The plans component is covered in all PRINCE2 training courses offered by Knowledge Train.
Plans define what needs to be achieved by a project, how it shall be achieved, who shall achieve it and by when. Apart from allowing us to plan ahead, plans also provide a mechanism for communicating with those who need to know the what, how, who, where and when. A third important use of plans is as a yardstick against which progress can be measured. Plans can be regarded as the ‘backbone’ of the management information system required for a project.
Time must be set aside on a project to perform adequate planning. However it is important to understand that different levels of the project management team requires a different level of plan. One of the reasons for requiring different levels of plan is that it is impossible to forecast accurately a long way into the future. Therefore any plan which tries to forecast a long way into the future should remain at a high level.
In PRINCE2, such a plan is known as the Project Plan and its purpose is to identify the major products, activities and resources required on the project. It identifies the total cost and time required and shall break up the project into ‘stages’. The Project Plan is used by the Project Board as a baseline against which to monitor project progress and costs stage by stage. The Project Plan should have tolerances assigned to it for both time and cost and these are set by Corporate/Programme Management.
Each stage of the project requires a Stage Plan which provides more detail than the Project Plan because it forecasts only for the foreseeable future (in other words for the next stage of the project). Each Stage Plan should identify the products to be produced, the resources involved in performing the work and the dates and personnel involved in any quality checks. The Project Board sets a tolerance to the Stage Plan for time and cost within which the Project Manager needs to manage the stage.
The Stage Plan is used by the Project Manager as a basis for day to day control of the project and it should be updated with the actual progress being made during the stage. By doing so, the Project Manager can determine if the stage is deviating beyond the agreed tolerance and if so, can escalate the matter to the Project Board for a decision.
If the project employs separate Team Managers, then the Stage Plan can be broken down into subsets to create an appropriate Team Plan which the Team Manager then uses to assign work to, and monitor progress by the team members. The Team Plan also contains tolerances agreed by the Project Manager and if these are likely to be exceeded, then the Team Manager must escalate the matter to the Project Manager in an Exception Report.
One other plan which forms part of the PRINCE2 method is known as an Exception Plan. This is a plan which is created when an existing plan is forecast to exceed its agreed tolerances. This could occur to any Team Plan, Stage Plan or Project Plan and if approved, replaces the existing plan which was forecast to exceed its agreed tolerances. An Exception Plan always covers the period of time from the date the tolerance threat was identified to the end of the plan which was forecast to exceed its tolerances.
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.
No part of this work may be reproduced, transcribed, or used in any form or by any means – graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, web distribution, or information storage and retrieval systems – without the prior written permission of the publisher.
©2008 Knowledge Train Limited unless otherwise stated.
