthwhile?”Objectives

To appoint those who will work during the initiation stage and those who will take significant project management roles in the project;
To ensure there is a plan (initiation stage plan) for the work required during the initiation stage;
To ensure the initiation stage is based upon sound assumptions regarding the project’s scope, timescales, acceptance criteria and constraints.

Pre-project process

This process is a pre-project process. The process is about filtering out the badly-conceived projects from the good ones. After, all it’s only sensible to initiate the good ideas for projects and to discard the bad ones before any serious time and money is wasted.

Project mandate

The trigger for the project is a project mandate (a trigger is an event or decision which “triggers” one of the processes) which comes from the highest levels within the customer organization (i.e. ‘corporate or programme management, or the customer’). From now on, we will refer to them as corporate management.

The project mandate (at a minimum) should provide the reasons for undertaking the project and should also identify the prospective executive of the project board.

Define roles and responsibilities

Before the project is commissioned (initiated) key roles and responsibilities for doing the work during the first stage (known as the initiation stage) must be resourced and allocated – i.e. it must be identified who is going to write the business case and the project plan.

Outline business case

The executive is responsible for creating the outline business case, which will explain how the project fits in with corporate management objectives and how (i.e. from which budget) the project will be funded. The executive is responsible for securing this funding.

Outputs

The 2 main outputs are:

Project Brief – this ensures that the project has an agreed and well-defined start point
Initiation Stage Plan – this covers all the work to be done during the initiation stage (the first stage of the project) and the project manager must review the lessons log for lessons relating to the project controls to be used during initiation.

2. Directing a project

Purpose

The purpose is to enable the project board to make key decisions and exercising overall control over the project, whilst delegating the day-to-day management of the project to the project manager. This enables the project board to be accountable for the project’s success.

Objectives

To ensure that:

there is authority to initiate the project, deliver the project’s products, and to close the project
management direction and control are provided throughout the project’s life
the project remains viable
corporate management has an interface to the project
plans for realizing the post-project benefits are managed and reviewed.

This process starts after the starting up a project process has completed and is triggered by a request to initiate the project.