Plans

• Purpose
• Defined
  • What is a plan?
  • What is planning?
  • Levels of plan
  • The Project Plan
  • Stage Plans
  • Team Plans
  • Exception Plans
• The PRINCE2 approach
  • Philosophy
  • Prerequisites for planning -
    design the plan
  • Define and analyse the products
• Prerequisites for planning
  • Write the Project Product Description
  • Create the product breakdown structure
  • Write the Product Descriptions
  • Create the product flow diagram
• Identify activities and dependencies
  • Activities
  • Dependencies
• Prepare estimates
• Prepare the schedule
  • Overview
  • Define activity sequence
  • Assess resource availability
  • Assign resources
  • Level resource usage
  • Agree control points
  • Define milestones
  • Calculate total resource requirements and costs
• Analyse the risks
• Document the plan
• Responsibilities

Key sections

• Introduction
• Business case
• Organization
• Quality
• Plans
• Risk
• Change
• Progress
• Introduction to processes
• Starting up a projectDirecting a project
• Initiating a project
• Controlling a stage
• Managing Product Delivery
• Managing a Stage Boundary
• Closing a Project
• Tailoring PRINCE2 to the project environment
• Directing Projects with PRINCE2

The PRINCE2® approach

Prepare the schedule

Level resource usage

The first allocation of resources may lead to uneven resource usage or over-utilization of some resources.
It may therefore be necessary to rearrange resources – this is called levelling.

Activities may be reassigned, or they may have start dates and durations changed within the slack available.

The end result is a final schedule with all activities assigned and resource utilization equating to resource availability.

The critical chain method of planning puts more emphasis on the resources required to execute the plan and their availability.
This is in contrast to traditional methods, which emphasize task order and rigid scheduling.
A critical chain network will tend to keep the resources levelly loaded, but will require them to be flexible in their start times and to switch quickly between tasks and task chains to keep the whole plan on schedule.

PRINCE2® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries.