Why PRINCE2 is tailored and what tailoring means

Every course in this program so far has described PRINCE2 at its full size: seven principles, seven practices, seven processes, a project board, stages, tolerances and a set of management products. Real projects rarely use all of that in exactly the form the manual describes. A two-month library makerspace refit does not need the same paperwork as a nine-million-dollar smart metering rollout, and an agile software team does not plan the same way as a crew installing water meters street by street. Tailoring is how PRINCE2 deals with that variety. This course is about doing it well, and about the Practitioner exam, which tests whether you can apply and tailor the method to a scenario rather than recite it.

This first lesson sets out what tailoring is, why the method insists on it, what may be tailored and what may not. Lesson 2 turns that into a repeatable way of making and recording tailoring decisions, and lessons 3 to 7 apply it to small, agile, large, regulated and people-centred contexts. Lessons 8 to 11 move to Practitioner scenarios, and lesson 12 brings everything together in a capstone.

Tailoring is a principle, not an option

PRINCE2 treats tailoring as one of its seven principles: the method is adapted to suit the project's environment, size, complexity, importance, team capability and risk. That has a sharp consequence. A project that applies PRINCE2 mechanically, producing every product in full whether or not anyone reads it, is not applying the method properly, because it is ignoring one of the principles. Equally, a project that drops the parts of PRINCE2 it finds inconvenient is not tailoring; it has simply stopped using the method.

The balance point is purpose. Each practice, process and management product exists to do a job: give the board confidence that the project is still justified, make sure products meet quality expectations, keep risks visible, and so on. Tailoring changes how those jobs are done, how often, by whom and in what format. It does not remove the jobs. A useful test, which the Practitioner exam uses repeatedly, is to ask of any proposed change: does the purpose of this element still get met? If yes, the change is probably legitimate tailoring. If no, something essential has been lost.

What can be tailored

The manual's guidance on tailoring can be grouped into a few families of adjustment. Each family has a typical use and a typical way of going wrong.

Two points from the table deserve emphasis. First, tailoring often means doing less, but not always. A project with a regulator, several contractors or an unusual safety risk may need more than the standard method: extra assurance, more frequent reporting, a dedicated configuration management role. Tailoring up is just as much tailoring as tailoring down. Second, the form of a product is the most flexible thing in PRINCE2. A business case can be a slide deck, a highlight report can be a dashboard tile, and a lessons log can be a shared spreadsheet. What matters is that the content serves its purpose and that people know where to find it.

What should not be tailored away

Some features of PRINCE2 are so close to the principles that removing them means the project is no longer being run as a PRINCE2 project. Study guides and the official material express this in slightly different ways; the list below is a practical summary rather than a quotation.

A project that keeps these features but strips everything else to the minimum can still be a well-run PRINCE2 project. A project that produces every document in the manual but has no real business justification, no single accountable executive or no stage boundaries is not, however impressive its paperwork looks. People sometimes call the second situation PRINCE2 in name only: the vocabulary is used, but the principles are not.

The factors that drive tailoring

PRINCE2 7 places tailoring in the project context element: the organization the project sits in, its commercial arrangements, its delivery approach and the wider environment. In practice, the factors that most often shape tailoring decisions are these:

No single factor decides the answer. A small project can be high-risk, and a large project can be routine. The skill is to weigh the factors together and explain the choices, which is exactly what a Practitioner exam scenario asks you to do when it describes a project and asks whether a proposed adjustment is appropriate.

factors = {                 # 1 = low, 3 = high
    "scale": 1, "complexity": 1, "risk": 2, "novelty": 1,
    "external_suppliers": 0, "regulation": 2, "team_experience": 3,
}
weights = {"scale": 2, "complexity": 2, "risk": 3, "novelty": 2,
           "external_suppliers": 2, "regulation": 2, "team_experience": -1}
score = sum(factors[k] * weights[k] for k in factors)
low, high = 10, 22
level = "light" if score < low else "standard" if score <= high else "extended"
print(f"context score: {score}")
print(f"suggested starting point: {level} tailoring")
for k in sorted(factors, key=lambda k: -factors[k] * weights[k])[:3]:
    print(f"  biggest driver: {k} (contribution {factors[k] * weights[k]})")

context score: 13
suggested starting point: standard tailoring
  biggest driver: risk (contribution 6)
  biggest driver: regulation (contribution 4)
  biggest driver: scale (contribution 2)

A scorecard like this is not a PRINCE2 product and should never replace judgment. Its value is in the conversation it starts. Here the project scores as light overall, but the risk and regulation factors stand out, so the tailoring would keep a light touch in most areas while strengthening risk management and record keeping. That is the typical shape of good tailoring: uneven, deliberate and explained.

Who tailors, and where the decisions are recorded

Tailoring starts before the project begins. The organization may already have its own project management method, based on PRINCE2, with templates and rules for different sizes of project. Within that, the project manager proposes how this particular project will be run, usually during starting up and initiation, and the project board approves the proposal as part of authorizing the project. The decisions are recorded in the project initiation documentation, where anyone joining later can see how the method has been adapted and why. Project assurance checks that the tailoring is sensible and is being followed.

Tailoring is not fixed once approved. At each stage boundary, the project manager reviews whether the tailoring still fits. A project that discovered unexpected risk may need more frequent reporting; a project that has settled into a steady rhythm may be able to reduce it. Changes to the tailoring are changes to the project initiation documentation and go through the same control as any other baseline.

In Canadian municipalities, the project management framework is often set by council policy or an administrative directive for capital projects, which may already define project sizes, approval thresholds and required documents. Federal departments work within the Treasury Board's policy on planning and managing investments. A project's tailoring should reference these rather than invent parallel rules.

The running cases

This course continues the two invented organizations from earlier PRINCE2 courses. Ridgeline Water is a mid-sized municipal water utility with about 60,000 customer connections. Its smart metering project, followed through PRIN-130, PRIN-131, PRIN-140 and PRIN-141, closed at week 101 and has left the utility with a mature project culture. Its next projects include a small customer app, a lead service line replacement project and a large treatment plant upgrade, each needing very different tailoring. Harbour City Libraries is a public library system with six branches that has just finished installing self-service kiosks and RFID tags. Its next projects are smaller: a makerspace refit, a digital card launch and an accessibility upgrade.