1.1 The project board

The project board, also known as the project steering committee, is responsible for ensuring that the project is properly managed. The project board may be for that specific project, or a board may look after a group of projects in the organisation. Such a group of projects might be a programme or a group of individual projects. For a smaller project, the sponsor may undertake all the responsibilities for that project. For a larger project, the responsibilities may rest with a project board of which the project sponsor may be the chair. In an organisation without the infrastructure to support projects, the governance may be undertaken by the project manager who would then be directly responsible to the organisational management. However, in a large, project-oriented organisation, the project board sits between any projects and the organisational senior management.

(Adapted from ISO 21500, p. 7, Figure 4)

Figure 2 Project stakeholders

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The diagram shows the relationships between stakeholders in a project, from ISO21500. Three ellipses are positioned vertically above each other. The smallest diameter of each ellipse is from top to bottom through the centre of the shape.

The three ellipses are labelled, in order:

• Corporate management
• Project Governance
• Project Organisation

The largest ellipse at the bottom of the diagram represents ‘Project Organisation’ and the ‘Project team’ are shown within this space. Within this large ellipse there is a smaller ellipse and the ‘Project management team’ is shown within this space. Within this ellipse there is another smaller ellipse and the ‘Project Manager’ is shown within this space. These three ellipses which describe the stakeholders in the ‘Project Organisation’ are joined at the upper point of each ellipse.

The ellipse in the middle of the diagram representing ‘Project Governance’ shows ‘Project Steering Committee or Board’ within this space. Within this ellipse there is a smaller ellipse and the ‘Project Sponsor’ is shown within this space. These two ellipses which describe the stakeholders in ‘Project governance’ are joined at the lower point of each ellipse.

A double-headed broad arrow links the ellipses showing ‘Project Sponsor’ and ‘Project Manager’.

An ellipse formed by a dashed line surrounds the ellipses for ‘Project Governance’ and ‘Project Organisation’. The ellipse formed by a dashed line is joined to the top of the ellipse for ‘Project Governance’ and is joined to the bottom of the ellipse for ‘Project Organisation’. Within the space formed by this ellipse but external to the ellipses for ‘Project Governance’ and ‘Project Organisation’, other stakeholders are shown.

On the left the following stakeholders are shown:

• Regulatory Bodies
• Project Management Office
• Special Interest Groups
• Customers

On the right the following stakeholders are shown:

• Business Partners
• Shareholders
• Suppliers
• Finance providers
• Employees

The ellipse at the top of the diagram, which is roughly equal in size to the middle ellipse, is labelled ‘Corporate management’.

A double-headed broad arrow links the ellipse showing ‘Corporate management’ and the ellipse formed by a dashed line.

Project stakeholders

Figure 2 is adapted from the International Standard ISO 21500 Guidance on Project Management (ISO, 2012). Senior management can be grouped together, but in Figure 2 the Corporate management stakeholders, who are part of the project and organisational infrastructure, are shown separately outside the system boundary of the project, although it may be appropriate to represent them inside the boundary, depending on structures within a particular organisation. The project sponsor is part of the project board or project steering committee. Following the definition of roles within ISO 21500:

• The project sponsor authorises the project, makes executive decisions, and solves problems and conflicts beyond the authority of the project manager.
• The project board contributes to the project by providing senior level guidance to the project.

PRINCE2 published by The Office of Government Commerce (OGC, 2009a) expresses the project board differently, including an executive, senior users and senior suppliers. The suppliers may be external to the organisation, or may be internal managers of the resources needed for the project. Senior users would usually be the customer, or representing views of the customer, whether this is an internal customer or an external customer. This is an example of governance applied across organisational boundaries and it can facilitate formal mapping of roles such as technical specialists communicating directly with each from different areas. The common aspect of the project board from both the ISO standard and PRINCE2 is that the project manager is responsible to the board, but is not part of the board. The project board may establish a ‘project assurance team’ that represents the three interests and performs this role working separately from the project team.

The project sponsor is the individual who has responsibility for ensuring that:

• appropriate governance mechanisms are in place for the project
• project assurance processes take place through periodic monitoring of the governance mechanism.

The monitoring may be by the project sponsor themselves, or by someone to whom the authority has been delegated. If delegated, this should be to someone who is external to the project.