Initiating a project I: tailoring and management approaches

Once the board has authorized initiation, the project manager runs initiating a project. Its purpose, in plain terms, is to establish solid foundations for the project, so that the organization understands the work that needs to be done to deliver the products before it commits to a significant spend. Initiating a project produces the project initiation documentation (PID). This lesson covers the first part of the process: agreeing the tailoring requirements and preparing the management approaches. Lesson 9 covers project controls, the project plan and the refined business case, and lesson 10 covers assembling the PID.

Agree the tailoring requirements

Tailoring is one of PRINCE2's seven principles, and PRINCE2 7 makes it explicit as the first piece of work in initiation. The project manager, with project assurance and the executive, decides how PRINCE2 will be adapted for this project: which management products will be combined or held in tools, which roles are combined, how often reports are produced, how agile delivery fits, and which corporate standards apply. The decisions are recorded, with reasons, so that assurance and auditors can see that departures from the method were deliberate rather than accidental.

Tailoring at this point builds on decisions already made in starting up. The project approach, the team structure and the scale of the initiation stage all embodied tailoring choices. Initiation formalizes them and extends them to the controls and approaches that will govern delivery. Good tailoring answers the question: what is the least management this project can safely use, given its size, complexity, risk and environment?

What a management approach is

A management approach describes how a particular aspect of the project will be managed. PRINCE2 7 uses the term management approach for products that earlier editions often called strategies. Each approach typically covers the procedures to follow, the tools and techniques to use, the records and reports to keep, the timing of the main activities, and the roles and responsibilities involved. The approaches are prepared in initiation, approved as part of the PID, and then used throughout the project. They are baselines: once approved, changes to them go through change control.

PRIN-130 and PRIN-131 described what the approaches must contain from the perspective of each practice: the benefits management approach in PRIN-130, the quality, risk and issue management approaches in PRIN-131. This lesson looks at them from the process side: when they are prepared, in what order, by whom, and how the project manager makes sure they fit together. A common failure is a set of approaches written by different people from different templates that contradict each other, for example a risk approach that escalates every risk above a score of 12 to the board while the issue approach routes all escalations through monthly meetings.

Preparing the approaches in a sensible order

There is no mandatory order, but some sequences work better than others. Tailoring decisions come first, because they affect every approach. The communication management approach benefits from an early stakeholder analysis, since it also informs risk identification. The risk management approach and the quality management approach can be drafted in parallel; the issue management approach should follow the risk approach so that the boundary between a risk and an issue is defined consistently. The commercial management approach depends on the project approach chosen in starting up and on procurement rules. The digital and data approach and the sustainability approach often draw on corporate policies. The benefits management approach is finalized alongside the detailed business case.

Ridgeline Water's project manager adapts existing utility templates where they exist and asks specialists to contribute: the procurement lead drafts most of the commercial approach, the privacy officer contributes to the digital and data approach, and the environmental coordinator drafts the sustainability approach. Project assurance reviews them together for consistency before they are assembled into the PID.

Ridgeline Water's digital and data management approach must address how meter readings, which reveal patterns of household activity, are collected, stored and used. For a Canadian municipal utility, provincial public-sector privacy law applies, such as Ontario's Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act or the equivalent in other provinces; a privacy impact assessment early in initiation is the usual tool.

Checking the approaches fit together

The code below builds a simple coverage matrix for Ridgeline Water's draft approaches. For each approach it checks that the five common elements are present (procedures, tools, records, timing, roles), and it checks one consistency rule: that every approach that escalates matters to the board uses the same response time the board agreed in starting up.

elements = ["procedures", "tools", "records", "timing", "roles"]
approaches = {
    "Risk":            {"procedures": 1, "tools": 1, "records": 1, "timing": 1, "roles": 1, "escalation_days": 5},
    "Quality":         {"procedures": 1, "tools": 1, "records": 1, "timing": 1, "roles": 1, "escalation_days": 5},
    "Issue":           {"procedures": 1, "tools": 1, "records": 1, "timing": 0, "roles": 1, "escalation_days": 20},
    "Communication":   {"procedures": 1, "tools": 1, "records": 0, "timing": 1, "roles": 1, "escalation_days": None},
    "Commercial":      {"procedures": 1, "tools": 0, "records": 1, "timing": 1, "roles": 1, "escalation_days": 5},
    "Digital and data":{"procedures": 1, "tools": 1, "records": 1, "timing": 1, "roles": 0, "escalation_days": None},
    "Sustainability":  {"procedures": 1, "tools": 1, "records": 1, "timing": 1, "roles": 1, "escalation_days": None},
    "Benefits":        {"procedures": 1, "tools": 1, "records": 1, "timing": 1, "roles": 1, "escalation_days": 5},
}
agreed_days = 5
print(f"{'Approach':17}" + "".join(f"{e[:5]:>7}" for e in elements) + "  escal.")
for name, a in approaches.items():
    row = "".join(f"{'yes' if a[e] else '--':>7}" for e in elements)
    d = a["escalation_days"]
    esc = "n/a" if d is None else ("ok" if d == agreed_days else f"{d} days!")
    print(f"{name:17}{row}  {esc}")
gaps = [(n, e) for n, a in approaches.items() for e in elements if not a[e]]
print("Gaps:", "; ".join(f"{n}: {e}" for n, e in gaps))

Approach           proce  tools  recor  timin  roles  escal.
Risk                 yes    yes    yes    yes    yes  ok
Quality              yes    yes    yes    yes    yes  ok
Issue                yes    yes    yes     --    yes  20 days!
Communication        yes    yes     --    yes    yes  n/a
Commercial           yes     --    yes    yes    yes  ok
Digital and data     yes    yes    yes    yes     --  n/a
Sustainability       yes    yes    yes    yes    yes  n/a
Benefits             yes    yes    yes    yes    yes  ok
Gaps: Issue: timing; Communication: records; Commercial: tools; Digital and data: roles

Four gaps appear: the issue approach has no timing, the communication approach does not say what records it keeps, the commercial approach does not say which tools are used for contract management, and the digital and data approach does not assign roles. The issue approach also escalates in 20 days rather than the five days the board agreed. These are small fixes, but each could cause real trouble in delivery: an issue sitting for four weeks because the issue approach and the board's expectations disagree is exactly the kind of failure the decision log analysis in lesson 6 found.

Who prepares and approves the approaches