What project assurance roles are there?
Supplier assurance (below senior supplier)
Business assurance (below exec)
User assurance (below senior user)
They may deligate this responsibility or carry it out themselves.
Change authority
Responsibility of the Project board.
They can delegate responsibilities if they please to the ‘change authority’.
Act with the same authority as the project board and can make decisions on any changes that are made.
There may be a limit on this.
Project Manager
Reporting to PB but never part of it.
Responsible for giving out work packages to specialist teams or providing any necessary project support.
What are the 3 project interests?
Customer
* Business
* User
Supplier
* Supplier
What are the levels of management?
- Corporate - Set project level tolerances. Exec of board reports up to corporate. Approves Ben Mgmt Approach. Authorizes closure.
- Directing - Set stage level tolerences. PM reports up to board. Approves any deviation to stage level tolerance. If Proj level tolerance breached, then reports to corporate. Communicates with other stakeholders.
- Management - Option to set WP tolerences. Delivery team report progess.
- Delivery - report any forecast tolerance breaches as an issue report rather than exception report.
What is a PRINCE 2 minimum?
Define org structure and roles.
Document roles for delegating change auth.
Define approach to communicating and engaging with stakeholders.
2 products are set up during initiation - PID and Communication Mgmt Approach
Key responsibilities of PB
- Ensures stakeholder involvement/representation
- Provides direction to PM
- Ultimately accountable for project success
- Project’s voice to the outside world.
- Authorizes next stage plan and agrees stage completion.
- Sets stage tolerance.
- Provide resources and allocate funds
Change control approach
- Scale of severity changes
- Who should handle changes
- Rules of engagement
PB Executive
Must provide value for money.
PM and exec cannot be the same person.
Has the final word.
Responsible for dev and ownership of business case and continued business case justification.
Obtains funding and sets stage level tolerance.
Aligned with strategic business case.
Responsible for business assurance.
Communicates between project and corporate.
Communicates to all stakeholders.
Formal project closure.
Chairing post project (benefits) review.
Senior User
- Fit for purpose.
- Accurately specifying user needs
- Reprisents those who use the products
- Accountable for user supplied procucts, resources and user-liason.
- Prioritises user opinions and issues
- Accepts the project end product (using acceptance criteria) for the user org
- Specifies the benefits at the beginning and is held accountable
- Monitor products against the requirements and make sure they care capable of achieving benefits
- Has authority to commit use resources
Senior Supplier
- Project is do-able and outcome sensible
- Must achieve objectives/capabilities required by senior user.
- Represents suppliers and providers
- Commits specialist supplier resources
- Briefs PB on any supplier related issues.
- Assures specialist integrity and project direction
- Accountable for supplier product quality
- Could be an ‘internal resource manager’
- Gives informal advice to PM if needed.
‘procurement’ usually represents suppliers.
Project assurance vs quality assurance
Project assurance
Provides assurance to project stakeholders that the project is being conducted properly.
* Intependent of PM, project support, team manager, and project teams (independant)
* Responsibiliy of Project board (internal to project)
Quality assurance
Provides assurance to corporate or programme management that the project is being conducted properly.
* Performed independently from PM team (including PB)
* Responsibility of corporate/Programme mgmt (independant from project).
Project assurance
Not optional.
Monitoring project’s performance independent of PM.
Project board accountable.
Monitors stage and team planning, work package and quality review prep.
Change Authority
Decision to delegate to change authority from PB to change auth is made at project initiation
* Used to authorise off spec or requests for change
* Details should be laid out in change mgmt approach
* Used if Project board is expecting many or costly changes
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Project manager
- Creates PID
- Day to day mgmt
- Delivery of products that have potential of achieving benefits
- Work package hand out and receive
- Highlight reports to PB
- Exception reports to PB
- Managing all issues and risks
- Monitoring progress and making adjustments
- Managing team managers or specialist teams
- Deliver against time, cost, quality
Team manager
- Might be more than one
- Manage specialist team
- Assist PM in delivering stage plan
- Creates team plan if required
- Creates team plan
- Manages work package
- Manages WP risks and issues - escalates if forecast to exceed wp tolerance (raise as issue)
- Reports to and takes direction from PM
- Provide checkpoint reports
Project support
- Admin and support
- Guidance on standards tools and techniques
- assist in planning
- Filing
- documentation
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Communication mgmt approach
Thorough description of the flow/freq/means of info flow.
* PM responsible for creating
* Reviewed and updated at each end stage boundary (same as rest of PID)
Stakeholder engagement
Identifying and communicating effectively with those people/groups who have influence/interest on project outcome
* Usually programme level
6 step procedure to implement
1. Identify stakeholders
2. Creating and analyzing stakeholder profiles (Why?/What?)
3. Defining stakeholder engagement approach.
4. Planning the engagements (when?)
5. Engaging stakeholders (do)
6. Measuring effectiveness
Business change manager and Design Authority
- Business change manager from programme may fulfil the project role of a senior user or exec
- Responsible for benefits mgmt (similar to snr user)
- and for implementing and embedding of new capabilities are delivered
- Senior role drawn from the area of the business affected by the programme
- Design authority expert in particular area.
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