PRINCE2 Roles: The Reigning Project Management Methodology

 

A carry on from our previous post, PRINCE2 Fundamentals: The Reigning Project Management Methodology. This post is concerned with the 7 roles of PRINCE2

The 7 roles in PRINCE2

There are 3 principle roles for PRINCE2: the project board, the project manager, and the project team. But there are many supplemental roles that help ensure requirements and standards are met and that work runs smoothly.

 

• The customer is the person paying for the project to be completed.
• The user will either use the project deliverables or will be impacted by the project's outcome. (For some projects, the customer and user may be the same person.)
• The supplier is a subject matter expert who provides the knowledge needed to complete the project by designing or building the end result.
• The project manager is responsible for organizing, planning and overseeing work on the project. They select and manage the people who complete project tasks, and they’re responsible for making sure work is done correctly and on time.
• The project team and team manager actually roll up their sleeves and get project tasks done. Team managers oversee the detailed aspects of daily work and report directly to the project manager.
• The administrator sets up meetings, keeps everyone updated, tracks documentation, etc. On small projects, project managers will often take over this responsibility, but if there are multiple projects running at once or the project is large/complex, a project support office is typically set up to manage these duties.

One of the 3 main roles, the project board typically includes multiple people: the customer (typically a senior executive), the end user (or a representative), and the supplier. It checks for project assurance from three unique perspectives:

• The customer ensures the project is still viable financially, typically through cost benefit analysis.
• The user ensures user needs are being met.
• The supplier checks whether the project is working towards a realistic, practical solution.

On some projects, PRINCE2 assurance is done by an unbiased, third-party team.