Project senior management
Within an organization, senior management and senior stakeholders may take many forms such as the CEO, board of directors, heads of department, sponsors, customers, suppliers, etc.
It is often one or more of the above that triggers a project into life; within PRINCE2 this is the project mandate.
But I want to focus on the governance at project level, and this will mean those who fill the roles within a project board.
As project board members remain accountable for the work that they direct that can really afford to get involved in the detail of their responsible project. Often their business responsibilities have a wider remit such as those examples within an organization mentioned in the first paragraph.
Within PRINCE2, the organization theme coupled with the planning and control aspects of the other themes provides a clear solution to the problem of project board members unable to get involved in the project details.
As the project board delegates the management of the project to the project manager on a stage by stage basis but only after they have approved the relevant stage plan. For each stage they set a tolerance level (this can be in terms of time, cost, quality, scope, risk, and benefits), and providing that the project manager is certain that the stage will finish within such tolerances, then there is no need for the project board members to maintain close contact with the work.
At the end of each stage the project board reviews the project status and as such is a major control milestone, and a review the stage that it is completed and the stage for the next plan as well as reviewing the project situation, the business case, and risks. On that basis they may approve commencement of the next stage or not as the case may be.
Project Board Governance ‘manage by exception’
The project board is a guiding coalition required to support and direct the project, and hence appointing the right people to fill those roles is a vital choice and if done badly the project is likely to fail to meet all of its objectives in some way.
Projects come in various sizes, complexity, risks and differing environments, and for this reason PRINCE2 does not define management jobs to be allocated to people on a one to one basis, instead it defines roles, each of which is defined by an associated set of responsibilities.
These three roles can be allocated, shared or combined dependent upon the project needs and the individuals concerned.
The project board consists of the executive role, the senior user role, and the senior supplier role. In addition each of those three roles have their own assurance responsibilities (in terms of business assurance, user assurance, and supplier assurance), and the combined name for this is project assurance.
I will go into further detail of these roles in another article, but in summary:
Project Board Executive Role
This will be filled by one individual and the role is ultimately accountable for the project success as well as being the key decision maker. The executive ensures that the project continues to give value for money and follows a cost conscious approach by carefully balancing the demands of the business, user and supplier. The executive is responsible for the business case throughout the project.
The executive’s focus is on the project achieving its objectives and delivering a product that will achieve the forecast benefits contained within the business case. The individual filling this role has the veto on decisions and actions, although he/she will listen and take advice if appropriate from the senior user and senior supplier roles.
Project Board Senior User Role
This role is responsible for representing the needs of those who will use the projects products as well as user liaison and continual monitoring that the chosen solution will meet such needs.
As this role is a champion for all those who will use the projects products, those for whom the products will achieve an objective or those who will use the products to deliver benefits.
Project Board Senior Supplier Role
This role is the champion of those designing, developing, facilitating, procuring and implementing the projects products, and is accountable for the quality of such products as well as being responsible for the technical integrity of the project.
This role may need to be filled by more than one individual as they are responsible for all those who are supplying resources to the project as well as insurance that designs and development of such products are feasible and a realistic.
Because of the structure of the project board you can see clearly that the design objectives of a PRINCE2 project board is to meet the three project interests of business, user and supplier.
The business interests are such that the project products should meet the business needs and hence justify the investment in the project as well as giving value for money. The executive role provides this interest area.
The user interest represents those who will use the projects outputs to realise the benefits, and may also operate, maintain, or support the project outputs.
The supplier interests are to ensure that the appropriately skilled resources are involved in the creation of the projects outputs and are hence responsible for providing the necessary skills. The project may use both in house and external suppliers.
Finally a word about the Project Assurance Role
The three interests mentioned above are safeguarded by ensuring that they are represented on the project board by project assurance. Since the three roles may provide their own project assurance or delegate it to other they retain the responsibility to assure themselves that the project is being conducted correctly.
Such project assurance must be independent of the project manager who is responsible for day-to-day running of the project, but such assurance roles are there to provide advice and support rather than direction.
Click on this for more Project Governance information.
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