IT Governance Blog on IT governance, risk management, compliance and information security.

Designing and Appointing the Project Management Team

You read the phrase, “Designing and appoint the project management team”, in a few seconds. “Yes”, you say to yourself, “I understand that.” OK, let’s dig a bit deeper and look at a couple of questions you might have to ask in order to do this.

A PRINCE2 Practitioner exam concerned the creation of a company brochure for customers. Products required included glossy paper and professional photographs. The project also needed a quote from the local Post Office for bulk mailing. It was amazing how many candidates came back and suggested that the stationer, photographer and Post Office manager would share the Senior Supplier role. Can you imagine them attending end stage assessments? Even worse was a suggestion by some that the stationer, who was a “dynamic individual”, would be the Senior Supplier and represent the Post Office and photographer. What chance of his being able to make commitments on behalf of the other two?

One error that I often find among candidates answering an examination question about what a project’s organisation should be is that they will appoint someone because “they are enthusiastic” or “know a lot about the subject”. These are not reasons to appoint someone to a Project Board role. A Project Board role is all about decision-making and commitment. If the person cannot commit the required resources, he or she is not a candidate for a Project Board role.

Check back next week for part 3 of the Art of PRINCE2 Survival.
Colin Bentley – Author of: The Art of PRINCE2 Survival – PRINCE2 2009 Edition

Deep thoughts about stages

Stages are a wonderful thing. PRINCE2 MANAGEMENT stages are even better!

Let’s remind ourselves of the two most important uses of management stages. Firstly, they ease the worries in the minds of the Project Board members – How is the project going? Will I like what those developers are producing? Will we get our money’s worth? Is it all going terribly wrong? Will it end up another disaster like we used to have before we introduced PRINCE2™?

PRINCE2 allows the Project Board to look at the Project Plan, discuss with the Project Manager where it sees the points in the project that make it nervous. It may be the point at which it has to commit a lot of resource. It may be a point at which it can see the direction in which one or more serious risks are going, or it may be just a point at which some products are emerging (not necessarily end products) and the Project Board wants the comfort of having a good look at them (maybe via Project Assurance or other experts) to ensure that time, costs, quality, benefits, risks and scope are OK.
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