6.1 Management Products Overview

What a Management Product Is

A management product is any document, record, or report that PRINCE2 uses to direct, manage, and control a project. They are deliberately separated from specialist products — the actual things the project is built to produce, such as a new website, a bridge, or a trained workforce. The exam frequently tests this distinction: a Stage Plan is a management product, while the software it schedules is a specialist product.

Management products carry the information the project board and project manager need to make decisions. They are the project's evidence trail. Without them, governance has nothing to govern by.

The three types in PRINCE2 7

PRINCE2 7th edition groups the management products into exactly three types. Knowing which type a product belongs to is a common Foundation question.

A useful memory hook: baselines are what you plan and agree, records are what you track as you go, and reports are what you send to someone at a moment in time.

What Changed in PRINCE2 7

The 6th edition listed 26 management products in Appendix A. PRINCE2 7 streamlined this to 15, reflecting a deliberate move away from heavy documentation toward a leaner, more practical set.

The most exam-relevant changes:

• Configuration Item Records and the Product Status Account were removed. Their tracking function is now served by the new Product Register, introduced under the Quality practice to record every product, its status, and its relationships.
• The separate logs and registers are conceptually consolidated under a single project log idea, although the Risk Register, Issue Register, Quality Register, Daily Log, and Lessons Log remain individually named records.
• Three new management approaches were added — sustainability, commercial, and digital and data — alongside the long-standing risk, quality, change, and communication approaches.
• Detailed quality criteria and rigid composition lists for each product were largely removed, giving teams more freedom to tailor.

Tailoring is expected, not optional

PRINCE2 treats every management product as tailorable. A product can be a formal document, an entry in a project-management tool, a spreadsheet row, a conversation captured in minutes, or even a verbal agreement on a tiny project — as long as its purpose is satisfied. Two products can be merged (for example, a Business Case folded into a small Project Brief), and on a large programme a single product can be split.

The exam rewards candidates who remember that PRINCE2 cares about the purpose a product serves, not the format. A frequent trap answer insists that a product must be a separate formal document; the correct answer usually allows tailoring while preserving the purpose.

How to study this chapter

For each management product, learn four things: its purpose (why it exists), its type (baseline, record, or report), who creates and owns it, and when in the process it appears. If you can answer those four for the dozen most-tested products, you will handle most Foundation questions in this area.

The Full Inventory by Type

It pays to hold the whole inventory in your head, because the exam can ask you to spot the odd one out — for example, which item in a list is a record rather than a baseline.

Baselines

The baselines define the project and are placed under change control once approved.

They include the Business Case (why the project is worthwhile), the Project Brief (the early definition), the Project Initiation Documentation (the master reference), the Plans (project, stage, exception, and team plans), the Product Description and Project Product Description (what a product and the final product must look like), the Work Package (a chunk of work assigned to a team), and the management approaches (risk, quality, change, communication, plus the new commercial, sustainability, and digital-and-data, and the Benefits Management Approach).

Records

The records are dynamic and updated continuously: the Risk Register, Issue Register, Quality Register, Daily Log, Lessons Log, and the Product Register. Together these track what is happening day to day so nothing is lost between formal reports.

Reports

The reports are fixed snapshots sent to a defined audience: the Checkpoint Report, Highlight Report, End Stage Report, End Project Report, Exception Report, Issue Report, and Lessons Report. Each new period or event produces a fresh instance rather than overwriting the last.

A reliable exam tactic: if a product's name ends in "Report" it is a report; if it ends in "Register" or "Log" it is a record; the planning and definition documents (Brief, PID, Business Case, Plans, approaches, Work Package) are baselines. Apply that rule and you can classify any management product in seconds, even one you only half-remember.