Tailoring the PRINCE2 project organization – Part 2
PRINCE2 Projects operating in a commercial environment
The objective here is to ensure that both organizations establish and maintain sound business justification for their work and that individual governance is respected.
The project manager must have a good understanding of their obligations under any contract with the supplier organization.
In PRINCE2, the project manager will normally come from the customer organization. The supplier staff may fulfill the team manager role for the project, and be the project manager from the supplier’s viewpoint.
Sometimes the project manager will come from the supplier’s organization. The customer may choose to stay at a distance from the working level and expect the supplier to provide the management of the project.
The customer is likely to increase the rigour in project assurance, and may choose their own staff to fulfill this role.
It will be helpful that job titles are mapped to PRINCE2 roles, and that responsibilities for each role are clear and recorded within the project initiation documentation (PID).
There may be a joint project board with representatives from the customer and all the suppliers that the customer has engaged. The executive on such a project board will be supplied by the customer and the senior suppliers will represent each of the suppliers.
The supplier may treat their work packages within the customer’s project as a project within the supplier’s organization. This may mean establishing a separate defined ‘supplier project board’
If there are multiple suppliers, all of them may be represented on the project board as it provides a forum for them to integrate direction and decision making.
If there were more than three or four suppliers, it may be more effective for the contracts manager responsible for the performance of all supplier contracts, to sit on the project board on their behalf. Alternatively, it may be more appropriate to appoint a prime contractor.
During procurement, the project may need a temporary appointment from within the customer organization for the senior supplier role until a supplier has been appointed.
PRINCE2 Projects using an agile approach
The additional delivery level agile roles may be needed, and mapped to the roles of the project management team structure.
The project manager will need to understand:
- How a self-organizing delivery team operates, and how this relates to the team manager and change authority roles
- The responsibilities of roles in the agile approach being used
- In an agile environment, the user is often represented by a single person refer to as ‘product owner’. However, a wider view of the customer may be needed due to the cross functional nature of projects
- Have agile team leaders liaise of the project manager when more than one team is involved
The use of management by exception is essential to enable PRINCE2 and agile to be blended in an effective manner. This empowers the project management team and enables it to self-organize within clearly defined boundaries.
Creating an effective PRINCE2 project board
A good project board should display FOUR key characteristics:
Authority
Project board members should be senior enough within the organization to make project strategic decisions
The individuals chosen must have sufficient authority to make these decisions and to provide resources to the project. The management level required will depend on factors such as budget, scope and project importance
Credibility
The credibility of the project board members within the organization will affect their ability to direct the project
Ability to delegate
The project board must ensure that the project manager is given enough ‘space’ to manage the project and keep the project board activity at the right level. Project board members should not be involved in the detail of how the project is managed.
Availability
Project board members who made all the above characteristics provide no value if they are not available to make such decisions and provide direction to the project manager.
The executive, supported by the project manager, is responsible for agreeing a suitable team structure and tailoring it to the project’s size, risk and complexity. The project board needs to represent all the interested parties and involve internal and external suppliers.
On a complex project, the project management team could have multiple people fulfilling each role, but it is good practice to keep the size of the project board as small as possible.
Producing a matrix of stakeholders against the projects products also helps but the project stakeholders, who also need to be fully engaged, from the project decision makers – who need to be on the project board.
Questions of confidentiality made influence whether to include external suppliers on the project board, whereas excluding them from the directing a project process could cause delays due to supplier response times to deal with resources, issues, and specialist changes.
