Roles and Responsibilities in PRINCE2®

Seven Principles of PRINCE2

A project is considered to be a PRINCE2 project if and only if follows the seven principles of PRINCE2:

1. Continued Business Justification
   

   Projects should make good business sense, with a clear return on investment as well as the justifiable use of time and resources.

2. Learn from Experience
   

   Teams working on projects should be sure to take into account lessons learned from previous projects. Creating a log of lessons learned should be part of every project.

3. Defined Roles and Responsibilities
   

   All team members should understand their own PRINCE2 project role as well as the roles of all other team members, including the decision-makers.

4. Manage by Stages
   

   Difficult tasks should be broken into manageable sections or management stages.

5. Manage by Exception
   

   Projects that are running smoothly don’t need much management intervention; the project board is only notified if problems occur.

6. Focus on Products
   

   Product requirements should be clearly defined before the project begins; everyone should know ahead of time what the product is expected to do.

7. Tailor to Suit the Business Environment
   

   PRINCE2 processes are scalable and customizable.

PRINCE2 Roles and Responsibilities Matrix

A PRINCE2 project has defined agreed roles and responsibilities within an organizational structure that engages the business, user, and supplier stakeholders’ interests. A project is generally cross-functional; it might involve a mixture of full-time and part-time resources as well.

To be successful, projects need to have an explicit project management team structure that consists of defined and agreed-upon roles and responsibilities for the people who are involved in the project. Projects should also have a means for effective communication between the people involved.

The PRINCE2 roles for primary stakeholders that are common to all projects are:

• Business Sponsors: Business sponsors are primary project stakeholders. They endorse the objectives and ensure the project provides a clear return on investment.
• Users: The people who use the products.
• Suppliers: Suppliers provide the resources and expertise required by the project. Suppliers may be internal or external to the organization performing the project.

One technique for dividing up the team’s work is to create a PRINCE2 Roles and Responsibilities Assignment Matrix (RAM). You do this by:

• Identifying all the tasks required to deliver the project
• Listing the tasks in order, on the left side of a chart
• Identifying all the PRINCE2 roles required to deliver the project
• Listing the roles in order, along the top of the chart
• Completing the cells in the chart by using symbols, colors, or letters to identify the responsibility level
• Ensuring every task is assigned to a role that’s accountable and responsible for it—and that no task has more than one role accountable
• Gaining agreement from project stakeholders before the project begins

To learn more about PRINCE2 project roles, you can explore our training courses on the PRINCE2 Foundation and Practitioner. Simplilearn offers self-paced online classroom training courses to help you prepare for both PRINCE2 Certification exams.

Are you looking forward to making a mark in the Project Management field? If yes, enroll in the Project Management Certificate Program now and get a step closer to your career goal!