Simon’s essential explanation of PRINCE2®: these comparatively few pages provide a complete overview of the whole 400 plus pages of the Red book. These pages integrate and distil the topics while the official Managing Successful Projects With PRINCE2® (The RedBook) is fragmented in its treatment: thus these pages are an easier read than the official manual. Surprisingly little if anything of what is in the manual is left out apart from the needless repetition. Certainly nothing exam relevant is omitted and we retain some useful repetition. Sections such as the Health Check appendix may be useful in reviewing project conduct but not required for the exam and so are relegated to "further reading" here.
For many people getting to grips with PRINCE2® is a slog. None of it is particularly complex but there is a lot of it. Because the topics of project management are integrated while the RedBook is very fragmented much seen early must wait till late to make sense. All of the contents is referenced by abbreviations and arcane names. It is perhaps like taking a shower under a waterfall - eventually the sheer volume of the deluge beats you down.
To stand up to the deluge my firm advice is that you run (read) through the concepts and the "a little deeper" sections as quickly as possible. DO NOT attempt to capture anything beyond the general structure and integrated-ness. When ever a sentence confuses just keep going - don't stop to ponder - just note that there was a difficult spot that needs later revisit. When you get to the end of your first pass through the entirety then restart and this time seek to understand the subtler points, but reserve attempting to extract absolute and final resolution of every query to a third or fourth study of just the select parts needing deeper focus. IE first pass everything but shallow, second pass everything a little deeper, third pass mostly just those topics not yet fully comfortable, fourth pass if needed - specific foggy spots. Supported learners can seek assistance whenever required.
First: the whole of PRINCE2®’s 8 processes and the intent of the 45 sub-processes in a single picture.
Figure 1: Overview of the Whole of the PRINCE2® Process Model.
While the representation of the processing is complete detail has been left out. We will tackle detail soon, when inclusion of the specific will mean that we will not be able to see breadth IE the whole of the process model!
Figure: 2 The Sub-processes in logical juxta-position
PRINCE2® is well known for the endless sets of initials that designate the sub-processes. Here is the full set. Note many of the sub-processes include the whole of Planning (PL), that the Initiation stage includes Managing Stage Boundaries (SB) as do (all but the last) subsequent stages.
The abbreviations are expanded to their formal full names and explained after the concepts given on the next few pages. (The impatient can skip to viii The Timeline View Supported learners should use the link at the foot of the page for further guidance - unsupported learners may wish to contact us on 0845 2 57 57 07 or mail-us - but do edit-out the anti-spam phrase.).
You will need the Process Template with full process names to decode the abbreviations and to follow the flow of the descriptions as you read-on.
Pre-course & distance learning members view the instructions here.
Move on to ii Products