PRINCE2 7 Managing Product Delivery
The purpose of the process of managing product delivery is to control the link between the project
manager and the team manager.
This is achieved by agreeing on the requirements for acceptance, execution, reporting, and delivery of specialist products. The role of the team manager is to coordinate an area of work that will deliver one or more of the specialist products that form the project product. Team managers can be internal or external to the organization running the project.
The process of managing product delivery views the project from the team manager’s perspective.
The process of controlling a stage views it from the project manager’s perspective.
The team manager ensures that the team creates and delivers products during the project by:
- accepting authorized work packages from the project manager
- ensuring that the development, operations, and maintenance relationships identified in a work package description are maintained
- creating a team plan for the assigned work packages (this may be done in parallel with the project manager creating the stage plan for the stage)
- ensuring that the products are developed following any development methods specified in the work package description
- demonstrating that each product meets its quality specification through the quality methods specified in the product description
- obtaining approval for completed products from the authorities identified in the product description
- delivering the products to the project manager following any procedures specified in the work package description.
Sometimes a project uses external suppliers that do not use PRINCE2. The process of managing product delivery provides a statement of the required working relationship between the team
manager and the project’s PRINCE2 method by the project manager.
The work package may be part of a contractual agreement; therefore, the formality of a team plan could vary from simply appending a schedule to the work package description to creating a fully formed plan that is presented in a style similar to a stage plan.
Managing Product Delivery – outsourcing project work
Where a third party is used to create one or more products for the project, the team manager role will normally be filled by their project manager. Indeed, they would see the collection of work packages for which they are responsible as being their ‘whole project’.
Optionally, the team manager may create a team plan which would lay out exactly how that particular work package is to be executed and delivered.
If a third party is being used to create work packages, this work will often be carried out within a contract, and hence the terms and conditions would need to be agreed.
The terms and conditions may be agreed upon during the initiation stage, during the creation of the next stage plan within the managing a stage boundary process, at the beginning of the relevant management delivery stage, or as part of the accept a work package activity.
A third party may be working under a contract that stipulates a fixed end date and a fixed cost for one or more of the work packages. Therefore, both the team plan and the regular checkpoint reports would not need to report or contain the end date and total budget for the work.
However, the project manager must remain in control of the progress of the stage and therefore may request, as an absolute minimum, that the team manager provide key milestones of the work to be carried out so that these can be reported regularly and timely corrective action taken.
Managing product delivery – objectives and context
Work should only start on a work package after it has been authorized by the project manager and accepted by the team manager.
All those involved in the management and delivery of the specialist products must be clear on what exactly is to be produced, and the expected work effort, cost or time scales.
The products to be created within each work package must follow the requirements outlined within each product description, therefore these product descriptions must be included as part of the work package.
Optionally, the project manager may request that the work package be delivered within certain tolerances, in which case the regular checkpoint reports should include performance against such tolerances.
The team manager’s role within the managing product delivery process
The team manager is there to accept and check that authorised work package descriptions given by the project manager are realistic and achievable within the constraints laid down.
Various interfaces will also need to be managed by the team manager. These include interfaces between one or more of the products being created and other products outside the scope of the work package. A simple example might be electrical cables and plugs to be consistent with other products being made by another specialist team or organization.
The other interface that needs to be managed by the team manager, is partly human interfaces. This will normally take the form of communication with others.
For example, asking questions or clarifying with another person, using a third party to test a product or ensure that it meets certain requirements, and obtaining authorization for acceptance criteria.
The creation of the optional team plan may take place as part of accepting each work package, or it may occur during the managing a stage boundary process and be done in parallel with the project manager producing the next stage plan.
Each product description for each product within the work package will have a set of quality criteria, and therefore each product is not considered complete until it has passed its acceptance criteria and this has been authorized by the appropriate role or individual.
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