15 Organisation Theme

The organisational theme deals with defining the roles and responsibilities that are given to the internal stakeholders of the project. In other words it is about setting up of a temporary organisational structure to ensure that everybody in a project is aware of the responsibilities that they and others hold.

PRINCE2 categorises stakeholders into three main interest groups. They are:

1. business interests
2. user interests
3. supplier interests

The executive represents business interests at a governance level. The executive sits on the project board alongside senior uses and senior suppliers. The executive is responsible for ensuring the project is providing good value for money.

The users form 3 different categories:

1. those that will be directly using the services or products that result from the project
2. those that will use the services or products to create value for themselves or their organisation
3. those that will maintain or support the services or products after the project is complete and moves into operation.

The suppliers create the project products or services by providing resources and the necessary skills and play a critical role in what the project’s products look like when they are being developed.

At this point it’s worth noting that the three main interest groups typically have different views on what is appropriate when a project is initiated. Please view the additional videos in week two’s video vault to get introduced to some of the considerations and challenges that will be faced by managers who need to manage stakeholders.

The following video that summarises PRINCE2’s Organisation Theme, and can also be found in section 3.3 of the PMO201 Learnline site. It will give you a brief outline of how to create an organisational structure for a project. You will find the original slide deck (with additional slides) and a transcript in the same section of the Learnline site.