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What is the purpose of this PRINCE2 process?
This process covers the work of the project board and enables them to be accountable for the project. The process covers the major decision making on the project and therefore provides direction and is where responsibility for day to day control is delegated to the project manager,
What activities does PRINCE2 recommend?
- Authorise Initiation
- Authorise a Project
- Authorise a Stage or Exception Plan
- Give ad-hoc direction
- Authorise project closure
Things that MUST be done
Decisions need to be made by the project board for the project to be able to commence, progress and finish Directing a Project Process. When making these decisions the project board are committing organisational resources (budget, staff, equipment etc) to the project and they need to make sure that the project is aligned to corporate strategy. The project board also have to decide how much autonomy / lee-way they are going to allocate to the project manager to run the project on their behalf. This is done through allocation of Stage tolerances, role descriptions and appointment (or not) of a change authority.
The project board need to keep themselves informed of project progress to facilitate good decision making. Therefore proper regard needs to be paid to documents such as the PID and regular reports (called Highlight reports on a PRINCE2 project) that are received by this process. If the project has been broken down into stages the project board need to review progress, provided by the End Stage Report, and authorise whether or not more resources should be committed to the project to enable it to continue.
This process also covers communication with those outside of the project, such as with the wider programme (if one exists) or with corporate management.
How & When to tailor the Directing a Project process
Because this process is about decision making and providing direction and advice there are limits to how it can be tailored. Decisions are either made or they are not. Tailoring can come in regarding the level of formality within which the project board conducts itself, such as whether decisions are made at formal meetings, via video conferences or following circulation of documents. When a decision has been made how that decision is communicated can vary. If external suppliers are involved, the project impacts the general public, or on large projects it could be very formal, but on smaller / internal only projects it could be quite informal.
If the project board are extremely busy they can delegate some of their work on the project, making use of the PRINCE2 defined roles of project assurance (to check that everything is being done correctly) and the change authority (for making smaller decisions on change requests).
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