Principles: the non-negotiable foundations of PRINCE2
What you must know
PRINCE2 has seven principles: continued business justification, learn from experience, defined roles and responsibilities, manage by stages, manage by exception, focus on products, and tailor to the project environment. In the current edition they sit alongside the practices and the People element as one of the method's core elements.
Candidates are expected to explain why they are principles rather than optional techniques. They are universal (they apply to every project, whatever its size, sector or delivery approach), self-validating (they embody proven good practice), and empowering (they give the project board confidence that the project is being run properly). Crucially, they must be applied all together; a project that applies only a selection is not using PRINCE2.
Traps in questions
- Tailoring is itself a principle, so principles are never 'tailored out'. What you tailor is the how of the practices and processes, not the principles themselves.
- Each scenario description usually maps to one principle only. Manage by exception is about tolerances and only escalating when a tolerance is forecast to be breached. Manage by stages is about breaking the project into reviewable chunks with board decisions between them. Focus on products is about defining and agreeing products and their quality criteria before doing the work.
- Learn from experience is not just 'keep a lessons log'; it means acting on lessons throughout, not only at closure.
Rule of thumb
If you could sensibly drop it on a small, low-risk project, it is a practice or a process activity, not a principle. Principles survive every tailoring decision.