2.3 Scenario Practice for 7 PRINCE2 Principles

Principle 5 — Manage by exception

Manage by exception is how PRINCE2 delegates authority efficiently. Each management level sets tolerances for the level below — the permitted deviation from plan before a decision must be escalated. As long as the work is forecast to finish within tolerance, the manager proceeds without referring upward; this frees senior managers from constant involvement. The moment a tolerance is forecast to be exceeded, an exception exists and must be escalated to the level that set it.

PRINCE2 7 sets tolerances against seven performance aspects (the 7th edition added sustainability to the six from earlier editions):

Scenario

A project manager forecasts that a stage will finish eight days late against a stage time tolerance of +5 days. The correct action is to raise an exception report to the project board, who decide whether to accept the deviation, adjust tolerance, or request an exception plan. The wrong actions: silently absorbing the delay, or escalating every small variance — escalation is only for forecast tolerance breaches, not for staying busy.

Principle 6 — Focus on products

PRINCE2 is a product-based method: you agree what must be delivered before deciding how. Planning starts by defining the products and their quality criteria, and only then identifying the activities and resources needed to create them. This prevents "activity-first" planning where teams stay busy without clarity on the deliverable.

The key management product is the product description, which records each product's purpose, composition, derivation, format, quality criteria, quality method, and the people responsible for quality. A good product description is clear, measurable, and lets a product be planned, built, reviewed, and approved against objective criteria. The project product description describes the project's final overall output and includes the acceptance criteria the customer will use to accept it.

Scenario

A team starts coding before anyone has written down what "done" looks like, and rework explodes when the customer rejects the result. The PRINCE2 fix is focus on products: write the product description with measurable quality criteria first, so quality is checkable and acceptance is unambiguous. "We'll know it when we see it" is the anti-pattern this principle exists to prevent.

Principle 7 — Tailor to suit the project

Tailoring adapts PRINCE2 so it fits the project's environment, size, complexity, importance, team capability, and risk. You tailor the practices, processes, management products, roles, and terminology — for example, combining roles on a small project, simplifying documents, or adjusting the number of stages. Tailoring is what keeps PRINCE2 from being bureaucratic overkill on a small project or too light on a complex one.

The hard rule the exam tests: you tailor the method, but you never tailor away a principle. All seven principles must still be present after tailoring. If a scenario says a team "tailored out continued business justification" or "removed the manage-by-stages principle to save time," that is wrong — those are principles, not tailorable elements.

Scenario

A small, low-risk internal project wants to reduce overhead. Acceptable tailoring: merge the project manager and team manager roles, use a lighter PID, and run just two stages. Unacceptable: skip the business case entirely or stop reviewing justification — that breaches a principle. Tailoring decisions are recorded (e.g., in the PID) so they are deliberate and visible, not accidental shortcuts.

Putting the last three principles together

These three principles often appear together in scenario stems because they govern how much control a project applies. A worked composite scenario:

A medium-risk software project sets stage tolerances of +/- 5 days and +/- 8% cost. Product descriptions with measurable acceptance criteria are written before estimating. On a small follow-on project, the same organization merges roles and uses two stages.

Unpack it against the principles:

• Manage by exception — the tolerances (+/- 5 days, +/- 8%) define the project manager's freedom; only a forecast breach escalates.
• Focus on products — quality and acceptance criteria are agreed before estimating effort, so plans are anchored to deliverables.
• Tailor to suit the project — the follow-on project is lighter (merged roles, two stages) because its size and risk justify it.

What you must never tailor — recap table

The exam reliably rewards candidates who can say, in one breath: tolerances delegate authority, products anchor planning, and tailoring adapts everything except the principles. If you can map a scenario's facts onto those three sentences, you will answer the applied principle questions correctly even when the stem is wordy.