Passing the PRINCE2 Exams For Dummies

Understanding Management Products

PRINCE2 takes a product-based approach to planning, but that product emphasis extends further than planning. The first thing to appreciate about products – what people will ­produce – is that there are two sorts: specialist and management.

Specialist products are, primarily, what the teams are building. Specialist products on a project may include things such as a design drawing, a computer program, a brick wall and a strategy report. You may think of them as ‘technical’, but in PRINCE2 the word is ‘specialist’.

In contrast, management products are the things being used to manage the project. Management products include things like the Project Plan, the Project Brief, the Daily Log and the End Project Report. The management products are the focus of this chapter. It’s very easy to know what the management products are in the method because they’re all listed in Appendix A of the PRINCE2 manual.

Many management products turn out to be documents, albeit electronic ones most of the time. However, picking up the point in the first paragraph of this chapter, bear in mind that a product in a particular project needn’t necessarily be a document. For example, when PRINCE2 was first being written, the name Highlight Report was chosen carefully. Note, it’s a Highlight Report not a Highlight Document. In a more informal project, much of the reporting may be verbal and not written down at all. The decision on what must be written down and what can be verbal ...