PRINCE2 Initiating a Project (IP)

Initiating a Project is mainly about building the project plan, setting up the rules (approaches) for the project and firming up the Business Case. The aim is to establish a solid foundation for the project, enabling the organisation to understand the work that needs to be done before committing significant resources.

Eight Main Activities

Prepare the Risk Management Approach — Define how risks will be identified, assessed, controlled and communicated throughout the project.
Prepare the Change Control Approach — Define how issues and changes to the project baseline will be managed.
Prepare the Quality Management Approach — Define the quality standards and techniques to be applied to products.
Prepare the Communication Management Approach — Define how information will flow to and from stakeholders.
Prepare the Sustainability Management Approach — Define how the project will address environmental and social sustainability objectives.
Set up the Project Controls — Define tolerances, reporting frequencies, and escalation procedures.
Create the Project Plan — Develop a product-based plan using the Product Breakdown Structure and Product Flow Diagram.
Refine the Business Case — Develop the full Business Case from the outline created during Starting Up.
Assemble the Project Initiation Document (PID) — Compile all the above into a single document that serves as the project contract.

Common Pitfalls

Isolated planning — Project Managers planning alone without involving the team leads to plans that don't reflect reality.
Strategy shortcuts — Copy-pasting management approaches from templates without proper reflection. Each approach must be meaningful and gap-filling.
Extended concept evaluation — Using the Initiating process to evaluate multiple concept options in depth. That evaluation should have happened in Starting Up.

Initiating a Project (IP)

Eight Main Activities

Common Pitfalls

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