The PRINCE2 process Managing Stage Boundaries (SB) is performed at the end of a management stage. This process forms part of all of the PRINCE2 courses offered by Knowledge Train.
At the end of each stage, the Project Manager needs to plan the next stage in detail. This process describes the main things that the Project Manager does at these points in the project. Essentially, this involves a number of steps:
a: creating a next Stage Plan which is a detailed plan of all of the work for the next stage.
b: modifying the Project Plan to take into account what happened on the stage just finishing. On all projects except for the very smallest, what actually happens on a project is quite often different to what was forecast to happen in terms of cost and time. Therefore, at the end of a stage, these ‘actuals’ must be reflected back into the forecasts for the project as a whole.
c: modifying the Business Case to take into account the new forecasts which have been updated in the Project Plan and any new circumstances
d: modifying the Risk Log to take into account the current risk situation. Since the risks may not have been looked at since the previous end of stage, PRINCE2 recommends that at a minimum risks should be reviewed at each stage end.
e: writing an End Stage Report which summarises what was achieved on the stage just ending, the new risk situation, any changes to the Business Case and Project Plan. This report and the next Stage Plan is then sent to the Project Board who decide whether or not to approve the next Stage Plan and therefore commit resources and expenditure to the next stage.
This process is performed at the end of each stage and also when the Project Manager writes an Exception Plan in response to an exception situation. After writing an Exception Plan, the Project Manager performs all of the above steps except for the first one.
This process is performed by the Project Manager once for each stage of the project and when creating an Exception Plan.
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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