PRINCE2 Project Environment and Tailoring
The project environment
PRINCE2 is designed to be tailored to the project's environment. Tailoring is the deliberate adaptation of the method - its principles, themes, processes, roles and management products - to suit the project's scale, complexity, importance, capability and risk. Tailoring is itself a principle, so it is mandatory to tailor; what varies is how.
What you must understand
Know that a project is a temporary organization created to deliver one or more business products according to an agreed Business Case, and that it sits within a wider programme or portfolio and organizational context. Understand the difference between projects, programmes and portfolios, and how embedding PRINCE2 means adapting it to the organization's culture, governance and existing methods. Tailoring decisions should be recorded in the project initiation documentation, often in a tailoring section.
Traps in questions
Watch for options implying PRINCE2 must be applied "by the book" with all documents - that contradicts the tailoring principle. Equally, options that drop principles or skip themes entirely are wrong: you may combine, simplify or omit products and activities, but not principles. Another trap is confusing tailoring (adapting the method) with embedding (adopting the method across an organization). Also be alert to questions about scaling for small projects - combining roles or shortening processes is acceptable if justified.
Rule of thumb
Tailor the how, never the whether: principles always apply; themes must be addressed; processes and products can be combined, scaled or simplified with justification recorded in the PID.
Worked example: A small, low-risk project combines the project manager and team manager roles and merges some management products into a single document. This is acceptable tailoring because principles are still applied and the decision is recorded and justified.