Project Manager
Organising and controlling a project means that we need to have someone responsible for doing the organising and controlling. This person is called the Project Manager.
The Project Manager will select people to do the work on the project and will be responsible for making sure the work is done properly and on time.
The Project Manager draws up the project plans that describe what the project team will actually be doing and when they expect to finish.
Customer, user and supplier
The person who is paying for the project is called the customer or executive.
The person who is going to use the results or outcome of the project, or who will be impacted by the outcome of a project, is called the user.
On some projects, the customer and user may be the same person. The person who provides the expertise to do the actual work on the project (ie. will be designing and building the outcome) is called the supplier or specialist.
All of these people need to be organised and co-ordinated so that the project delivers the required outcome within budget, on time and to the appropriate quality.
Project board
Each PRINCE2 project will have a project board made up of the customer (or executive), someone representing the user side, and someone representing the supplier or specialist input.
In PRINCE2, these people are called customer, senior user and senior supplier respectively.
The Project Manager reports regularly to the project board, keeping them informed of progress and highlighting any problems he/she can foresee.
The project board is responsible for providing the Project Manager with the necessary decisions for the project to proceed and to overcome any problems.