Project Organization

Project Organization

The organization theme serves a main purpose of defining and establishing the project's structure of accountability and responsibility. PRINCE 2 is based on a customer/supplier environment. A successful project organization should have three characteristics which are:

a) Have business,user and supplier stakeholder representation

b) Ensure appropriate governance by defining responsibilities for directing,managing and delivering the project and clearly defining accountability at each level.

c) Have an effective strategy to manage communication flows to and from key external stakeholders.

The three Project interests:

There are three project interests in organization,and they are:

• Business: The products of the project should meet a business need which will justify the investment in the project. The project should satisfy the value for money criteria to make it worthwhile.The executive role is defined to look after the business interests.

• User: The senior user will represent this stakeholder interest on the project board. The senior user specifies the needs of the project, ensures user liaison with project management team,commits user resources, monitors products against requirements and specifies benefits and are held accountable for forcasted benefits realization. The user view point should represent those individuals or groups who will operate,maintain or support the project's outputs.

• Supplier: The supplier viewpoint should represent those who will provide the necessary skills and produce project product. The project may require both in-house and external supplier teams to construct the project product. The senior supplier will represent this stakeholder interest on the project board.

Organization Levels.

In the organization theme of project management under PRINCE 2, there is a distinction between the direction and management of the project and the delivery of the project's output.

The project Management structure has four levels, three of these represent the project management team while the fourth sitting outside of the project.

• Corporate or program management: This is the topmost level of the project management structure,it sits outside the project management team but will be responsible for commissioning the project, including identifying the executive and defining the project-level tolerances within which the Project Board will work.

• Directing: The responsibility of directing is entrusted with the project board, it is responsible for the overall direction and management of the project within the constraints set out by corporate or program management. The project board escalates problems outside the tolerance level to the corporate or program management and it is accountable for the success of the project.

• Managing: The project manager is responsible for the day to day management of the project within the constraints set out by the project board. The project manager is expected to ensure that the project is completed and produces the required output in accordance to the time,cost,quality, scope, risk and benefit performance goals.

• Delivering: This is vested with the team members. They are responsible for the day for delivering the project's products to an appropriate quality, and within a specified timescale and cost.

Project Board

Duties of the project board includes:

• Being accountable for the success or failure of the project in terms of the business,user and supplier interests.

• Providing unified direction to the project.

• Providing the resources and authorizing the funds necessary for the successful completion of the project.

• Facilitating integration of the project management team with the functional units corporate or external organizations

• Ensuring effective decision making

• Providing visible and sustained support for the project manager.

• Ensuring effective communication to project team and external stakeholders.

Four characteristics of a good project board:

•  Authority: A project board should be able to make strategic decisions about the project. It should have the power and right to make decisions and to provide resources to the project. The managerial level required to fill the roles will depend on factors such as the budget, scope and importance of the project.

• Credibility: Within organization will affect the ability to direct the project.

• Ability to delegate: Project board should not be involved in the detail of how the project is managed, nor in the specialist content of the project, but they should delegate this to the project manager and give enough space to manage the project by keeping the project board activity at the right level.

• Availability: To make decisions and provide direction to the project manager.

Project board roles:

• Executive: The executive is tye key decision maker of a project, he is accountable for the project's success. The executive is the owner of the business case and is focused throughout its life on achieving its objectives and delivering a product that will achieve the forecasted benefits. The executive is appointed by the corporate or program management during the pre-project process of starting up a project.

• Senior user:The responsibilities of the senior user include:a) Specifying the needs of those who will use the project's products. b) User liason with the project management team. c) Monitoring that the solution will meet those needs within the constraints of the Business case in terms of quality, functionality and ease of use. d) Committing user resources.

• Senior supplier:The senior supplier represents the interests of those designing,facilitating,procuring and implementing the project's products. The role is accountable for quality products and technical integrity. They provide supplier resources,ensure proposals for design are feasible and realistic and also mostly represents the maintenance interest post implementation.

Change authority:

The change authority has the following responsibilities

a) Changes approved by project board unless many changes are envisaged.

b) May include the project manager, project assurance, technical experts and users.

c) Approves request for changes and off specification

d) severity and authority of changes defined in Configuration Management Strategy

e) Appointed during initiating a project.

Project Assurance:

Project assurance is appointed where project board has insufficient time or requires expertise. Some of the responsibilities include:

a) Provide advise to the project manager but independent of the project manager

b) ideally should have 3 different role representing the business, user and supplier

c) Ensures correct people are involved with quality review and approval

d) Assist with the appointment of the quality review chairperson.

Project Manager:

The project manager manages the prpject from a day to day basis, it normally comes from tge customer environment but may also be from supplier.

The project manager is responsible for all PRINCE2 processes except directing a project. The project manager is appointed by the executive at starting up a project . The project manager delegates responsibility to the team managers and project support, and they are responsible for liaison with the project board and project assurance.

Team manager

Tge team manager is responsible for the production of the assigned products and reports to the project manger. The appointment of the team manager is influenced by the project size, specialist skills required and the geographical location.

The team manager agrees with the project manager on work packages delivery, reporting, cost, time.

Project support. The project support is delegated by the project manager unless performed by corporate or programme management. Project support may include specialist functions such as planning or risk management. Project support is responsible for configuration management procedure and tools defined in configuration management strategy. The project support must be kept independent from project assurance.