Terms | Description |
| Acceptance Criteria | A prioritised list of criteria which the final product(s) must meet before the customer will accept them. They should be defined as part of the project brief and agreed between customer and supplier no later than the Project Initiation stage. They should be in the Project Initiation Document. |
| Baseline | A snapshot; a position or situation which is recorded. Although the position may be updated later, the baseline remains unchanged and available as a reminder of the original state and as a comparison against the current position. |
| Business Case | Information which describes the justification for setting up and continuing a PRINCE 2 project. It provides the reasons (answers the question “why?”) for the project. It is updated at key points throughout the project. |
| Change Authority | A group to which the Project Board may delegate responsibility for the consideration of Requests For Change. The Change Authority is given a budget and can prove changes within that budget. |
| Change Budget | The money allocated to the Change Authority to be spent on authorised Requests For Change. |
| Change Control | The procedure to ensure that the processing of all Project Issues is controlled, including the submission, analysis and decision making. |
| Checkpoint | A team level, time-driven review of progress. |
| Checkpoint Report | A progress report of the information gathered at a Checkpoint meeting, which is sent from a team to the Project Manager, and provides reporting data as defined in the Project Initiation Document. |
| Concession | An Off-Specification which is accepted by the Project Board without corrective action. |
| Configuration Management | A discipline, normally supported by software tools, which gives management precise control over its assets (e.g. the products of a project), covering identification, control, status accounting and verification of the products. |
| Contingency Plan | A plan which provides an outline of decisions and measures to be taken if defined circumstances, outside the control of a PRINCE 2 project, should occur. |
| Corporate and corporate body | Used to describe any company, government department, corporation, charitable body, which is involved in a project. It can be a customer for the end results, supplier of specialist skills or deliverables, assurance or auditing body. The word is used to avoid confusion particularly between the public and private sectors. |
| Customer | The person or group who commissioned the work. |
| Deliverable(s) | An item which the project has to create as part of the requirements. It may be part of the final outcome or an intermediate element on which one or more subsequent deliverables are dependent. According to the type of project, another name for a deliverable would be “product”. |
| End Project Report | A report sent from the Project Manager to the Project Board, which confirms the hand-over of all deliverables, provides an updated business case, and an assessment of how well the project has done against its Project Initiation Document. |
| End Stage Assessment | The review by the Project Board and Project Manager at the end of a stage of the End Stage Report to decide whether to approve the next stage plan (unless the last stage has now been completed). According to the size and criticality of the project, the review may be formal or informal. The approval to proceed should be documented as an important management product. |
| End Stage Report | A report sent by the Project Manager to the Project Board at the end of each management stage of a PRINCE 2 project. This provides information about the project performance during the stage and the project status at stage end. |
| Exception | A situation where it can be forecast that there will be a deviation beyond the tolerance levels agreed between Project Manager and Project Board or between Project Board and corporate or programme management. |
| Exception Plan | A plan which follows an exception report. For a stage or team plan exception it covers the period from the present to the end of the
current stage. If the exception is at a project level, the project plan would be revised. |
| Exception Report | A report which describes an exception, provides an analysis and options for the way forward and identifies a recommended option. It is sent from the Project Manager to the Project Board. |
| Executive | The chairman of the Project Board, representing the customer. |
| Follow-On Action Recommendations | A report which can be used as input to the process of creating a business case/project mandate for any follow-on PRINCE 2 project, and/or for recording any follow-on instructions covering incomplete products or outstanding issues. It also sets out proposals for post implementation review of the project’s deliverables. |
| Highlight Report | Report from the Project Manager to the Project Board on a time-driven frequency on stage progress. |
| Issue Log | A log of all issues and change requests raised during the project, showing details of each issue, its evaluation, what decisions about it have been made and its current status. |
| Lessons Learned Report | A report which describes the lessons learned in undertaking a PRINCE 2 project and which includes statistics from the quality control of the project’s management products. It is approved by the Project Board then held centrally for the benefit of future projects. |
| Off-Specification | Something which should be provided by the project, but currently is not (or is forecast not to be provided). This might be a missing product or a product not meeting its specification. |
| PIM | see Project Initiation Meeting. |
| Post Implementation Review | One or more reviews held after project closure to determine if the expected benefits have been obtained. |
| PRINCE | A method which supports some selected aspects of project management. The acronym stands for Projects in Controlled Environments. |
| PRINCE 2 Project | A project whose deliverable(s) can be defined at its start sufficiently precisely as to be measurable against predefined metrics and which is managed according to the PRINCE 2 method. |
| Process | That which must be done to bring about a particular outcome, in terms of information to be gathered, decisions to be made and results which must be achieved. |
| Producer | This role represents the creator(s) of a document which is the subject of a Quality Review. Typically it will be filled by the person who has produced the product, or who led the team responsible. |
| Product | Any output from a project. PRINCE 2 distinguishes between management products (which are produced as part of the management of the project), specialist products (which are those products which make up the final deliverable) and quality products (which are produced for or by the quality process). A product may itself be a collection of other products. |
| Product Breakdown Structure | A hierarchy of all the products to be produced during a plan. |
| Product Description | A description of a product’s purpose, composition, derivation and quality criteria. It is produced at planning time, as soon as the need for the product is identified. |
| Product Flow Diagram | A diagram showing the sequence of production and interdependencies of the products listed in a Product Breakdown Structure. |
| Project | A temporary organisation which is created for the purpose of delivering one or more business products according to a specified business case. |
| Project Assurance | The Project Board’s responsibilities to assure itself that the project is being conducted correctly. |
| Project Brief | A description of what the project is to do; a refined and extended version of the Project Mandate, which has been agreed by the Project Board and which is input to Project Initiation. |
| Project Closure Notification | Advice from the Project Manager to inform the host location that the project resources can be disbanded and support services, such as space, equipment and access, released. |
| Project Initiation Document | A logical document whose purpose is to bring together the key information needed to start the project on a sound basis; and to convey that information to all concerned with the project. |
| Project Initiation Meeting | The meeting for the “DP” process “Authorising Initiation”. It is the first meeting of the Project Board. It occurs after “Starting Up a Project” and triggers the Initiation stage. |
| Project Issue | A term used to cover both general issues and change requests raised during the project. Project Issues can be about anything to do with the project. They cover questions, suggestions, Requests For Change and Off-Specification. |
| Project Management | The planning, monitoring and control of all aspects of a project and the motivation of all those involved in it to achieve the project objectives on time and to the specified cost, quality and performance. |
| Project Management Team | A term to represent the entire management structure of Project Board, Project Manager, plus any Team Managers and project assurance roles. |
| Project Manager | The person given the authority and responsibility to manage the project on a day-to-day basis to deliver the required products within the constraints agreed with the Project Board. |
| Project Mandate | A document, created externally to the project, which forms the terms of reference and is used to start-up a PRINCE 2 project. |
| Project Plan | A high-level plan showing the major products of the project, when they will be delivered and at what cost. An initial project plan is presented as part of the Project Initiation Document. This is revised in later versions as information on actual progress appears. It is a major control document for the Project Board to measure actual progress against expectations. |
| Project Quality Plan | The definition of key quality criteria and quality control and audit processes to be applied to project management and technical work in the PRINCE 2 project. It will be part of the text in the Project Initiation Document. |
| Project Records | A collection of all approved management, specialist and quality products and other material, which is necessary to provide an auditable record of a PRINCE 2 project. NB. This does not include working files. |
| Project Start-up Notification | Advice to the host location that the project is about to start and requesting any required project support services. |
| Project Support Office | A group set up to provide certain administrative services to the Project Manager. Often the group provides its services to many projects. |
| Quality | The totality of features and characteristics of a product or service which bear on its ability to satisfy stated and implied needs. |
| Quality Management System | The complete set of quality standards, procedures and responsibilities for a site or organisation. |
| Quality Review | A Quality Review is an inspection with a specific structure, defined roles and procedure designed to ensure a document’s completeness and adherence to standards. The participants are drawn from those with an interest in the document and those with the necessary skills to review its correctness. An example of the checks made by a Quality Review is “does the document match the Quality Criteria in the Product Description?” |
| Quality System | see Quality Management System |
| Request For Change | A means of proposing a modification to the current specification of the product required. It is one type of Project Issue. |
| Reviewer | A person asked to check a product for errors or omissions at a Quality Review. |
| Risk Log | A document which provides identification, estimation, impact evaluation and counter-measures for all risks to a PRINCE 2 project. It should initially be created at the outset of the project and be developed during the life of the project. |
| Risk Report | A report which records and describes any development which poses a risk to a PRINCE 2 project. |
| Senior User | A member of the Project Board, accountable for ensuring that user needs are specified correctly and that the solution meets those needs. |
| Stage | A division of the project for management purposes. The Project Board approve the project to proceed one stage at a time. |
| Supplier | Supplier is defined as the group or groups responsible for the supply of a project’s products. |
| Tolerance | The permissible deviation above and below a plan’s estimate of time and cost without escalating the deviation to the next level of management. Separate tolerance figures should be given for time and cost. |
User(s) | The person or group who will use the final deliverable(s) of the project. |
| Work Package | The set of information relevant to the creation of one or more products. It will contain the Product Description(s), details of any constraints on production such as time and cost, interfaces, and confirmation of the agreement between the Project Manager and the person or Team Manager who is to implement the Work Package that the work can be done within the constraints. |
| Work Package Authorisation | Authority from the Project Manager to produce a defined Work Package. |
PRINCE2 Glossary 
One of the many benefits of using PRINCE2 is that it standardises the use of project terminology for the team. This concise and straightforward alphabetical glossary regroups in one place all the terms and definitions used during a PRINCE2 project.