Organization: Roles, Mandate and Decision Authority
What this domain tests
Organization questions test your grasp of who decides what: the roles in the project organisation, their responsibilities, and the boundary between the project and the standing line organisation. You will be asked to spot role conflicts, missing mandates or an over-stepping steering group.
Core rules
- The project owner (commissioner) owns the business case, approves the mandate and accepts the result at the end. The owner does not manage the project operationally.
- The project manager is accountable for delivering the agreed result within the agreed constraints, and manages the team, the plan and the logs.
- The steering group safeguards business value and takes go/no-go decisions. It decides on escalations; it does not solve operational problems for the team.
- Quality assurance is independent of the project manager and reports to the owner or steering group, so findings are not filtered.
- The team delivers the work and supplies estimates; those who estimate should be involved in committing to the plan.
- RACI thinking clarifies roles: who is responsible, who is accountable, who must be consulted, who must be informed. Accountability should not be shared.
Worked example
In a construction project, the project manager also holds the quality assurance role, arguing this avoids overhead. Reasoning: the arrangement fails the independence requirement. Every quality report the manager writes about his own work is self-assessment, so a supplier’s delayed delivery or an under-tested component may not surface to the steering group. The correct answer in such a scenario is to separate the roles and route QA reporting to the owner, even at some cost.
Traps that cost marks
- Merging the project manager and quality assurance roles.
- A steering group that re-does operational work instead of deciding on escalations.
- Project managers committing to deadlines without the team’s estimates.
- Delegating work without delegating the corresponding mandate.