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Unit 1: Introduction to Software Project Management

5. Managing Stage Boundaries: This process engages preparing for the next stage and Notes
reviewing the current stage. The Project Manager makes suggestions to the PB about the
likelihood of the project achieving its business objectives and any changes in the business
case, project plan, risks and issues. When a project has clear stage boundaries it can be
simply controlled and managed by permitting the project to continue only once the PB is
satisfied with the current stage end and next stage plan.
6. Planning: Each project plan, stage plan and team plan must believe key planning aspects.
These include what products to produce, the activities required to produce these products,
estimated resources (including costs and time), scheduling the activities and analyzing
risks. By following the PRINCE2 planning process all these points are conducted in a
sensible, logical sequence. Ensuring consistency enables plans to be compared and
streamlines the planning process.
7. Managing Product Delivery: The objective of a PRINCE2 project is to deliver products.
A product can be a physical thing such as a poster or it could be an intangible deliverable
such as a service or sales agreement. In fact everything produced in PRINCE2 (even a
document) is called a product. Often a Project Manager does not create the product. A third
party supplier and/or their colleagues may do some or all of the work. It is the Project
Manager’s responsibility to ensure that the supplier produces the correct products at the
right time by providing a description of the work to be done.
8. Closing a Project: At the end of the project, after its products have been delivered, the
project is closed down with approval of the PB. The Project Manager plans what will be
done to assess the project’s outcome, which is called the Post Project Review (PPR).
A controlled close down is in effect the last provable PRINCE2 project action. Any lessons
learned are recorded, resources are released and the Post Project Review Plan (PPRP) is
created.
The key concepts that are fundamental to PRINCE2 are:
 Control: Being able to control your project is key to its achievement. For this reason
PRINCE2 breaks down projects into easily managed stages, essentially breaking a large
project into ‘bite size chunks’.

 Quality: To ensure that a product (or service) meets the customer’s quality prospect these
must be defined and agreed when a project is being planned.

 Planning: In PRINCE2 planning does not end once the project has started. Of the eight
PRINCE2 processes all but one engage planning, even the final process.
 Lesson Learned: Every time we carry out a project we learn something. All lessons, mistakes,
ideas or successes are detained in the Lessons Learned Log. At the end of the project these
are collated into a Lessons Learned Report, allowing others in the organization to benefit
from them.
Application Area

PRINCE2 is a project management methodology owned and preserved by the OGC in the UK. It
summarizes best practice from a variety of industries and backgrounds. PRINCE2 has been
adopted by the National Health Service as its favored methodology and a number of governments’
worldwide are looking at adopting it as their standard project management methodology.
PRINCE2 is one of the few government standards that have grown organically to be adopted by
both private and public organizations. Some organizations that use PRINCE2 as a project
management methodology are the UK Police Forces, Rolls Royce, the British Medical Association,
Norwich Union, the UK Department of Justice and London Underground.

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