It’s been many a year since I studied PRINCE2, since then I have experienced rather too many project managers keen to maintain plans with clearly unmanageable numbers of activities and dependencies.
I am a strong believer in the art of the practical. Some programmes may impose a structure but to me the layering as proposed in PRINCE is salvation from the overly long project plan read on the Train. If technical resources cannot manage a devolved task list they either need a team lead or most likely be shown the door.
I prefer an objective driven approach that focuses on what is in and out of scope and summarises the objective with a milestone that you can track and depend upon. Ultimately if you cannot see the wood from the trees the project plan and associated reporting become a waste of valuable time and resource.