Plain-English definitions of the PRINCE2 7 terms that Practitioner scenario questions turn on. Simplified for learning; the official manual is authoritative - and it is the one book you may use in the open-book exam.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Apply and tailor | The Practitioner-level skill: using the method correctly in a given scenario and adapting it to the project’s context. |
| Five integrated elements | People, principles, practices, processes and project context - the frame PRINCE2 7 hangs the whole method on. |
| Project ecosystem | The project team, the organisation around it, and external parties whose interests and culture shape what will work. |
| Ensure continued business justification | Principle: a project needs a valid reason to start and to keep running; if justification disappears, escalate - closing early is legitimate. |
| Learn from experience | Principle: lessons are actively sought at the start, recorded during the project, and passed on at the end. |
| Defined roles, responsibilities and relationships | Principle: an agreed structure in which everyone knows who directs, who manages and who delivers. |
| Manage by stages | Principle: the board commits funding one management stage at a time, reviewing at each boundary. |
| Manage by exception | Principle: each level manages freely within agreed tolerances and escalates when a tolerance is forecast to be exceeded. |
| Focus on products | Principle: agree what will be delivered, and to what quality, before planning the work to build it. |
| Tailor to suit the project | Principle: adapt the method to the project’s size, risk and environment - without ever dropping a principle. |
| Sustainability | A performance aspect given new weight in PRINCE2 7, managed with targets and tolerances alongside benefits, cost, time, quality, scope and risk. |
| Output | The product a project delivers - what changes hands at handover. |
| Outcome | The change in ways of working that the output enables once people use it. |
| Benefit | The measurable improvement that results from an outcome, judged against the business case. |
| Dis-benefit | An actual negative consequence of the change, knowingly accepted and managed alongside the benefits. |
| Benefits management approach | Defines how and when benefits will be measured and by whom - often continuing after the project closes. |
| Project board | The directing level: executive, senior user and senior supplier, accountable to corporate management. |
| Executive | Owns the business case and is the board’s single point of accountability - ultimately the decision-maker. |
| Senior user | Represents those who will use the products; specifies the benefits and is accountable for showing they are realised. |
| Senior supplier | Represents those who design, build and deliver the project’s products. |
| Project manager | Runs the project day to day on the board’s behalf, within delegated tolerances. |
| Team manager | Accepts and delivers work packages, reporting progress to the project manager through checkpoint reports. |
| Project assurance | The board’s independent check that the project is being run properly - it can never be delegated to the project manager. |
| Change authority | A person or group the board delegates change decisions to within agreed limits, usually funded by a change budget. |
| Project support | Administrative help for the project manager and teams - keeping registers, logs and configuration records in order. |
| Product-based planning | The planning technique: define the products and their descriptions first, then derive the activities to build them. |
| Project product description | Defines the overall product, the customer’s quality expectations and the acceptance criteria for the whole project. |
| Product description | Defines one product: its purpose, composition, quality criteria and how it will be checked. |
| Stage plan | The project manager’s day-to-day control plan for a single management stage. |
| Exception plan | A replacement plan the board commissions after an exception; once approved, it takes over from the plan it replaces. |
| Work package | The agreed bundle of work and constraints a project manager hands to a team manager for delivery. |
| Quality criteria | The measurable definitions of acceptability written into a product description before work starts. |
| Quality register | The running record of planned and completed quality activities and their results. |
| Threat and opportunity | The two faces of risk: an uncertain event with a negative impact (threat) or a positive one (opportunity). |
| Risk response | The chosen action on a risk - for threats: avoid, reduce, transfer, accept or prepare contingent plans; opportunities have mirrored responses such as exploit, enhance, share, reject. |
| Risk appetite | The amount of risk the organisation is prepared to take, which frames the project’s risk tolerances. |
| Risk register | The formal record of identified risks, their assessment, responses and owners. |
| Issue | Something that has already happened and needs management attention - unlike a risk, which is uncertain. |
| Request for change | An issue proposing a change to something already baselined, decided through change control. |
| Off-specification | Something the project should deliver that does not (or will not) meet its specification; accepting it unchanged is a concession. |
| Issue register | The formal record of issues being managed, with their status and decisions. |
| Daily log | The project manager’s informal notebook for actions and minor matters that need no formal register entry. |
| Tolerance | The permitted deviation around a plan’s targets before the deviation must be escalated. |
| Exception | The situation where a tolerance is forecast to be exceeded, triggering escalation to the next level. |
| Checkpoint report | The team manager’s progress report to the project manager, at the frequency agreed in the work package. |
| Highlight report | The project manager’s periodic progress report to the project board during a stage. |
| Exception report | The project manager’s report to the board describing a forecast tolerance breach, its options and a recommendation. |
| End stage report | The project manager’s report to the board on a stage’s performance, prepared at the stage boundary. |
| Project brief | The startup product giving the board just enough - outline business case, approach, team - to authorise initiation. |
| Project initiation documentation (PID) | The assembled definition of how the project will be managed: approaches, controls, plans and refined business case. |