PRINCE2 Approach to Progress

Progress control involves measuring actual progress against the performance targets of time, cost, quality, scope, benefits and risk and using this information to make decisions, such as:

• Whether to approve the stagger work package

• Whether to escalate deviations from plan

• Whether to permit surely close the project and so on and then to take actions as required

PRINCE2 provides progress control through:

• Delegating more authority from one level of management to the other level

• Dividing the project into management stages and authorizing the project

One stage of the time and by using time driven and events driven progress reporting and reviews and when necessary raising exceptions. The project controls should be documented in the project initiation documentation. The principle of management by exception uses six types of tolerance against which a project can be controlled. The project board who have overall control of the project level, as long as forecast remains within project tolerance and will allocate tolerance for each management stage for the project manager. Then we have the project manager who has day to day control for a management stage within the tolerance limits laid down by the project board and the team manager who has control for work package.

Work package tolerances from the project manager to the team manager

The team manager passes information about work package progress and issues to the project manager. The project manager passes information about stage progress up to the project board along with flaking any exceptions. The project board pass information about project progress back up to corporate program management again as well as pointing out any exceptions. The main controls available to the project board include:

Project Manager Controls

The main controls available to the project manager include:

1. Authorization

Project Manager authorization occur during the process controlling a stage. Project manager will be responsible for agreeing authorization work packages and work package tolerances.

2. Progress updates

These include checkpoint reports produced by team managers all team members and when dealing with exceptions and changes. The project manager will use project registers and logs to review progress and identify issues and risks that may need to be resolved

3. Management Stages

The Management stages are partitions of the project with management decision points. A management stage is a collection of activities and products whose delivery is managed as a unit. As such, this stage is a subset of the project and in PRINCE2 terms it is the element of work that the project manager is managing on the behalf of the project board any one time.

Management stages provide review and decision points, giving the project board the opportunity to assess the project viability at regular intervals. Managers stages also give the ability to ensure the key decisions which are made prior to the detailed work needed to implement there.

Towards the end of each stage the project manager will review the business case and project plan and he will update the project documentation with the results of the stage and create an end state report and a stage plan to request for an isolation to commence the next management stage. The end stage reports together with the stage plan for the next stage should contain all the information necessary to enable the project board to conduct an end stage assessment and make a decision as to whether to proceed.

The project board only authorizes the next management stage if there is sufficient business justification to continue. The project board delegates the authority for day to day control of the stage within agreed tolerances to the project manager. The use of management stages in a PRINCE2 project is mandatory but the number of stages is flexible it depends on the scale and risk of the project.