The PRINCE2™ themes are facets of a project that should be managed continually. If you devote time and attention to all these facets, you will provide a professional service.
The facets of your project are intertwined like the facets of a precious jewel. You should hold that jewel carefully in your hands and rotate it slowly looking for inclusions within or blemishes on the surface.
| ......Theme...... | ...Description... | ...Answers... |
|---|---|---|
| Business case | The idea to provide benefit to the organisation concerned that starts a project. This theme focuses on how to turn that idea into an investment proposal with ROI and how to set the course for the rest of the project. | Why? |
Organization |
This theme describes the roles and responsibilites in the project team. |
Who? |
Quality |
Our initial idea as a broad outline need further explanation. This theme exposes the quality attributes of the products to be delivered. And then how the project will deliver them. |
What? |
Plans |
Our project will proceed on the basis of a series of approved stage plans. This theme set out how to develop those plans using a range of PRINCE2™ techniques. You will develop a range of plans of differing details attuned to the audience you are communicating with. |
How? How much? When? |
Risk (my favourite) |
Our projects are uncertain as we have not done this before. This theme addresses how to manage the uncertainty and quantify the risk. It helps us fidn out what it is we don't know about. From the US Secretary of Defence; Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones. |
What if? |
Change |
This theme show us how to find and address issues that can knock our project off course. Baseline the plans developed earlier and look for divergence. These can be general problems, requests for change or quality failures requireing rework. |
What's the impact? |
Progress |
How are your plans going? This theme sets out the descion making process for approving plans, how to monitor performance against plan and what the escalation proceedure should be if (god forbid) your plans should go astray. |
Where are we now? Where are we going? Should we carry on? |