Lesson 13: Organization, Part 3

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

00:06 – So the next scenario we look at is a new stock control system for a company, and here the Senior User is responsible for the requirements so they want to give the requirements information, but they also want to give the maintenance requirement information, so how actually the application will be maintained in the future.
00:26 – Is this appropriate for them to get involved in this or should they just focus on the basic user requirements?
00:34 – Okay. I’m going to go off-track here a little bit if you don’t mind.
00:38 – I thought you would because it’s not so easy.
00:42 – When we are thinking about the justification of the project, most people are only thinking about the product that’s going to be created, while it’s always important to have the whole product lifecycle in mind, also after the project is finished and we need to maintain it. Yes.
00:59 – That’s not part of the project, but it has a lot to do with the justification and things like that.
01:06 – That has a big impact on the option we select.
01:10 – Now back to your question. It’s a good idea for the Senior User to think about that. Yeah.
01:16 – It’s also a good idea to document those things somewhere.
01:23 – Now, is it a part of the project, is that your question?
01:28 – Yeah. Is it a good idea for them to do it or should they leave it, let’s say, to the Senior Supplier to take care of this or should they do it?
01:39 – Oh well, that To give the maintenance requirements.
01:42 – Well, part of that relates to the Senior Supplier because they are the technical people, the type of technical people who will do the maintenance in the future and they understand it best.
01:53 – Correct, yeah. But still some of the things come from the Senior User part.
01:59 – Yeah. It’s a tricky question and I definitely would have got it wrong, you know, from my own point of view. But I think that the Senior Supplier is first, isn’t it?
02:07 – The Senior Supplier is first?
02:09 – Has the most to do with information about maintenance.
02:14 – Correct, yeah. That’s what I thought, that they will be responsible for giving this, but the PRINCE2 manual actually says, no, that the Senior Supplier can also be responsible for this as well, and they’re even told …
02:27 – Senior Supplier or User? Sorry, Senior User, yeah. Okay.
02:31 – Can also be responsible for these requirements, for the maintenance requirements for the future.
02:36 – So, just in case it’s a question, just you have to know this.
02:39 – Well, because part of it comes from the user side. For example, if something happens to your system, it must be recovered, it must be fixed in maximum two hours; otherwise, you will have a big problem in your business.
02:56 – That’s the type of information requirement that comes from the users, user side.
03:00 – Sure, sure. In hindsight, it’s easy to see why it’s the answer, but when you’re stuck with the question right in front of you, your logic starts to come in and you go like, “No, no, no. It should be the Senior Supplier that takes care of that because that’s how the main application will be done.” Well, I think it should be both of them, but mainly the Senior Supplier. Yeah. So just to So can you summarize it? Yeah. The Senior User is responsible for requirements, including being able to advise on how the application should be maintained in the future.
03:32 – So the suppliers can also give their suggestions as well on future maintenance.
03:37 – That’s the PRINCE2 reply. The next scenario.
03:41 – A Project Manager has got three teams, well actually, two are fully remote teams, so they each will have their own Team Manager, and there are three people working locally.
03:54 – So the Project Manager has, let’s say, a good knowledge of the technology that they will use.
04:00 – So, they decide to be the Project Manager. Is that appropriate?
04:04 – Project Manager or Team Manager? To be the to be the Team Manager, yeah, yeah.
04:10 – To take on the role of Team Manager, so they’re reporting to themselves, you know.
04:15 – Is that appropriate or how does that work out?
04:17 – I think that’s fine, having three teams. Two of them have …
04:21 – Two of them have their own Team Managers and the third still has a Team Manager role, but that is done by the Project Manager.
04:29 – I think it works fine. What about you? You dont think so?
04:36 – Well, I think in this situation, it works. No, it’s correct. It’s the right answer.
04:41 – Maybe I thought you were going to get into the reasons maybe why the Project Manager would select this, would allow this to happen, and basically because the people are local, so they can do it, but also because they can act as the Team Manager and one of the things they have to do is to be able to provide knowledge and support on the technology or the domain that they are in.
05:01 – So that’s one of the considerations and in this case, they can do it.
05:05 – So, yes, it’s advisable for them to do it in this case.
05:09 – Our next scenario is actually an exercise.
05:12 – So I’ll give you an example of an organization, and I want you to match the existing organization roles with the roles in a PRINCE2 project.
05:22 – Now there’s no 100% answer, so the suggestions I give may not be the ones that you give, but don’t worry about it. As long as we’re on the same wavelength, that’s important.
05:31 – So, this is a company with about 200 employees and they wish to install or create a new sales force application or a CRM system and they have about 16 sales people and they will use an external software company called DubSoft to develop this.
05:48 – So this is an overview now. You can see it on your screen.
05:52 – That’s an overview of everybody in the organization today.
05:56 – Now try to match this with the PRINCE2 roles.
05:59 – So I suggest to stop the video and then I will come back and give my suggestions in a moment, and remember, it’s to build a sales application, okay?
06:10 – So, I’m back. Again, a quick reminder, there was no one answer here; well, actually, unless my wife gives a suggestion and then that will be the correct answer.
06:21 – So let’s start at the top. The first one, it’s the Executive.
06:24 – I would make that the CFO because they are business minded.
06:28 – So maybe you have chosen that role as well. Next one is Senior User.
06:33 – Well, here we need somebody who has responsibility for their requirements, but also can supply resources, so they can tell other people, “You’ve got to help me to give requirements.” So that could be the sales manager, plus one or two sales staff who really understand the process of how the sales department works.
06:54 – So it’s not just one person here. I’ve put like two or three people in this role.
06:59 – Next is Senior Supplier. This could be the buyer or the person who deals with outside factors, or in this case, it could be the IT manager because they are used to dealing with outside companies such as DubSoft.
07:13 – The next one is Project Manager. Well, that was easy, that’s Will Yeats, so he was mentioned as the Project Manager for handling these kind of things.
07:21 – Change Authority, it’s what we call a small project, so the Project Manager or the Project Board in this case could decide to give this to a financial assistant or allow themselves to take on this role.
07:37 – Project Assurance, that will be done by the Project Board themselves.
07:40 – They will walk around every month or two and just check everything is going okay, and Project Support, well, sadly the Project Manager doesn’t have anybody to help him, so they’ve got to take on this role as well, okay, which is a pity.
07:54 – So that’s a quick overview on how you can map, let’s say, organization roles to PRINCE2 roles.
08:03 – Do you have any comment on that before I continue or was it just brilliant?
08:08 – It was fine, yeah. Good. Okay.
08:11 – About the Senior User, who was the Senior User? Oh, the sales manager.
08:17 – I said the sales manager, yeah, and one assistant who understands the sales process very, very well.
08:24 – My personal experience is that it’s a little bit difficult to have someone like the sales manager as the Senior User.
08:31 – They usually don’t know enough about the problems of the users.
08:39 – It seems easier to me if you bring someone who’s actually a user, going to be a real user. Yes.
08:47 – Another person from the sales department. Okay, alright. Just my personal preference.
08:51 – So in that case, you will put three the reason I put the sales manager there is that’s the person with the authority to make decisions and when you have someone who owns the process, who knows the process very well, and then you just have then someone to sit on their side to say, “Okay, I can be the main test user here.” Yeah. The idea is that they will bring ideas from their department, from their real users.
09:11 – Okay. So you would put three people in that role then, Senior User role.
09:15 – And that’s something to think about as well. It’s not just one person, it looks like one person, but we can actually put as many people as we like, but three or four should be the maximum that we should do.
09:26 – Okay, the next scenario is we have an organization which is a semi-government organization, so this is where your status and your car parking place are very, very important.
09:36 – Now, we’re in the IP process of this project, and one of the Team Managers is a lot more senior in the organization than the Project Manager.
09:45 – So in fact, the Project Manager can tell the Team Manager what to do.
09:50 – Now, someone complains to the Executive about this, and the Executive says, “This is okay.” So as Project Manager, what would you do in this situation?
10:00 – Is there anything that you can suggest to make this easier?
10:04 – The problem was that the Team Manager wants to tell the Project Manager what to do?
10:08 – No. The problem is that the Project Manager is a lot junior than the Team Manager and the way it looks in the org chart is that the Project Manager is higher up and they can tell …
10:19 – they can tell the Team Manager what to do, you know.
10:24 – That’s not so easy if you’ve got a …
10:26 – No, isn’t it similar to what we had before a few questions ago? Very similar, yeah.
10:32 – Yeah. I would say the same thing.
10:35 – The Project Manager has to be a facilitator and so there’s no such hierarchies there. Okay.
10:43 – And actually I was working in a company and there was a great Project Manager who was also the CEO of the company. It was a very small company, and we had a project, we had organization of the project, and I was one of the members of the project. I was responsible for project planning at that time.
11:05 – And then we initiated a new project, a small project, inside that company, which was practically related to the main project that we had. It was a program, but anyway, when the new project was defined, the CEO said that, “Let’s do it with another organization.
11:27 – So we will keep the organization that we had for the main project, but we won’t use the same thing for the new project.” For the new one, he said that we must define a new organization and there is one condition." A new project organization you mean? Yes, yes. Okay, yeah. The project organization, and there’s one condition. All places must be switched. Oh wow!
11:49 – If I report to you in the main organization, then for the small project, you must report to me.
11:54 – And that was a great practice for everyone. It was really, really great.
11:58 – That’s good. Yeah. And did the project work out okay? Yeah, yeah.
12:01 – Okay, that’s the important thing. Great.
12:04 – Okay, our next scenario and we’re going back to the sales application that we had a while ago, that project.
12:10 – So the CFO decides to take on the role as the Executive, and the sales department head decides to take on the role of Senior User and Senior Supplier.
12:19 – Now the reason that they do this is because they have a good understanding of the technology.
12:24 – Do you think this is appropriate?
12:29 – Do they really have a good understanding of the technology?
12:32 – They think they do. I mean they read a lot of magazines.
12:36 – The first problem is that they probably don’t, that’s the biggest problem, and now I’m thinking, can there be a conflict of interest somehow? That’s it.
12:48 – Because the Senior User is the one who’s usually demanding great features, interesting features, and the Senior Supplier is usually the one who’s thinking about the difficulties of implementing that feature and would like to say no to everything. So putting those two into one person, then we won’t have the discussions and constructive arguments. Correct.
13:09 – But I don’t know what’s the role in PRINCE2.
13:11 – Well, you’re right. The first thing you should check, is there a conflict of interest and there definitely is one here between these two roles.
13:18 – Senior User and Senior Supplier should never be shared by one person.
13:21 – That should not be allowed. So the solution here is to make them understand this, and make them find another person to take on the Senior Supplier role.
13:29 – So it’s not allowed in PRINCE2 to combine them?
13:32 – No, no. It’s allowed to take on the Executive.
13:34 – It’s allowed to combine the Executive and the Senior User, but not the Senior User and Senior Supplier, that’s not allowed.
13:40 – So we need at least two people in the Project Board? Yes.
13:43 – I thought it’s one. But that’s for tiny projects where you don’t have anybody else in there.
13:49 – They’re more like minimum task projects, not really this is a bigger project in this case. We cannot have two different roles here.
13:58 – Okay, so in small projects we can combine Senior User and Senior Supplier. Yeah, yeah.
14:02 – but it’s recommended not to. But those are more like one-person projects where you have just one person and maybe you have one or two people helping them or something.
14:11 – Then in that case, it’s a different case. Good.
14:16 – Coffee? Yeah, okay. Good.

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

Scenarios/questions we’ve discussed in this lesson

Scenario: The project is to deliver a new stock control system. The senior user is responsible for requirements, and they also provide the maintenance requirements that will detail how maintenance will be done in the future. Is it OK for the senior user to give maintenance requirements or this only for the team manager?
Scenario: In a project, a PM has three teams reporting to her. Two teams are remote and one team is local (three people). The PM decides to act as the team manager for the local team as they have a good knowledge of technology. Is this appropriate?
Scenario: Here is an overview of an organization (ACME printers). Match the organization roles with the PRINCE2 roles. (Please note there is no 100% correct answer.)
- Organizational roles: CEO, CFO, financial assistant, sales manager, projects coordinator, buyer and contracts, IT manager, sales support and training, Dubsoft account manager
- Project roles: executive, senior user, senior supplier, project manager, change authority, project assurance, project support.
Scenario: The organization is semi-government where status is very important. It is noticed that the team manager is a lot more senior in the organization than the PM, and the PM will be able to tell the team manager what to do. As a PM, what could you say to this team manager to protect their ego and make it possible to work with them?
Scenario: The CFO of a small manufacturing company takes on the executive role in a new project. The head of the sales department takes on the roles of senior user and senior supplier as they have a good understanding of the technology. Is this appropriate?

Lesson 13: Organization, Part 3

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