Defined Roles and Responsibilities

In any project, people need to know what to do and what they can expect from others. From my perspective, this is one of the most important principles to get right from the beginning. PRINCE2 states that a project should have defined and agreed roles and responsibilities within an organization structure that engages the Business, User and Supplier Stakeholder interests.

According to PRINCE2, a project has 3 primary stakeholders. They are the Business sponsors, Users and Suppliers.

• Business sponsors are those who make sure the project delivers value for money.
• Users will use the products once created, so they receive the benefits.
• Suppliers provide the resources and expertise to the project and produce the products.

This principle states that these three primary stakeholders must be correctly represented in the Project Management Team and in the Project Board. This is done by the following default roles in PRINCE2:

• Project Board, a group of the following roles:
  • Executive, the business-oriented person who’s ultimately responsible for the project
  • Senior User, one or more people who represent the final users' requirements in the board
  • Senior Supplier, one or more people who represent the interests of the suppliers
• Project Assurance, assures the interests of the primary stakeholders
• Change Authority, decides on some of the request for changes in behalf of the Project Board
• Project Manager, responsible for the day to day management of the project in behalf of the Project Board
• Project Support, helps the Project Manager in project management activities
• Team Manager, one or more people responsible for ensuring the quality and other variables of production in the teams

Each role in the project management team has a defined role and agreed responsibility, so to summarize the principle of “Defined Roles and Responsibilities,” a good Project Management structure answers the questions “What is expected of me?”, “What can I expect from others?”, and “Who makes what decisions?”