princPRINCE2® Roles and Responsibilities [All Roles explained]

7 min readMar 30, 2022

PRINCE2® clearly suggests that a project should have well-defined, distributed and agreed roles and responsibilities among the entire team undertaking the project. It is important for an organization to distinctly identify these Prince2® roles and responsibilities to enable its structure that deals with Business, User and Stakeholder interests to function properly and effectively.

PRINCE2® ORGANIZATION THEME

The organization theme is responsible for defining and authorizing the accountability and responsibilities that form the structure of a project.

PRINCE2® assumes that there will be a customer responsible for specifying the desired result and then purchasing the project. Similarly, a supplier will also be present to provide the resources and skills needed to deliver the desired results. Thus, it is safe to say that PRINCE2® is based on a customer/supplier environment.

One major feature of PRINCE2® is that all the projects should have a defined organizational structure that will ultimately bring together the various parties and teams for the common aspirations of the project. It further enhances the effectiveness of project governance and decision making.

These are the components of a successful project management team under the organization theme:

1. Representing all the three major stakeholders as listed in PRINCE2®, the project consists of three major stakeholders which are the Business Sponsors, Users, and Suppliers.

Business Sponsors are responsible for ensuring that the product or service offers value for money and is of high-quality standards.
Users represent the consumer aspects, they will use the final finished products and services, and are the ones receiving the benefit of those products and services.
Suppliers are responsible for providing the basic material and resources, raw or tailored and supplying proper knowledge and experience to the project. They are the producers, producing the finished products according to the designed project plan.

This particular principle clearly states that the three major stakeholders must be correctly represented in the Project Management Team and in the Project Board as they act as the three staunch pillars that support and drive the project further ahead. Every successful project team must have a proper Business, User, and Supplier stakeholder representation.

An effective project team should have defined responsibilities for directing, managing and delivering the project. These three processes paired up with accountability are the key components of a project and thus require accurate and proper distribution of responsibilities.
Another component of a successful project team is the regular and continuous reviewing of various project roles assigned to the members throughout the project.
The final component is to come up with an effective strategy for properly managing the communication flows that the project team must maintain to/from the external key stakeholders.

It is a common understanding that the senior management board will be under a lot of workload and cannot supervise the day-to-day development of the project. Hence, the board issues certain responsibilities to certain individuals or a group of individuals, such that the direction and management of the project is separated from the delivery of the project’s outputs and results. It is done by using the principle of Management by Exception.

The structure that eventually forms comprises of four levels, where Corporate level is outside the project borderlines:

Corporate: It is responsible for:
Commissioning the project in the first place
Appointing the Project Executive
Defining the project level tolerances to be followed by the project board
Directing: It is undertaken by the project board, which is responsible for:
Overall direction and supervision of the project
Accountable for the project’s success
They approve all the major plans
They approve completion of each stage
They authorize the start of the next stage
Communicating with the stakeholders
Authorizing any deviation that exceeds the project level tolerances
Managing: Project Manager comes under this level and is responsible for:
The day-to-day management of the project within the parameters set by the project board
To make sure that the products are being delivered according to the time, cost, quality, scope of risk and benefit objectives
Delivering: Team Managers come under this level and are responsible for:
Delivering the project’s products with the desired quality standards and within a specified time frame and cost

To summarize these components, we can conclude that each project should have direction, management, control and communication within its structure and project team for providing better and fruitful outcomes.

THE PREDEFINED ROLES IN A PROJECT

The PRINCE2® methodology is based on processes and division of stages for improved performance. It also brings along a series of defined roles with specific tasks designated to them. The predefined roles in a project based on a PRINCE2® environment are:

Project Board — It is a group of professionals that includes :

Executive: The executive has the custody of the business case and is the person ultimately taking responsibility for the project.
Senior User: This position can be held by an individual or a group of professionals. Their primary objective is to represent the demands of the final user.
Senior Supplier: This position can also be assigned to one or more individuals. Their responsibility is to ensure the representation of the interests of the suppliers.

Project Assurance: The primary goal of Project Assurance is to make sure that the interests of the stakeholders are met.
Change Authority: They are responsible for deciding the major change requests on behalf of the Project Board.
Project Manager: The person responsible for undertaking the day-to-day supervision of the project on behalf of the Project Board.
Project Support: It is the body responsible for assisting the Project Manager in the Project Management tasks and duties.
Team Manager: This position can be assigned to one or more professionals that ensure the quality and other elements of production in the various teams that focus on a particular skill or knowledge from various departments.

1. Roles Associated with the Project Board

The project board represents the direction level of the project and consists of the following roles :

a. The Executive: The executive actually owns the business case and his role is that of a business-oriented leader who is ultimately accountable for the project. The executive also has the authority of delivering the final words and decisions that are taken in the project. Thus, the project board doesn’t demonstrate any signs of democracy and equal decision-making rights.

The executive is appointed by the corporate of programme management, he is the one responsible for the project with additional support from the Senior User and Senior Supplier. The executive is also responsible for designing and appointing the project management team, including the rest of the project board and also appoints the project manager

b. The Senior User: It represents the final user’s requirements in the board. It specifies the needs of the user that will use the finished product or service and also establishes communication between the project management team and the users, and ensuring that the products will cater to the needs of the users, especially the quality of the product or service and ease of use. It also supplies benefits information for the Benefit Review Plan.

c. The Senior Supplier: It represents the interests of the supplier. It represents the interests of those designing, developing, facilitating and implementing the project’s product and services, they provide supply to the project and make sure that only the right tools, people, equipment and expertise are in place. They also ensure that the product meets the expected criteria including the quality criteria.

Only one person can be the executive, but both the other two roles i.e the senior user and the senior supplier can be assigned to one or multiple individuals.

Associated Duties

The project board is responsible for holding accountability for the success and the failure of the project.
Another duty is to provide unified direction to the project and the respective Project Manager.
The project board also provides the resources and also authorizes funds utilized in the project.
They should also provide additional visible and continuous support and assistance to the Project Manager.
They ensure that there is effective communication within the project team and with external stakeholders.

In real life, there are many organizations that have a project board that is incapable of handling projects or is either inexperienced or not at all interested in the project itself. This is a serious issue and a major drawback that could sabotage the entire project and the team associated. Henceforth, a great project board is a must to ensure that the direction is on point and effective.

2. The Project Assurance Role

It is the responsibility of the Project Board to ensure that the project performs well and the products/services are produced, this is known as the Project Assurance. The board usually checks it directly through the Project Manager. But in large projects, many of the board members are busy with their respective tasks. Thus, the board can delegate this responsibility to someone else. The basic method is to double-check the information and this is called Project Assurance.

It monitors the performance of the project and provides assistance to the Project Manager by giving insights on corporate-related issues. That’s how the board uses its Project Assurance responsibility to ensure that everything is going according to plan and the Project Manager is up to date with corporate regulations.
Different board members have their respective Project Assurance responsibilities. For example:

The Executive is responsible for Business Assurance (Business Value)
The Senior User is responsible for the User Assurance
The Senior Supplier is responsible for the Supplier’s Assurance

3. The Change Authority Role

The responsibilities associated with the Change Authority are as follows:

This role lies under the Project Team Management.
The Project Board may decide if an individual should be appointed or an entire group is required to undertake this role.
The primary objective of Change Authority is to review the requests for change or the off-specifications related to the project.
The Change Authority is also capable of delegating responsibility to a number of levels depending on the intensity and the complexity of the change.
If smaller changes are expected in a project then the Project Board can handle them. But when many major changes are expected then it is more efficient to use a separate Change Authority group.
A separate Change Authority group simplifies the change process and saves the Project Board from all the hassle.