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PRINCE2 2009 - Organization part 8

The PRINCE2 approach

The project management team

size of project board smallsize of project board

Size of the Project Board

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 of the interested parties in the corporate organization, and involve any suppliers (internal or external) that have been identified.

On a large project, tailoring the project management team could mean breaking the PRINCE2® roles into multiple appointments - for example, several Senior Users or Senior Suppliers could be appointed.
However, it is good practice to keep the size of the Project Board as small as possible while still representing all business, user and supplier interests.
To avoid enlarging the Project Board, user or supplier groups could be used to maintain broad-ranging senior management involvement in those projects that impact on a large user or supplier community.
These groups discuss user or supplier issues and risks, and pass recommendations to the Senior User(s) or Senior Supplier(s) on the Project Board.
If a user or supplier group is involved, it is important to define at the outset who is authorized to represent its collective view and how this will operate.
It may also be appropriate to appoint members of these groups to user or supplier Project Assurance; multiple individuals can fulfil Project Assurance roles.
The commercial context will also affect the project’s organizational structure (e.g. if a prime contractor is appointed).

The diagram shows a potential project-reporting structure which includes user and supplier groups.

Producing a matrix of stakeholders against the project’s products also helps split the project stakeholders (who need to be engaged as part of the Communication Management Strategy) from the project decision makers (who need to be on the Project Board).

The decision on whether to include external suppliers on the Project Board may be a cultural one based on fear of divulging commercial or financial information.

Leaving them out of the Directing a Project process could cause delays due to the lack of supplier resources to deal with change and to address specialist issues.
It is the Executive’s decision as to how this dilemma is solved practically.

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.

PRINCE2® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries.

This product contains EVERYTHING in the publications:

Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2 - 2005 edition
Managing successful Projects with PRINCE2 – 2009 edition
Directing Projects with PRINCE2.
plus:
The Complete Project Management package.

And much more besides - at a fantastic price.