PRINCE2 project management method aims to provide a method to projects that can be applied to projects regardless of it’s type, organization, scale, geography or culture. This is possible because PRINCE2 method is principles-based. You can relate Principles as a good practices across different industries for managing a project.
A project is characterized as a PRINCE2 project based on whether the project adopts to these principles or not. There are 7 Principles defined in PRINCE2 method:
| Principle | Description |
| Continued business justification | A PRINCE2 project always has a continued business justification. It is always needed that for a PRINCE2 project : There is a justifiable reason to start the project. The justification remains valid throughout the life of the project and the justification is documented and approved. |
| Learn from experience | A PRINCE2 project teams always learn from their previous experience. It is needed that these lessons learnt are sought, recorded and acted upon throughout the life of the project by the project teams. |
| Defined roles and responsibilities | A Project has many and varied stakeholders. So it is a need of a PRINCE2 project that it should define and agree roles and responsibilities within an organization structure that engages the all it’s stakeholder interests categorized under business, user and supplier |
| Manage by stages | A PRINCE2 project is planned, monitored and controlled on a stage-by-stage basis. A stage is considered as a Management stage provides senior management with control points at major intervals throughout the project. These control points allow them to review the project progress at regular intervals. Shorter stages offer more control, while longer stages reduce the burden on senior management. Planning can only be done to a level of detail that is manageable and foreseeable. A great deal of effort can be wasted on attempts to plan beyond a sensible planning horizon. PRINCE2 overcomes the planning horizon issue by Dividing the project into a number of management stages |
| Manage by exception | A PRINCE2 project has defined tolerances for each project objective to establish limits of delegated authority. PRINCE2 enables appropriate governance by defining distinct responsibilities for directing, managing and delivering the project and clearly defining accountability at each level. Accountability is established by: Delegating authority from one management level to the next by setting tolerances against six objectives for the respective level of the plan: Time, Cost, Quality, Scope, Risk and Benefit. Setting up controls so that if those tolerances are forecast to be exceeded, they are immediately referred up to the next management layer for a decision on how to proceed Putting an assurance mechanism in place so that each management layer can be confident that such controls are effective. This implementation of ’management by exception’ provides for very efficient use of senior management time |
| Focus on products | A PRINCE2 project always focuses on defining and delivering products. This approach is called as Product based Planning. It allows project to deliver the products in specific their quality requirements as per customers quality expectations. |
| Tailor to suit the project | PRINCE2 method recommends that your project should be tailored to suit the project’s need of environment, size, complexity, importance, capability and risk. The main purpose of tailoring the project is to: Ensure that project controls are based on the project’s scale, complexity, importance, capability and risk. If PRINCE2 project is not tailored, it is possible that the project management effort and approach are not appropriate for the needs of the project. This may lead to project management efforts being leaning towards ’robotic’ management (the method is followed without question) or ’heroic’ project management (the method is not followed at all). |