Management stages are the main way that the Project Board keeps control over a PRINCE2 project. They are covered in the PRINCE2 Controls component which forms part of the PRINCE2 courses offered by Knowledge Train.
One of the fundamental concepts within PRINCE2 is the concept of management stages. The reason for having management stages is to allow the Project Board to review progress to date and decide upon continuing viability of the project. Every project must have at least 2 management stages – the Initiation Stage plus at least one other.
At the end of every stage the Project Board performs an End Stage Assessment where they review the progress made during the stage just ending, check the Business Case remains viable and approve the next Stage Plan, thereby approving the commitment of resources and expenditure to the next stage.
By committing stage by stage, this avoids the situation where possibly large sums of money are committed at the beginning of the project and there is no subsequent possibility of reviewing that commitment. This would be a risky approach to spending the money of the organisation. Applying the PRINCE2 concept of management stages thereby lessons this risk.
Since management stages are decision points, it therefore makes sense to plan the stages of a project at feasible durations (planning horizons). It is not feasible to try to plan in detail for a long time into the future because of the many uncertainties that exist. If this were tried, the plan would inevitably have to change. Therefore it is sensible only to plan in detail for the foreseeable future (the next management stage). This means that the Project Plan contains high level, long term forecasts and Stage Plans contain short term detailed forecasts.
This article was taken from the booklet Concise PRINCE2™ (PRINCE2 ™ is a Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce) which was offered to students as part of the PRINCE2 training course (version 2005) by Knowledge Train. This booklet has been based on OGC (PRINCE2™) material. Reproduced under licence from OGC.
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