PRINCE2- 30 Minutes

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-Msk4ff8ewhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-Msk4ff8ew

 

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What is a Project ?

A project is a temporary organization that is created for the purpose of delivering one or more business products according to an agreed business case.

There a are quite a few business case to say how the project is temporary so there is light at the end of the tunnel really . It is important for us to understand what the project is here to do. And recognize that one the project is delivered what you need to do . The project then closes down. Business As Usual picks up and uses what the project has produced. 

isn't it produced for creating one or more business products . Now Prince 2 Calls everything a product .

Generally speaking there are two types of products .

1. Management Products : These are the products used to manage the project, such as the project plan, risk register, quality register, and issue register. These products are used by the project manager and other members of the project management team to keep track of progress, identify and manage risks, and ensure that quality standards are being met.

2. Specialist Products :These are the products created as a result of the project, such as the software application, the marketing campaign, or the new building. These products are the tangible deliverables of the project and are what the project is ultimately designed to create. Specialist products are created by the project team, working in collaboration with stakeholders and subject matter experts, and are used to achieve the project's objectives.

Business Case : Is show the justification for doing the project so they needs to see that there is a justification for the business to invest the time and the effort into this project do to have the benefits that they are going to have from it.

Here we have got two environment .

So a project is here to product a product and this is a specialist product that we will get to Business as usual at the end of the project and at the end of the day it is all just stuff.

Which we are going to hand over to the Business as Usual. for the users to use.

So the specialist products are really an output from the projects . And it all when the users start to use this product that when things will start to change in business as usual

Now the change is what is refereed to as the outcome . And outcome in business as usual is what we are hoping to achieve .

But with any sorts of change there are two side of change .

1. Positive Side
2. Negative Side

So prince2 calls a positive change the Benefit which is a measurable improvement for one or more stake holder. or a dis-benefit which is a negative change for a one or more stake holder.

So with all projects we must not only consider the benefits but also the negative knock on effect by the project existing as well.

One of the things while learning PRINCE2 is to learn the terminology. 

Now PRINCE2 is made of 4 integrated elements

• Principles
  Processes
  Tailoring to the Environment
  

Principles are guiding obligations and good practices which helps you determine whether if the  project is genuinely managed by PRINCE2 . And there are seven principles and if not all of them are applied they are not classed as PRINCE2.

So the principle are like the underlining rules that every project needs. But what with learned principles something that you would do as second nature. So as an example , if you are preparing a meal or a sandwitch before you touch any of the food one of the things that you will always do is wash your hands. This is something that you learned at some point in your life and now you do that automatically.

So the principles are similar type of thing it is something that you would do automatically . You will feel strange for the principles to be not in place.

 
Themes : These are addressed continually across the project . If I were preparing a meal the ingredients needed for the meal would be needed all the way while producing the meal so if he was making a Scottish pie . One of the ingredients that we would need is potatoes but they might look very different from the normal potatoes that we buy from the super market. So the potatoes will go through various different stages . We might need them from the very beginning to the end but they can look very different from what it looks early on.

Processes: The step-wise progression from the beginning of the project to the end of the project. If you want to make a scottish pie and you haven't done that before. You can step through a recipe to help you what needs to be done. And the process is just like following a recipe. Now the recipe tells you what to do with the ingredient at that point in time. And the processed doing for the same .

The processes step you through the project by telling you what needs to be done with the  themes at that point in time. not forgetting the principles or washing your hands all the way through in our project .

Tailoring : The final step is tailoring . Now tailoring is looking at the environment ,the size and complexity of your project and making sure it is appropriate for your project that you are working on . Going my the previous example of the scottish pie, of deciding to place the carrots in the middle, or around the pie . or the different way of how we will the scottish pie together.

And that's thinking about the environment the people that is involved and making sure that what we are producing is appropriate. Exactly the same as the PRINCE2 project.

PRINCIPLES: Now the principles are mentioned there , there are seven principles.

1. Continuous Business Justification :

The justification of doing the project . So the business case of showing the justification and this is not only going to be in the beginning of the project but the business cases of data that keeps pointing through out the project. to make sure that we continue to have that justification . 

2. Learn from Experience : 

This is all about not making the same mistake again and to learn from experience . Lets learn from things that happened before.

3. Define Roles and Responsibilities :

The different People involved in the projects , we need to make sure that they understand what their responsibilities are and also how they fit into the big structure of the project and people understand what their roles are what their responsibilities are .

4. Manage by Stages :

Breaking the project down into a more manageable chunks. If you are looking the project as a whole you can feel a little bit overwhelming , or you may not be able to plan to the right level of detail to the whole of the project so by breaking it into a more manageable stages, you know one stage at a time as we are coming towards the end of one stage near that point in time plan the next stage.

5. Manage by Exception:

Relating to tolerances . Tolerance is the permissible deviations around a planned target for time and cost that is the basics for tolerances . It is a matter of legal rule that we have .Now managing my exception is by agreeing between the Project Board and the Project Manager what needs to be done agreeing to the tolerances the lean way also possible. Means the project board don't need to be checking on the project manager every time every two minutes. To give a little bit of space to the Project Manager to manage the project . It is a much more efficient way of working. 

Manage by exception though relies on reporting . Regular report going to the Project Board reassure them that everything is okay. And in a situation where it is not okay forecast into that tolerance then we need to present an exception report to the board immediately.

6. Focus on Products :

Is about understanding that we know what is the end product is or have a good idea of what the end product is then we can start to make sure that we are planning to achieve that until the project environment

7. Tailor to suit the project environment:

Ties back to the four integrated element ties back to the four integrated elements that we already spoke about making sure that the formality and the structure that we are putting in place is appropriate environment that we are working within. So all the principles must be applied.

Themes :

To understand the themes we need to understand how these things are used across the processes.

So the Processes in PRINCE2

here we have got the diagram illustrated in all the different 7 Processes.

Corporate and Program Management:

Being the people who instigate the project the Mandate is what we receive is what kick starts the project.
It starts to think about the project itself could be in loads of different formats the Mandate.

While we see the Mandate it triggers first of our process of starting off the project Now in starting of a project we are wanting to ensure we have an understanding of what the project is about. First we need to ensure we have an Executive and a Project Manager appointed

Capture previous lessons goes back to the principle learned from experience to make sure we are learning before we get into the project itself 

Preparing the outline of business cases - a rough draft of the justification of doing this project itself what is the project about.

We also need to consider who else is need to be on the Project is part of the Project Management team make sure all the different stake holders actually have a voice on the Project .

The project approach despite of how we are going about the project . Is this something that we can do it ourselves. Do we need to go to the external third party . Do we need to upgrade something we have got or do we rent new or even something that is newly created.

And assemble in the project brief , bring in all the information together that we know about the project at this point in time so that we can present it to the Project Board to allow to move it forward

The final step here is to plan the initiation stage and that is what we are all going to go into do.

Starting of the project , we use a number of different themes one of the themes that we use is the 

Organization Theme

This is all about the different people that is needed on the project . These are the management level just above the project it self. These are the people who instigate the project within the project management team we have the project board who are directing the project . The Project Manager , managing the project on behalf of the project board and the team manager who is looking into the delivering of the specialist products. Now you might have notice how the Project management team can be abbreviated into PMT .

Project Management Team has three letters and the project management team has three teams .

One of the other themes that are available at the start of the project is the Business Case Theme

Now a Business case is something that evolves through out the project. At the start of the project we Outline a Business Case . But as we move forward into the initiation stage we would then be updating this as a full detailed business case. And as we are progressing in the project at the end of every stage we will then update the business case to make sure we have still got the justification to continue into the next stage . 

Once the Project Board receives the project brief and the initiation stage we will ask the Project Board to authorize us to move into initiating a Project

Now initiating a project is where we really do the planning of the project . 

Now the top of this diagram is talking about strategies . Now strategies are just procedures. Now the procedures of how you will risk all the take configuration management communication.

Ask the procedure to be specific to our project on the central area we create the project plan. So this is a high level view of everything that needs to be done in a project.

Set the Project Controls : Is putting up where the stage boundaries needs to be . Thinking about the reporting frequency to go to Project Board.

We find the business case , we created an outline business case in the start of the project . And now we will create the project plan -- This will have the estimates and the time scales and the costing for doing the project and that information can go into the business case. And now we can actually see the justification of delivering that project plan. Then everything from initiation of the project comes inside the project initiation documentation which is generally referred to it as the pit.

Now as part of initiation of the project there are various themes that is being used. One of the themes that is being used is the Risk theme. 

A Risk is something that is uncertain

So when we are putting the Project plan together we want to be considering what are the uncertainties that could effect as achieving project plan. 

When we are identifying Risks there as awesome words that we can look forward for help us to do that.

You see the words MAY, MIGHT, COULD within a sentence , what that sentence is describing is there is something that is uncertain and if that uncertainty is effecting your objective on that project then that is a risk to your objectives. 

So if a risk is something that is uncertain the issue is something that is certain if that is something that has happened or that will happen it was not planned.

Then that issue is something that must go to the Project Manager

to deal with it to investigate to look at

Quality :

One of the other themes that we look at while initiating the project is is Quality . Quality is such as all the way throw in the project . One of the key management products of quality is something called the Project Product Description. This is something that we create at the start of the project but it is referred throw all the way of the project . Because this is describing what the project must deliver in order to gain acceptance . It is describing the end product. 

If the end product is to produce a Car . Before we can start to do that we need to have a good understanding of what the customer is expecting. And within the Project Product description we have the Customer Quality expectation .

To go along the customer quality expectation we also have customer Acceptance criteria .

Which is a measurable definition of end product. So if I would like to have a fast car , having something measurable around that would be The car does 60MPh in 3 sec is pretty fast. The flashy car could be difficult to get into a measurable term , but we can always refer this to something that is already pre-defined. So if we looked at the car magazine that tend to publish the most popular 10 most desirable cars are if we specify that the car is in that top 10 desirable cars will that be acceptable we now have something that is measurable. So the project product description is really a key thing to ensuing the thing that we work towards achieving a quality and product.

The end product is often made of a number of other products which would each have its own product description. 

Describing the specific criteria for that product .

In an initiation of project we also mentioned about creating the project plan. Now the project plan is a high level view that every thing that needs to be done on a project. And all the products and activities that is to be done. As soon as  we identify the need for the project we must write a product description describing that product.

We also want to produce estimates for the time scales of the cost of the different products and activities and overall cost of delivering that project plan.

Project Control

Project control is about breaking the project plan into multiple stages to make it more manageable

So coming out of initiating a project PID - Project Initiation Document .

We have assembled the PID that we can take to the project board asking them to authorize the project we also go across Managing a Stage Boundary . Because in Managing the stage boundary is where we then produce the stage plan. which the Project manager reworks from on a day to day basis.

So just like while we create the Project Plan while creating the stage plan we need to identify all the different products like the product description to produce the estimate to give us the overall time and cost for doing that stage.

Now the project plan give guidance on what needs to go into the stage plan. But the stage plan will have much more detail than the project plan.

From managing a stage boundary we now have the stage plan we can take it to the project board who is also there to directing  the project.

So Authorize a project or Authorize a stage or an exception plan. The both are potentially done at the same time. So presenting a PID to Authorize the project and then we present a stage plan asking for that to be approved . Once the project board has authorized the stage , you then come down to 

-- Controlling the stage

Now Controlling the stage is where the PM will be for the majority of the time during the project giving out the workpackage to the team managing product delivery.

And the workpackage will contain details of everything a team manager must know about the work that needs to be done.

So the workpackage is the level for the team manager . So once they receive a workpackage they could then create team plan to show how the work in the workpack can actually be done.

Now as the teams are doing the work of managing the product delivery . They need to keep the project manager up-to-date as to how the work is progressing. This is where the checkpoint report is sent to the project manager which helps project manager to know how the project is progressing.

Now Progress is not only needed between the Project Manager and the Team Manager where we sent the checkpoint report we also need to make sure that the project board is kept up to date. 

The project manager will send regular high level report to the project board. This would be through a highlight report.

The project board is responsible for keeping the corporate and Programme manager update to date. This would be through a Highlight report

As far as reporting on progress we also we also need to think about tolerances each of the different levels of managements needs to work within their own tolerances. 

So the team manager will agree the tolerance as part of the workpackage with the project manager and if there is an problem with the tolerances they will sent an "issue" to the project manager.

Project Manager is working with the stage tolerances set by the project board and if there is any problem with the stage tolerances the Project Manager would sent an exception report  to the project board immediately.

Project Board would have to work with the tolerances set by the corporation of the program manager and if there is any forecast problem with the project tolerances an exception report is sent to the corporation and program manager immediately.

As we are coming towards the end of the stage from controlling the stage we come across to then managing a stage boundary

Where we would then plan the next stage update the project plan and the business case create an end stage report and hand it over to the project board asking for authorization to move into the next stage . If they give the authorization we are then back into controlling the stage giving out work packages to the team in managing product delivery . Checkpoint report back to controlling the stage and so on.

As we are coming to the of the stage if this is the final stage. We will then be moving across into closing an Project where we then want to confirm that all the product are completed . We will evaluate the project and then look at lessons that have been learned and move forward for the next project.

We would then hand over everything to the project board and they would formally authorize the project closure.