"How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time" is a famous quote from Fred Brooks, chief designer of the IBM 360.

When most of us create a plan we think about the activities required to achieve our goal. For example, if our project was to redecorate a room our plan might be to choose new wallpaper, choose new paint, strip the old wallpaper, prepare the woodwork, hang the new wallpaper and paint the woodwork.

Product Based Planning is a technique that focuses on identifying what we intend to create or modify before we think about how to produce it. In this way we would focus on the outcomes first, wallpaper options, chosen wallpaper, paint options, chosen paint, stripped walls, prepared woodwork, hung wallpaper, painted woodwork. Once we know what we are to produce we can start thinking about how to produce it.

Product Based Planning is a Prince2 technique that can be applied to all project planning activities.