CGSCo Health

Prince2 the default for project management

Most of the projects in Europe are managed by Prince2 certified project managers. Part of the Prince2 training is the Prince2 healt check, which can be found in Appendix D of OGC’s Prince2 manual (Managing Sucessful Projects).

Use the project management health check

I used this wonderful health check for years years to check the current state of my projects. Later as a programme manager I have used it to check my project managers and help them perform better.

Every time I switched jobs I was surprised that I was the only one who had an automated Prince2 checklist (in excel). Now I created a website with the automated health check so everyone can benefit from it.

Online health check at healthcheck-online.com

With this website I found an easy way to share my automated checklist with the world. To use the Online Prince2 health check select the desired check from the submenu. Fill in your name and email. Select the ‘send me a copy’ box, to receive the results by mail.

Partial health checks available

The whole health check has 203 questions, which is a awfull lof of questions to answer. To make life easier I divided the health check also in sub health checks. One of the sub health checks is the Risk Management Health Check. I’ll try to explain the necesity of this health check:

A key aspect for the project is management of Risk. Management of Risk aims to identify risks that threaten the project and then manage them. It is not necessarily required to eliminate a risk (or all risks), that could be an disproportionate effort and could prove costly.

The project manager must be aware of the risks from the beginning of the project and not limited to one stage, but looking forward towards the end of the project. When decisions are taken they can have impact on the risks. So a risk assesment is a continous process.

Risk are introduced at any stage in the project, so good management of them is a necesity. The Prince2 risk management cycle is divided in two steps:

Risk analysis Identify the risks Evaluate the risks Identify suitable responses to the risk Select Risk management Plan and resource Monitor and report

The Prince2 Health Check contains the following questions:

Is there a Risk Log? Is it kept up-to-date? Are risks to each plan identified, analysed and acted upon? Are business risks identified? Is a formal procedure for the management of risk in use? Is risk assessment part of each End Stage Assessment? Were the major risks entered in the PID? Have risk owners been identified? Are risks monitored on a sufficiently regular basis? Is risk assessment part of each major change request assessment? Were risk likelihood and impact assessed? Have proactive risk actions been taken where necessary? Were any needed contingency plans prepared? Were all obvious risks covered? Were the risks and countermeasures discussed with the Project Board? Were appropriate countermeasures taken? Were risks reassessed when plans were changed?

Related links:

complete project health check (203) questions; the Prince2 Weblog.

Reference to the manual: “Managing Successful Project” from OGC, the 2005 edition:

Management of risk – Chapter 17 Risk management cycle – Chapter 17.3 Risk analysis – Chapter 17.3.1 Risk Management – Chapter 17.3.2