Lesson 11: Organization, Part 1

This is the first of five lessons about the Organization theme.

Based on AXELOS PRINCE2^® material. Reproduced under licence from AXELOS. All rights reserved.
Note: PRINCE2 2017 edition is now called PRINCE2 6th edition.

00:07 – So welcome to the Organization Theme.
00:10 – As usual, I will ask you many scenario-based questions on the way.
00:13 – Nader will give a comment, and if needed, then I can do a quick recap.
00:18 – A good thing to point out is that stop the video many times and use the manual to find the information because that will help you a lot as well in the exam.
00:26 – You really have to know where everything is in the PRINCE2 manual.
00:30 – It will help you a lot and give you confidence. So, just a quick reminder.
00:34 – Now back to the Organization Theme. There’s actually two main subjects here.
00:38 – One is about the people itself, so the project management team and the roles and responsibilities, and the other is about communication. So we’ve got two subjects in, let’s say, one theme.
00:51 – So, let’s go to our first question, our first scenario, is we have a sales manager for a company or a sales manager is appointed as a Senior User for a new application project.
01:04 – It’s a new sales application that will be built, and the Senior User provides the detailed requirements, but the Senior User as well also wants to create the Business Case because they have a very good understanding of their business and what they do. Is this appropriate?
01:23 – The first part is, where they provide the information about the requirements, but not about the Business Case. And why not?
01:31 – They don’t have all the skills and information required for creating a Business Case.
01:38 – They know how things work, but when it comes to the cost of creating those things, that’s a supplier type of information that they don’t have. Exactly, yeah.
01:46 – And in the Business Case, we always compare the cost of creating the product to benefits realized by using the product.
01:52 – It’s the responsibility of the Project Manager to create the Business Case in the Initiating a Project process.
01:58 – Before that, in the Starting Up a Project process, you remember who he was? The Executive.
02:05 – Those people have a wider understanding and they will get information from many different people, including the Senior User.
02:15 – Correct. So the Executive is really, they’re responsible for the business interests of the project and they should keep this in mind the whole way during the project and the Senior User should not be allowed to do this.
02:26 – A reminder then of what the Senior User does is they are there to represent the user interests and make sure the requirements are known to the project and they should be thinking about constantly, “Are we going to get the product at the end of the project that we can use to realize our expected benefits?” The next scenario. The project team has business and user representation, but they don’t have supplier representation. That’s because the supplier is external and they don’t see this fit. Is that an appropriate thing to do?
03:02 – Sometimes it is difficult to bring real supplier representatives to the project because you may not be comfortable discussing some things with them, and sometimes even you have many, many suppliers and each of them are involved only in very small parts of the project. Okay.
03:20 – It is fine to bring internal people as Senior Suppliers, that’s fine, but we must have Senior Suppliers. Okay.
03:27 – We can even sometimes combine the role of Senior Supplier with someone else, but still we need to have someone responsible for Senior Supplier ship in a project.
03:38 – What can happen if we don’t have that role?
03:40 – What can happen to the project if we don’t have a proper Senior Supplier role?
03:44 – Well, the idea is that when we want to make high-level decisions in the Project Board, we need to have understanding about different aspects of the project.
03:54 – How the features are going to be used, that comes from the user representatives, the Senior Users, and what types of things are possible to be done in the project and what are the needs for the project during the execution.
04:09 – That comes from the Senior Supplier and when we have both of them together, also with the business understanding that comes from the Executive, we can make the correct decisions.
04:19 – Yeah, the representation is there because otherwise the users may believe they can have so much functionality at a really low price, but the Senior Supplier is there to remind them, “No, actually that’s not available yet to do.” So they will keep the project, let’s say … they will keep the project grounded, is a probably good way to say it.
04:37 – So, all projects need business, user and supplier representation, and the supplier needs to be represented as well on the Project Board and the organization then can choose which information to share at particular meetings.
04:50 – So there’s no real excuse. Now the next question.
04:55 – PRINCE2 says it’s possible to combine different roles in PRINCE2, especially for smaller projects and that’s a good example of tailoring.
05:03 – So, for example, the Project Manager can do both the Project Manager role and the Project Support role.
05:09 – So, now a question based on this.
05:12 – So we have a new application that’s being built for a financial department and the financial head becomes the Executive. So they decide, “Okay, good, I’m the Executive. I can eliminate the role of the Senior User and I can take on that …”
05:26 – I can control the project then. Is that an appropriate thing to do?
05:32 – The part about the Executive doing the responsibilities of the Senior Supplier is fine, but you mentioned eliminating the role of the Senior Well done, yeah.
05:42 – Yeah. That doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t mean that we don’t need that role anymore.
05:48 – What happens is that the same person is doing both of those two things.
05:51 – Yeah. So both roles have to still be done, that’s what you mean. Yeah. Okay.
05:54 – Yeah. Those responsibilities, those activities assigned to those two roles will be done by one person and sometimes they can change hats. Yeah. But there are many conditions, practical conditions.
06:05 – The first thing is that they should have all the skills.
06:09 – If the Executive is going to take on the role of Senior User, they should understand how the product is going to be used in the real environment and how users are working with the product.
06:21 – They should also have enough time to spend on the project because they will have more activities to do, and the Executive, for example, doesn’t usually spend a lot of time in the project, but the Senior User usually spends a little bit more time and goes through the details, so they should make sure that they have enough time for that.
06:38 – And finally, my favorite here is that what the Executive does is relatively high level, relative to the Senior User. The Senior User is a still high level, but they go through more details and there’s a risk here.
06:55 – When one person is responsible for a few high-level things and a few concrete detailed things, they usually forget about the more high-level things.
07:05 – That’s really risky. That’s how people think and work.
07:09 – So it’s good practice to try to avoid the situation then if possible, if at all possible.
07:14 – Yes. If it is possible, and that’s a good idea.
07:18 – You can bring more people to the project. More people will be involved.
07:23 – They will feel like they own the project. You know, they will I don’t know how to put it. You shouldn’t keep everything for yourself.
07:33 – Yeah. So in the case of the financial head, he can still be the Executive, but he should perhaps point to people who understand the process of the financial department very well and say, “Okay, you’re there to represent the user, so you’re on the Senior User role.” That will be like a good idea and in that way, they’re still responsible, but of course, they have those people who are there then to give the requirements.
07:56 – So, well done, that was a really … this question was not so easy because I had the word eliminating here.
08:01 – The question sounded good, but this is the kind of thing you’ve got to look out for in the exam questions.
08:09 – So a role cannot be eliminated. The word is combined, they’re combined into different roles, okay.
08:16 – So the Senior User role cannot be eliminated.
08:19 – The financial head can take on both roles, so the Executive and the Senior User; however, it’s better that they try to find another person.
08:27 – The Project Manager as well should remind them of their duties, that they have got two hats to carry, and question are they carrying both during the project as well.
08:38 – Now, the next scenario. We have a customer who has a Project Manager or the customer’s Project Manager is 10 years younger than the supplier’s Team Manager and out of respect, the Senior Supplier has asked the Project Manager to change the title for that Team Manager to Senior Project Manager because that’s what he is, you know, and how should the Project Manager handle that because there’s an image problem here.
09:06 – Yeah. I’ve seen problems like that in the projects.
09:10 – I believe that the main problem is the old-fashioned way of seeing the Project Manager.
09:15 – In the past, the Project Managers were the highest people in the project, they were the oldest people with the most experience, the most capable people.
09:24 – They had the best parking places. Yeah, and when I say that, it’s not about management capabilities, it’s about mainly technical capabilities.
09:33 – Because of that, they are promoted to be the Project Manager, but nowadays we try to see the project management role as a profession, something different.
09:45 – So if you’re a technical expert and then you become a Project Manager, you’re not promoted, you’ve changed your career. That’s a big change. Many things change.
09:54 – It doesn’t mean that if you’re successful in your job, you should become a Project Manager.
10:00 – No, that’s something else. You can become a much better technical expert. That’s the idea." Yeah. This is not very well known actually. It’s not very well shared.
10:11 – Unfortunately. It’s getting better nowadays. I think it’s getting better.
10:15 – The pioneer may be I think is the PMI in changing this.
10:20 – They’ve done a great job on doing this.
10:23 – That was probably one of the best things that PMI has done in my opinion.
10:27 – You also mentioned facilitation before, that the main key word here is facilitation.
10:32 – Yeah. Well, in the new point of view, the Project Manager is a professional in project management, not in technical, as for example, what they do is they enable people to do their best. They facilitate everything.
10:48 – We have great technical experts in the project. They’re doing their job.
10:52 – They will have some problems. They will have conflicts, issues with communications, many different things, and that’s the Project Manager who goes there and helps them and let’s them do what they can do best. That’s project management." I often like to see it like a traffic cop, when you’ve got lots of traffic and the traffic cop is making sure that all the traffic is flowing and that everybody is getting places, let’s say, and work is being done. So it’s more fluid, let’s say.
11:20 – Yeah. So if you see it like that, then the difference in age or experience is not a problem. It’s not going to be a problem.
11:28 – In that situation, it’s best for the Project Manager to let the Senior User was that the Senior Senior Supplier? Yeah.
11:37 – Let the Senior Supplier understand the real role of a Project Manager and act that way, help them, don’t order them to do different things, and also an important thing for every Project Manager is to respect the technical experience and skills of the people inside a project. Of course, yeah.
11:58 – When they do it properly, the problem will be solved.
12:01 – Will go away, yeah, if it’s explained to them.
12:03 – So, PRINCE2 is very specific here.
12:05 – There’s only one Project Manager and if we give someone the title of Senior Project Manager, it will cause actually confusion within the project, so we don’t want to do that.
12:15 – However, another solution will be for the Project Manager to explain to the Senior Supplier, is that, “Well, this is our view on the project, but you have your own view from your side where you are delivering this to us, and within that context, this person can be the Project Manager or Senior Project Manager.
12:34 – It doesn’t matter, but just from our customer view, that’s the way it is.” Yeah. That’s a little bit similar to the discussion we had about the Business Case.
12:43 – Oh yes, yeah. The ….. Business Case. Before in one of the previous lessons, you remember we can have multiple Business Cases from different perspectives to the project.
12:50 – The customer has their own Business Case and then supplier number one has their own Business Case, supplier number two their own, and that’s the same with the Project Manager and everything else. Yes.
13:00 – Each of the companies involved in the project can have their own Project Manager, but whenever we want to talk about these things, we should have a certain perspective to the project and in each perspective, we have only one Project Manager, only one Business Case, and so on.
13:18 – Right. The next scenario is a mining company.
13:21 – So they have their own very specific vocabulary.
13:24 – So, for example, they call the Executive the Sponsor, they call the Senior User the User Representative, and they call the Team Manager the Team Leader.
13:33 – Now they’re going to use PRINCE2 for the first time and they want to keep using the same names which they’re used to.
13:39 – Is that appropriate for them to do so? That’s a very good idea, I think. Yeah. Why?
13:44 – It is allowed. That’s tailoring. In tailoring we can change names, we can split/merge with certain limits, and well, also the names that you suggested are all really great names. Thank you.
13:58 – Yeah, you’re welcome. The Senior User is practically the User Representative, and I think that was the old name in PRINCE2 also. Oh yeah.
14:07 – The Senior Supplier is practically the Supplier Representative.
14:11 – The reason they changed the name is that sometimes they don’t have to be real representatives of users or suppliers as we had in one of the previous questions.
14:20 – You can have people from the customer’s side who understand those things to play their role.
14:25 – That’s probably why they changed the names, but still the names are really good. Yeah.
14:30 – And the Executive, the similar role in the PMBOK guide or DSDM is called a Sponsor.
14:35 – Well, in DSDM, it’s Business Sponsor. They’re all good names.
14:39 – Yeah. Business Sponsor is also a good name.
14:41 – You know, when people are starting when you’re starting to implement a new system in your company, you should make sure that it’s easy for everyone to use it, that’s the most important thing.
14:50 – If you need to change names, of course, you should do it.
14:54 – So this is a good example of tailoring PRINCE2 to suit your environment and make it easier for everybody in the organization then to use PRINCE2.
15:03 – The next scenario. What about coffee?
15:06 – Okay. He drinks a lot of coffee.
15:08 – Okay. See you. Alright.

We’ll continue the Organization theme in the next lesson.

Scenarios/questions we’ve discussed in this lesson

Scenario: In an electronics company, a sales manager is appointed as the senior user for a new sales application. In this project, the senior user provides detailed requirements and also creates the business case as they have a much better understanding of the ROI. Is this appropriate?
Scenario: A project team in an events organization has business and user representation but they do not have supplier representation as they are using external suppliers and the project is confidential. Is it appropriate not to have supplier representation if the project is confidential?
Scenario: A project has been started to create a new application for the finance department, and the head of the finance department becomes the executive. The executive also decides to eliminate the role of the senior user as they can cover their own requirements. Is this appropriate?
Scenario: The customer PM is 10 years younger than the supplier team manager. Out of respect for the team manager, the senior supplier asked the PM to update the job title from team manager to senior PM. How should the PM handle this?
Scenario: A large mining company has its own business vocabulary and they are going to use PRINCE2 for the first time.
- The executive will be known as the sponsor.
- The senior user will be known as the user representative.
- The team manager will be known as the team leader.

Lesson 11: Organization, Part 1

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