The PRINCE2 process Starting Up a Project is one of the eight processes in PRINCE2 and forms part of the PRINCE2 courses offered by Knowledge Train.
This process is triggered off by a Project Mandate, which sets out the reasons for doing a project and what is expected to be achieved. It is also possible that it may contain high level estimates of time and cost for the project. The Project Mandate is supplied by Corporate/Programme Management. This process is a pre-project process and is concerned with deciding if the project is sensible. During this process, the project management team is established, a Project Brief and Project Approach are written.
The Project Brief is based upon the Project Mandate but expands upon it to provide more detail so that the Project Board can make an informed decision about whether or not to proceed to the Initiation Stage of a Project. The Project Approach describes at a high level how all the work shall be done e.g. by outsourcing, performed in-house or by implementing an off the shelf solution. Finally an Initiation Stage Plan is developed which shows all of the management work that must be done in the Initiation Stage.
The Project Brief and Initiation Stage Plan are then handed to the Project Board who are asked to provide authorisation to the Project Manager to proceed to the Initiation Stage of the project. By providing this authorisation the Project Board are committing themselves to the providing the necessary expenditure and resources that are required.
This process is performed by the Project Manager once for a project.
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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