Control system
Project team membership
Control is considered in more detail elsewhere and under PRINCE2® 2005 as the component ‘Controls’ and within the process 'Controlling a Stage (CS)'.
In addition, PRINCE2 2009 covers the area of project control within the theme Progress.
[see Progress - purpose]
The purpose of the Progress theme is to establish mechanisms to monitor and compare actual achievements against those planned; provide a forecast for the project objectives and the project’s continued viability; and control any unacceptable deviations.
Two of the principles of PRINCE2 are managing by stages and continued business justification.
The Progress theme provides the mechanisms for monitoring and control, enabling the critical assessment of ongoing viability.
The membership of all the main project control teams must be recorded.
This would include the project management team and the Project Board for PRINCE2.
Any experiences of the teams should be noted and their areas of expertise.
The recruitment of these teams will be critical to the success of the project and should be considered carefully.
Each position should have its own Team Role description which outlines all of the responsibilities of the position.
These are fully described as part of PRINCE2 in the product package.
Management committee structure
The key management committees will be the project management team and the Project Board.
The latter may be called other things, for example a Steering Committee.
You will need to give good consideration to how they are structured and how they are organised and run.
Project lifecycle
This refers to the entire project from start to end.
It will be broken down into various stages which must be ratified at senior management level.
Note the use of the word ‘lifecycle’ to describe the overall schedule of the entire project, the start, middle and end.
This should not be confused with ‘lifespan’ which is the period of existence of a ‘product’.
The product ‘lifespan’ will include various phases such as conception through to development, testing operation and final removal of a product that will be replaced with something else.
Project reporting
All projects will be managed by exception.
That is, the project will be on track unless you report otherwise.
The main reporting will be at milestones but other reports will be required to manage project progress.
A simple template is provided in the product package.
Schedule
Control of the revision, issue and recall of the schedule and any other documents is paramount.
This is covered under PRINCE2 [see ‘The Complete Project Management plus PRINCE2’] with the use of Configuration Management.
PRINCE2® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries.