PRINCE2 Study Guide – 7 Part 2
Project Board Executive and Project Manager
One of the first activities is to appoint the Executive of the Project Board and the Project Manager; the Executive will now design and appoint the remaining roles within the Project Board including who will fill the Senior User and Senior Supplier roles, and how Project Assurance is to be handled.
The project manager will design and appoint any other supporting roles that will be needed such as project support, configuration management and the optional Team Manager role.
The next step is for the Executive to appoint the Project Manager; indeed, the name of the Project Manager may be included within the Project Mandate. This will free up the Executive to focus on directing, decision making, and all business-related activities.
In turn, the Project Manager will have the focus on the day-to-day management of this pre-project work.
Next, the Executive and the Project Manager will create the Project Brief and recruit the rest of the project management team.
The key question to be asked for the remaining activities within the Starting Up a Project process is to check that the project idea stated within the Project Mandate is worthwhile and viable.
The Project Brief
There are two main management products that are an output from this process, the Project Brief and a plan for the Initiation Stage.
The work of the remaining activities will be focused on refining the Project Mandate into the Project Brief. The answer to the question “why are we doing this project?”, is laid down within the Outline Business Case which forms part of the Project Brief, and will provide the justification for undertaking the project. It is the Project Board Executive’s responsibility to create the Outline Business Case.
The Project Brief contains the outline Business Case with sufficient information to justify carrying out the initiation stage, creating the Project Product Description which includes aspects such as the customer’s quality expectations and acceptance criteria for the end-product of the project.
The Project Brief also contains the Project Approach management document. This lays out the approach used by the project to deliver the end-product, for example, basing the design on an existing product or developing an entirely new design, or whether resources used for the project will be provided internally or using third parties.
The Project Brief is a refinement of the Project Mandate, and in a similar way the Project Brief will be refined further within the initiation stage to become the Project Initiation Documentation (PID).
The Project Management Team
The rest of the project management team members are now appointed by the Executive and the Project Manager. The Project Board Executive will appoint the remaining two roles of Senior User and Senior Supplier.
The Project Manager will appoint any other roles that are needed typically project support. The specialist team would not normally be appointed yet as the details of the project are yet to be known until planning takes place during the initiation stage. Those appointed needs to reflect the range of stakeholder perspectives of business, user, and supplier making sure that they have the appropriate level of authority.
One important principle of PRINCE2 is that of manage by exception. The purpose of this is to set tolerance levels at the directing, managing, and delivering management levels within a project. Tolerance is defined as limit within which a specific level may manage without the need to escalate to the next level above.
Tolerance
There are six objectives against which tolerances may be set: time, cost, quality, scope, risk, and benefits. If any of these tolerances are forecast to be exceeded, then an Exception Plan must be raised which if approved would replace the existing plan that would have no longer completed within tolerance. Corporate or Programme management have the authority to set project level tolerances, the Project Board have authority to set stage level tolerances, and optionally, the Project Manager may set tolerances around each Work Package.
One of the PRINCE2 principles is learning from experience. For this reason, the Lessons Log is created and filled with any lessons that can be learned from appropriate individuals and previous similar projects. The project manager would be expected to proactively collect such data. The Lessons Log will be updated and used throughout the project, as a source of information to create the optional Lessons Report at the end of each stage, and the Lessons Report that is created as part of the Closing a Project process. In this way, lessons can be passed on to future similar projects.
The Daily Log is also created by the project manager, and is used as a ‘diary’ by the project manager for the remainder of the project. But here in SU, it is also used to capture any risks and issues that need to be managed prior to the formal start of the project.
After the Project Brief, has been completed, the Project Board will review it and decide on whether the project should precede any further, and if the answer is yes, then the Project Board will authorize the official start of the initiation stage.
To proceed any further, the newly formed project board will need to decide whether it is worth investing in the creation of the PID. Specifically, how much work effort and resources are needed in the initiation stage.
In this way, poorly conceived projects can be nipped in the bud before any further effort is wasted upon them. By the same token, the information contained within the Project Brief and the initiation Stage Plan will give the project board sufficient information to make an informed choice.
However, before that decision can be made, the Project Board will also want to see a plan for the work of the initiation stage and so the final activity in the Starting Up a Project process is for the Project Manager to create the Stage Plan for the initiation stage. The initiation Stage Plan will detail the time, effort, and costs needed to carry out the work within the initiation stage.
The Starting Up a Project process culminates with the project manager requesting that the project board consider authorizing the initiation stage. This uses the first activity ‘authorizing initiation’ within the directing a project (DP) process. The project board may decide not to proceed any further. However, assume that in this instance they agree based on the evidence above to invest in the initiation stage, then this will become the formal start of the project, and corporate/programme management will be informed that the project is initiated.
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