PRINCE2 2009 - Tailoring PRINCE2 part 27
of the Cabinet Office under delegated authority from the Controller of HMSO.
Tailoring PRINCE2 to the project environment
Commercial customer/supplier environment
Themes
OrganizationOne of the key decisions to make in a commercial customer/supplier relationship is who should take the role of Senior Supplier.
Considerations include:
- Is it appropriate to have a Senior Supplier from an external organization if the Project Board needs to discuss funding of changes or of future work? Or what if the debate is about whether to terminate the contract with the supplier? One option could be to simply exclude the Senior Supplier from the part of the reviews that involve the sensitive discussions. Another option would be to appoint the person who is responsible for the performance of the supplier contract (e.g. a contracts manager)
- What if there are multiple suppliers? If there are only a few (say three or four), then it is recommended that all of them are on the Project Board as it provides a forum for them to integrate. If there are more than three or four suppliers, then the contracts manager responsible for the performance of all the supplier contracts could sit on the Project Board on their behalf, or it may be appropriate to appoint a prime contractor
- If the project includes a procurement stage, who should fulfil the role of Senior Supplier if the supplier has not been appointed? The project may need a temporary appointment for the Senior Supplier role – perhaps from the customer’s procurement department
Another key decision is who provides the Project Manager.
In PRINCE2®, the Project Manager will normally come from the customer organization, with the suppliers’ Project Manager(s) fulfilling the
role of Team Managers for the project.
Even though the Team Managers may be called Project Managers in the supplier’s organization, the role titles and job titles should not be confused.
Remember, there can only be one Project Manager.
There may be projects where the Project Manager comes from the supplier’s organization.
Customers may choose to stay ‘at arm’s length’ from the working level and expect the supplier to provide the management of the project.
The customer is likely to increase the rigour in Project Assurance (and indeed may choose to appoint one of its internal Project Managers to
fulfil the role of Project Assurance).
In this case it needs to be clear that although the person undertaking Project Assurance may have a job title of Project Manager,
that person is not the Project Manager for this project - there can be only one Project Manager.
Consideration should be given to the Project Board dynamics if the Project Manager has a project reporting line to the Executive,
and a line management (or commercial) reporting line to the Senior Supplier.
The supplier’s governance rules may mean that they have to treat their Work Package(s) within the customer’s project as a project within the supplier’s organization.
This may mean establishing a separate supplier Project Board. Consideration should be given to:
- Who fulfils the Senior User role if not someone from the customer’s organization (the account manager is a useful proxy as the customer advocate)
- How the customer and supplier Project Board roles relate, i.e. which of the supplier’s Project Board members takes the Senior Supplier role on the customer’s Project Board. Whoever it is, they need to have authority to make decisions on behalf of the supplier when undertaking the Senior Supplier role on the customer’s Project Board.
There are numerous ways to structure the project management team roles in a commercial customer/supplier context.
The key objective is to ensure that both organizations establish and maintain sound business justification and that their respective governance rules are adhered to.
PRINCE2® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries.