PRINCE2 Definitions Flashcards
Project
A temporary organization that is created for the purpose of delivering one or more business products according to an agreed business case.
Project Management
Project management is the application of methods, tools, techniques, and competencies to enable the project to meet its objectives.
Performance Target
The project’s performance target sets the expected success level against which the management of the project will be judged. PRINCE2 includes performance targets for benefits, cost, time, quality, scope, sustainability, and risk.
Business
The organization that provides the project mandate and the structure within which the project is governed.
User
The organization that will use the project products to enable it to gain the expected benefits. They may be internal or external to the business organization.
Supplier
The organization that provides the expertise, people, and resources required to deliver the products required by the project. They may be internal or external to the business organization.
Customer
Where there is a commercial relationship between the business and the supplier, the business is regarded as the customer.
PRINCE2 Principles
The PRINCE2 principles are the guiding obligations that determine whether the project is genuinely being managed using PRINCE2 and ensure effective application and tailoring of PRINCE2 to any project.
Stage
The section of a project that the project manager is managing on behalf of the project board at any one time.
Tolerance
The permissible deviation above and below the plan’s target for benefits, cost, time, quality, scope, sustainability, and risk without needing to escalate the deviation to the next level of management. Tolerance is applied at project, stage, and team levels.
Management Products
Documents or information needed to support the management of the project, such as a business case or a plan.
Product
An input or output, whether tangible or intangible, that can be described in advance, created, and tested.
Specialist Products
Products that are needed by the user to realize the benefits required of the project.
Project Product
Total output from the project as defined in the project product description.
External Products
Products developed or provided outside of the project’s control but which the project is dependent on, for example, the publication of a new standard.
Organizational Ecosystem
Internal elements of an organization (including staff, board, owners, and other stakeholders) together with the organization’s external relationships such as customers, partners, suppliers, regulators, and competitors.
Project Ecosystem
Elements of the business involved in or directly impacted by the project and the associated users and suppliers.
Change Management
Change management is the means by which an organization transitions from the current state to the target state.
Stakeholder
Any individual, group, or organization that can affect or be affected by (or perceives itself to be affected by) the project.
Culture
Culture is the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and ways of working that characterize a group of people.
Collaboration
People from across the project ecosystem working together to achieve the project’s objectives.
Co-creation
A specific form of collaboration involving users and key influencers in the design of products and agreed ways of working to ensure they are adopted by the project and organizational ecosystems
Leadership
Motivating people to achieve a project’s objectives. On projects, this is best done through collaboration across the project ecosystem, persuading, influencing, and co-creating with a focus on managing key relationships and seeking regular feedback to ensure team members remain aligned to the project’s objectives and agree to joint ways of working.
Management
Instructing the execution of tasks in line with agreed ways of working. Co-creating ways of working with project team members (and stakeholders) significantly improves people’s willingness to be managed in line with them.
Practice
An aspect of project management that must be applied consistently and throughout the project life-cycle. The practices require specific treatment of that aspect of project management for the PRINCE2 processes to be effective.
Output
The tangible or intangible deliverable of an activity. In PRINCE2, outputs are the specialist products that will be used to enable change.
Capability
The completed set of project outputs required to deliver an outcome.
Outcome
The result of change, normally affecting real-world behaviour and circumstances. Changes are implemented to achieve outcomes, which are achieved as a result of the activities undertaken to facilitate the change.
Benefit
The measurable improvement resulting from an outcome that is perceived as an advantage by the investing organization and contributes towards one or more business objectives.
Dis-benefit
The measurable decline resulting from an outcome perceived as negative by the investing organization and which detracts from one or more business objectives.
Business objective
The measurable outcomes that demonstrate progress in relation to the organization’s strategy and to which the project should contribute.
Benefits tolerance
The permissible deviation in the benefit performance targets that is allowed before the deviation needs to be escalated to the next level of management. Benefits tolerance is documented in the business case.
Sustainability tolerance
The permissible deviation in the sustainability performance targets that is allowed before the deviation needs to be escalated to the next level of management. Sustainability tolerance is documented in the business case.
Role
The function assigned to a group or individual in a particular project. It is not the same as the position or job of a person outside of that project.
Project Board
Accountable to the business for the success of the project and has the authority to direct the project within the remit set by the business.
Project management team structure
The project management team structure is composed of the project board, project manager, team managers, and project assurance and project support roles.
Project team
PRINCE2 uses the term project team to cover all people required to allocate their time to the project.
Work breakdown structure
A hierarchy of all work to be done during a project that forms a link between the product breakdown structure and the work packages.
Delivery model
The organizational and commercial arrangements to be deployed to meet the project objectives given the project constraints and capabilities of the user, business, and supplier organizations. It isdescribed in the commercial management approach and reflected in the project management team structure.