PRINCE2 Project Management Team
As with all roles within PRINCE2, choices need to be made about the correct and most appropriate individuals to fill each of those roles. Some roles, like the executive and project manager, will only have one person. But other roles, such as the senior user, may require several people to fill it.
PRINCE2 describes responsibilities (roles), not to be confused with ‘jobs’. Within the project management team, there are four roles, and an individual or several individuals can share these may fill a role – put:
- More than one person can fill a role.
- One person can have more than one role.
Whenever considering who would be the best choice, a person’s skills, experience, authority, commitment, and availability are some of the criteria that need to be considered when creating the PRINCE2 project management team.
PRINCE2 Project Management Team defined
The project management team needs to reflect the interests of all parties and stakeholders involved.
As such, the PRINCE2 project management team must act as a team in support of each other, and the PRINCE2 project management team concept is powerful as it binds together every manager to ensure they are all committed and responsible for project success.
The project board forms part of the PRINCE2 project management team. The project board represents senior managers who own the project.
There are four levels of authority within a PRINCE2 organizational structure, and it is the final three below that form part of the PRINCE2 project management team:
- Corporate or Programme Management. The project board report on these.
- Project Board. Responsible for project direction
- Project Manager. Performs day-to-day management responsibility.
- Team Manager. Delivering the specialist products by managing the specialist team.
This will include business interests, user interests and supplier interests. Like any well-run project, each needs to understand and agree with the PRINCE2 project management team, who is accountable for what, who is responsible for what, and what the reporting and communication lines are.
Within a PRINCE2 project management team, the business and user interests are from the customer’s side and the supplier from the supply side.
The first step is to examine the Lessons Log for any lessons that may be applied from previous similar PRINCE2 projects to designing and appointing a project management team. The next step is to prepare the team structure and create role descriptions for the remaining project board roles within the PRINCE2 project management team.
Within the PRINCE2 project management team, remember that the term role has nothing to do with an individual’s status.
An essential responsibility of the PRINCE2 project board is project assurance. This is part of the PRINCE2 project management team and consists of three roles, business assurance, user assurance, and supplier assurance.
What must be decided at this point is whether the senior user role will carry out their user assurance or whether they will delegate it. The same applies to the executive and supplier roles.
From the project manager’s perspective, they will want to decide whether the optional Team Manager role is needed and, if so, create their role descriptions.
Another consideration for the project manager is whether they will provide their project support or a separate individual will be required. If project support is to be delegated, then a role description for project support will be required.
The reporting and communication lines within all role descriptions must be confirmed, and the remaining individuals within the project management team can now be appointed.
It is essential to ensure that suitable candidates for each role are available for the time and effort estimates for each role.
Identifying individual candidates for each role can now be done. However, for larger and more complex project management teams, it may be appropriate to undertake stakeholder analysis to select suitable candidates for each role more accurately.
Some training may be required if suitably experienced individuals are currently out of stock. In this case, it needs to be considered how and when such activity will be given and funded.
Depending on the nature of the project, it may not be possible to identify all candidates for the roles at this time, so it may only be possible to appoint them later.
Consideration should be given as to whether a temporary role could be appointed to represent their interests. An example might be appointing the organization’s purchasing manager as the senior supplier role until contracts are placed with third parties.
During the start of a project process, the daily log is used to capture and manage any known issues and risks.
This course is DEPRECATED
The old PRINCE2 6th Edition Foundation and Practitioner syllabus was upgraded in 2024. Check out the brand NEW PRINCE2 7th Edition Masterclass, covering all the current syllabus, training material and online exam benefits HERE
Your Route To PRINCE2 6th Edition Practitioner
Study PRINCE2 6 Foundation and Practitioner Exams with our famous on-line course with streaming HD Video Lessons, study guides and mock exams. In the last fifteen years we have had 6,000+ Academy students successfully transform their careers as PRINCE2 Practitioners.
