Chapter 5
Planning the Whole Project: Initiation
In This Chapter
Thinking through risk, quality, change and communications and how best to manage them
Deciding on the degree of control you need and what mechanisms to use
Planning the work of the project
Working the Business Case into full detail
Creating the Project Initiation Documentation (PID)
Chapter 4 is about the PRINCE2 process of Starting Up a Project and how the Project Manager and the Executive produce a Project Brief. The Project Board uses this ‘sketch plan’ of the potential project to decide whether the project looks worth planning in more detail. And that’s where this chapter comes in. Initiation is that planning in more detail.
The first project stage, which is driven by the process ‘Initiating a Project’, is devoted entirely to project planning and doesn’t involve any other work. A very common cause of project failure is poor planning – or even a total lack of planning – and this stage in a PRINCE2 project helps to make sure that doesn’t happen.
The completed set of project plans form the Project Initiation Documentation or PID, a precise definition of exactly what this project is. But then you also need to plan in more detail for the first delivery stage of the project (the one after the Initiation Stage), so that if the board decides to go ahead with the full project the first of the delivery Stage Plans is in place and ready to roll.
