Organization

• Introduction
  • Purpose
  • Organization defined
• Levels of organization
• The project management team
  • Project management team structure
  • Project Board
  • Project Assurance
  • Change Authority
  • Size of the Project Board
  • Project Manager
  • Team Manager
  • Project Support
  • Dealing with changes to the project management team
• Working with the project team
  • Balancing the project team and individual
  • Training needs for project teams
  • Part time teams
• Working with the corporate organization
  • Line management functional management
  • Centre of excellence
• Working with stakeholders
  • Types of stakeholder
  • Stakeholder engagement
  • The Communication Management Strategy
• Responsibilities

Key sections

• Introduction
• Business case
• Organization
• Quality
• Plans
• Risk
• Change
• Progress
• Introduction to processes
• Starting up a projectDirecting a project
• Initiating a project
• Controlling a stage
• Managing Product Delivery
• Managing a Stage Boundary
• Closing a Project
• Tailoring PRINCE2 to the project environment
• Directing Projects with PRINCE2

The PRINCE2 approach

The project management team

Change Authority

One consideration at project initiation should be who is permitted to authorize requests for change or off-specifications.
It is the Project Board’s responsibility to agree to each potential change before it is implemented.

In a project where few changes are envisaged, it may be reasonable to leave this authority in the hands of the Project Board.
But projects may be in a dynamic environment, where there are likely to be, for example, many requests to change the initial agreed scope of the project.
Technical knowledge may also be needed to evaluate potential changes.

The Project Board needs to decide before the project moves out of the initiation stage if it wishes to delegate some authority for approving or rejecting requests for change or off-specifications.

To facilitate this, the Project Board should define in the Configuration Management Strategy a scale of severity ratings for requests for change.
Depending on the severity, the request for change could be handled by:

• Corporate or programme management
• The Project Board
• Delegating to a Change Authority
• Delegating to the Project Manager.

These delegated authorities must be written into the appropriate role descriptions.
For projects that exist within a programme, the programme management should define the level of authority that the Project Board will have in order to be able to approve changes.

The Project Manager and/or the people with delegated Project Assurance responsibilities may act as the Change Authority.
Refer to the section covering ‘Change’ for more information on changes.

A Project Manager is given authority to approve changes to individual products only if the changes would:

• Cost less than a pre-arranged limit
• Impact the project timescales by no more than one week
• Not require any changes to the Project Product Description or any other product.

Any changes that fall outside of these limits would have to be escalated to the Project Board.

Note:
PRINCE2® 2009 describes the roles and responsibilities of key positions in the Appendices.
[see Appendix C Roles and responsibilities]

Further details of project management team roles and their associated responsibilities are provided in the folder ‘roles and responsibilities’ as part of the product package. These include role description outlines, which should be tailored to the needs of the specific project and each specific appointment.

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