Appendix C: Roles and responsibilities
Note: there is no Appendix B. This appendix has been numbered to reflect the system used in the main volume, Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2 (2017 edition).
These roles may be tailored to meet the needs of the project and some roles can be shared or combined as long as the minimum requirements for the organization theme are met.
The project board is accountable to corporate, programme management or the customer for the success of the project, and has the authority to direct the project within the remit set by corporate, programme management or the customer as documented in the project mandate.
The project board is also responsible for the communications between the project management team and stakeholders external to that team (e.g. corporate, programme management or the customer).
According to the scale, complexity, importance and risk of the project, project board members may delegate some project assurance tasks to separate individuals. The project board may also delegate decisions regarding changes to a change authority.
The executive is ultimately accountable for the project, supported by the senior user and senior supplier. The executive’s role is to ensure that the project is focused throughout its life on achieving its objectives and delivering a product that will achieve the forecast benefits. The executive has to ensure that the project gives value for money, ensuring a cost-conscious approach to the project, balancing the demands of the business, user and supplier.
Throughout the project, the executive is responsible for the business case.
The project board is not a democracy controlled by votes. The executive is the ultimate decision maker and is supported in the decision-making by the senior user and senior supplier.
The senior user is responsible for specifying the needs of those who will use the project’s products, for user liaison with the project management team, and for monitoring that the solution will meet those needs within the constraints of the business case in terms of quality, functionality and ease of use.
The role represents the interests of all those who will use the project’s products (including operations and maintenance), those for whom the products will achieve an objective or those who will use the products to deliver benefits. The senior user role commits user resources and monitors products against requirements. This role may require more than one person to cover all the user interests. For the sake of effectiveness, the role should not be split between too many people.
The senior user specifies the benefits and is held to account by demonstrating to corporate, programme management or the customer that the forecast benefits which were the basis of project approval have in fact been realized. This is likely to involve a commitment beyond the end of the life of the project.
The senior supplier represents the interests of those designing, developing, facilitating, procuring and implementing the project’s products. This role is accountable for the quality of products delivered by the supplier(s) and is responsible for the technical integrity of the project. If necessary, more than one person may represent the suppliers.
Depending on the particular customer/supplier environment, the customer may also wish to appoint an independent person or group to carry out assurance on the supplier’s products (e.g. if the relationship between the customer and supplier is a commercial one).
The project manager is accountable to the project board, and ultimately the executive, and has the authority to run the project on a day-to-day basis, within the constraints laid down by them.
The project manager’s prime responsibility is to ensure that the project produces the required products within the specified tolerances of time, cost, quality, scope, benefits and risk. The project manager is also responsible for the project producing a result capable of achieving the benefits defined in the business case.
The team manager’s prime responsibility is to ensure production of those products defined by the project manager to an appropriate quality, in a set timescale and at a cost acceptable to the project board. The team manager is accountable to, and takes direction from, the project manager.
Project assurance covers the primary stakeholder interests (business, user and supplier). The role has to be independent of the project manager; therefore the project board cannot delegate any of its assurance activities to the project manager.
The project board may delegate authority for approving responses to requests for change or off-specifications to a separate individual or group, called a change authority. The project manager could be assigned as the change authority for some aspects of the project (e.g. changing baselined work packages if it does not affect management stage tolerances).
The provision of any project support on a formal basis is optional. If it is not delegated to a separate person or function, it will need to be undertaken by the project manager.
One support function that must be considered is that of change control. Depending on the project size and environment, there may be a need to formalize this and it may become a task with which the project manager cannot cope without support.
Project support functions may be provided by a project office or by specific resources for the project. For further information on the use of a project office, see the AXELOS publication, Portfolio, Programme and Project Offices.