Risk Assessment Scales

In the PRINCE2 Risk Management Approach, part of the Project Initiation Document (PID), you are asked to define the scales for probability and impact. In the PRINCE2 Risk theme you find an example using five levels of probability and five levels of impact.

This is a easy and straight forward way of scaling probability and impact, and you can make a nice 5x5 probability impact grid for visual purposes. But, PRINCE2 doesn't give you any help to define the levels of impact. Here is one suggestion that might help:

PowerPoint PRINCE2 Project Brief Template

In complex environments with high level of ambiguity, rich content in the shape of a document might be needed to describe objectives, scope, products, approach and roles. But for some projects, the context is known and the project environment quite clear. In these cases more structure can compensate for less rich content, and a PowerPoint slide deck might do the job as a project brief.

PRINCE2 2017

Mid-2017, AXELOS launched a new edition of the PRINCE2 guidance. The updated guidance comes with new exams, both PRINCE2 Foundation and PRINCE2 Practitioner.

According to AXELOS, the new PRINCE2 2017 Foundation exam is leaner and more focused on the core of PRINCE2, while PRINCE2 2017 Practitioner is focusing on the practical skills. If you trained and certified on PRINCE2 2009 Edition, should you retrain for PRINCE2 2017?

PRINCE2 Project Brief – Scope vs PPD

A common challenge in PRINCE2 Project Briefs and PRINCE2 Project Initiation Documents (PID) is that the Project Product Description (PPD) is repeating too much of the Scope description. Repeating something previously described brings no added value, annoys the reader and potentially draws the attention away from other important points to get alignment on.

In addition, many struggle to get specific on the “Customer’s quality expectations” resulting in a Project Product Description filled with too many general statements. Sounds familiar? If so, the guidance below could be helpful.

When is it a project?

PRINCE2 is only suitable for use on projects, but how do we know if we have a project or if we have “business as usual” (BAU)?

“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”. This is the PRINCE2 definition of a project. It is helpful, but the definition is not always sufficient to help you judge if you have a project or a collection of tasks. Below you find some additional help.

A Brief PRINCE2 Project Brief Template

Are you looking for a short and simple PRINCE2 Project Brief Template? If you bombard stakeholders and team members with long and content rich PRINCE2 documents, both you and the PRINCE2 method could be perceived as overly bureaucratic.

Keeping the documents short, writing in bullet points and using tables are useful tricks to signal efficiency and agility.

PRINCE2 – Hierarchy of Requirements

Product based planning is one of the most powerful techniques in PRINCE2, but where do you draw the line on how detailed a product description should be? Unlike PMBOK® Guide from PMI, PRINCE2 doesn’t explicitly deal with requirement management.

Who documents which level of requirements? What goes in the Project Product Description (PPD in the Project Brief and PID), what should be in the Product Descriptions and what do you do with the rest? Here are some advices:

PRINCE2 Agile - Stage vs Sprint.




PRINCE2 Agile - Stage vs Sprint

Those who have worked with agile methods like Scrum, and then are exposed to PRINCE2, can easily jump to the conclusion that a PRINCE2 stage is a Scrum sprint. Both in PRINCE2 Agile theory and in real life the link between a stage and a sprint is usually slightly different. 

The PRINCE2 Agile Organization

Organization is one of the seven PRINCE2 Themes and includes definitions of roles and responsibilities at different levels of the project organization. One of the most challenging dimensions of combining PRINCE2 and Agile is to design the organizational interface between the two. PRINCE2 Agile gives us some clear advice on the governance structure and some interface options to choose from. Let us have a closer look at these recommendation and the options.

What is PRINCE2 Agile?

PRINCE2 Agile is an extension to PRINCE2, combining the flexibility and responsiveness of agile delivery with the established and proven best practice framework of project management.

PRINCE2 Agile will guide practitioners on how to apply agile methods to PRINCE2 in the most effective way to produce a perfect blend of best practices. It covers a range of agile frameworks, including Scrum, Kanban and the more recent approaches including Lean Start-up and Cynefin.

3 Steps to Understand PRINCE2 in 1 Hour

PRINCE2 is a comprehensive project management method, and you can easily get lost in hundreds of pages of PRINCE2 theory.

Joining a course and signing up for certification is a good way to get some momentum, but you need to set aside 3-5 days to get this done.


 If your need is to get started fast or just need a good overview, you can set aside 1 hour to cover the following topics:

Does Design Input Replace PRINCE2 Product Descriptions?

There is one recurring question in most organizations introducing PRINCE2: “Does Design Inputs, like functional requirements or user requirements, for the end outputs of the project replace any Product Descriptions for these end outputs?”
 

The short answer is “no”. If you have detailed design input for a product to be made, there is no need to repeat these detailed requirements in the Product Description. This helps simplify the Product Description, but it doesn’t make it redundant because: