PRINCE2 practices
The seven practices
PRINCE2 7 has seven practices: business case, organizing, plans, quality, risk, issues and progress. Each is an aspect of project management that must be continually addressed, and each has a purpose, activities, products and tailoring options. A Practitioner candidate must know each practice's purpose, its main products, who is accountable, and how it can be tailored.
Concepts and traps
- Business case: the executive is accountable for the business case and its continual justification; benefits management sits here. Trap: treating it as finance-only, or as the project manager's document.
- Organizing: roles, responsibilities and the communication management approach. Trap: confusing role combination with merged accountability.
- Plans: product-based planning, stage and team plans. Trap: assuming a plan must be a Gantt chart.
- Quality: quality planning, control and assurance, quality register. Trap: confusing quality assurance with quality control.
- Risk: risk management approach, appetite and tolerance, cause-event-effect. Trap: treating issues and risks as synonyms.
- Issues: issue register, change control, recommended actions, lessons. Trap: changes bypassing change control.
- Progress: tolerances, checkpoint, end stage and exception reports, linked to manage by exception.
Worked example
A risk register holds twenty risks but no owners, no response plans and no agreed tolerance for how much risk the board will accept. The risk practice is not really being applied. Remedy: agree the risk management approach (appetite, tolerance, scales, roles), assign owners and responses, and report against tolerance.
Rule of thumb
For any practice, ask four questions: purpose, key products, accountable role, tailoring. That resolves most Practitioner scenarios.