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Card 3 of 15 The seven principles ●●○ Working knowledge

Tailor to suit the project

PRINCE2 must be tailored to the project's environment, size, complexity, importance, team capability and risk. What may not be tailored away are the principles: a project that drops one is not a PRINCE2 project.

Why it is like this

A method rigid enough to be consistent and flexible enough to be used had to put the boundary somewhere. Fixing the principles and freeing the rest is that boundary.

Not to be confused with

Permission to skip the parts you dislike. Tailoring is a deliberate, documented decision — recorded in the project initiation documentation — about how products, roles and processes are applied, not about whether.

In practice

Combining the executive and senior user roles on a small project is tailoring. Running without a business case is not — it drops a principle.

Source: Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2, 7th edition (PeopleCert, 2023) — PRINCE2 7, §3 and §5 — tailoring. Read on .

PRINCE2® is a registered trade mark of the PeopleCert group. ytyk.org is not affiliated with, endorsed by or licensed by PeopleCert. These cards are independent commentary written in our own words; no part of the PRINCE2 manual, and no PRINCE2 diagram, is reproduced here.

Predict Check yourself

A small project merges several management products into one document and skips the business case entirely. Is this tailoring?

  1. The merge is tailoring; dropping the business case is not, because it abandons the continued business justification principle.
  2. Both are tailoring — the method is flexible by design.
  3. Neither; management products and the business case are both mandatory in full.
  4. Both are tailoring, provided the project board approves.
Show the answer

The merge is tailoring; dropping the business case is not, because it abandons the continued business justification principle.

The principles are the part tailoring cannot reach. Everything else is a documented judgement call.