PRINCE2 Issue Report - Structure Gives You Credit.

There are times when a project manager ad-hoc needs to inform, seek advice and possibly get a decision from the project board. A demanding PRINCE2 Project Board will expect the project manager to provide structured analysis of the situation and recommended solutions, not just serve the board unstructured information and problems.

The way a PRINCE2 project manager is dealing with this topic is through Issue Reporting. Using a PRINCE2 Issue Report template helps the project manager to provide structured and analyzed information. Here are a couple of Issue Reporting advices:

• Do it – even if a decision is already made on a change request or off-specification. The Issue Report and the Issue Register is your documentation on what happened and an opportunity to ensure alignment and common understanding of the issue and the decision.

• When decision has been made and documented, circle the issue report back to the project board for them to review and confirm the decision.

• Always log the issue in the Issue Register. If you don’t, you easily loose oversight of the issues reported. 

• Quantify Impact in the Impact Analysis. The stakeholders need to understand how much more calendar time, working hours or money a change request will impact or a concern can impact.

• Create a project culture where project board members are not copied on e-mails concerning emerging issues. This can cause unnecessary noise before the issue is analyzed. You should rather serve matured information on a silver plate through issue reporting and make the project board’s job easy.

PRINCE2 Issue Report is a type of communication with the project board you can choose to do by e-mail text only if you prefer (dropping the document), but on one condition: You should structure the email using the same headings as the PRINCE2 Issue Report template – again, forcing yourself to analyze and structure.

From: Project Manager

To: Project Board

Subject: Issue Report

Issue Description:

.....

Impact analysis:

.....

Recommendation:

.....

Decision:

.. what, by whom and when

You find a full Issue Report Template on the PRINCE2 Templates Page.


Related articles:
Advice: Make the Project Board’s Job Easy
The PRINCE2 Project Manager’s Most Important Task 

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