Project Roles and Responsibilities

Hopefully, you can use this list to educate your team members about the various roles on a project team.

Executive Steering Committee
Sets the strategic vision and objectives for a given program or project. The team leads efforts to build consensus through the organization to support the project or program’s objectives.

Governance Board
Formal team of executives from across the organization that ensure projects will meet/are meeting enterprise goals.

Project Sponsor
Provides clarity of the project vision, and directs the activities of the project team. Allocates funding and resources to the project. Provides executive authority necessary to overcome organizational obstacles and barriers. The guardian of the business case, and ultimately responsible for project success.

Performing Organization
The organization whose personnel are most directly involved in doing the work of the project. This organization usually provides sponsorship for the project.

Project Management Office
An organizational body or entity assigned various responsibilities related to the centralized and coordinated management of those programs/projects under its domain.

Project Stakeholders
Persons or organizations (customers, sponsors, performers, public) that are actively involved in the project or whose interests may be positively or negatively impacted by executing or implementation of the project.

Program Manager
Person responsible for the centralized, coordinated management of a program (group of related projects) to achieve the program’s strategic objectives and benefits.

Project Manager
The person assigned by the performing organization to achieve the project objectives. The project manager is responsible for coordinating and integrating activities across multiple functional lines, and managing stakeholder communications. The project manager accomplishes the above by managing project scope, time, cost, and quality. Finally, the project manager applies project management, general management and technical skills, as well as team management, negotiation, financial and business acumen, combined with an understanding of organizational politics to meet project objectives and to meet or exceed stakeholder expectations.

Project Team
All the project team members, including the project management team, the project manager, and for some projects, the project sponsor.

Functional Manager
On projects, the person responsible for ensuring agreed-upon project tasks are completed using pre-defined resources under the manager’s control within scope, time, budget and quality constraints.

Project Team Leader
Responsible for ensuring that agreed-upon project tasks and assignments are completed on time, on budget, and within quality standards for personnel under their realm of control or influence. The team leader should be knowledgeable of the principles and practices of project management and understand the business unit’s strategic and operational issues.

Technical Manager/Liaison
Responsible for the technical implementation of the project as measured against the project requirements, quality targets, and budgetary constraints, and timelines. Ensures technical deliverables are consistent with the overall technical strategy of the enterprise.

Business Analyst
Primary interface between projects and business partners. Responsible for understanding current and future processes, including processes for the entire enterprise. Documents business requirements, generate business cases, assists in defining project benefits/ costs, and participates in project reviews

Regards

-MZA-

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Project Requirements and the WBS

The project manager is responsible for controlling a project's requirements. To start the process of managing requirements the project manager works with the team to create a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).

A couple of things to keep in mind regarding a WBS are:

1. A WBS should identify the level tasks to be completed, and relate to the project’s deliverables.
2. The customer(s), project sponsor, and stakeholders are actively involved in creating the WBS.
3. The WBS helps avoid future "scope creep".

As you can see the WBS is an important project artifact. The WBS accomplishes several things:

a. It assists the project team to identify and create specific work packages
b. It is another way of communicating the project's objectives to the team
c. It is the foundation for future project planning and activity sequencing

In closing, a WBS summarizes deliverables, shows work relationships, helps the team to estimate costs and perform risk analysis, and assists the team to identify project assumptions and dependencies.

The WBS is your friend. Start taking time to create one for every project.

regards

-MZA-

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Introduction to Project Management

Introduction to Project Management: Slides Presentation

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Project Charter Version 2.0

This Project Charter Template will help you to define the scope of your project. Writing the Project Charter is typically one of the most challenging steps in the Project Life Cycle, as it defines the parameters within which the project must be delivered.

Its sets out the project vision, objectives, scope and implementation, thereby giving the team clear boundaries within which the project must be delivered.

This Project Charter template will help you to:

1. Identify the project vision and objectives
2. Define the complete scope of the project
3. List all of the critical project deliverables
4. State the customers and project stakeholders
5. List the key roles and their responsibilities
6. Create an organizational structure for the project
7. Document the overall implementation plan
8. List any risks, issues and assumptions

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