Roles and responsibilities

Abstract

Defining the roles and responsibilities is an important part of a successful collaboration among team members. Roles are the general terms, and responsibilities are the specifics. Project management is responsible for defining the roles and responsibilities within the organisation. There are roles more concentrated on office activities, while others are on technology and development. Project team members may have varied skill sets, may be assigned full or part-time, and may be added or removed from the team as the project progresses. Although specific roles and responsibilities for the project team members are assigned, the involvement of all team members in project planning and decision making is beneficial. The right and most appropriate people for the project can be only hired when the roles are clearly and precisely defined. Planning or control will have no effect if the team consists of wrong people or if the team members are not aware of what is expected of them. Therefore, responsibilities and accountabilities must be determined. It results in higher productivity, better results and better communication with fewer misunderstandings and disruptions. Good match between work and a person decreases the number of errors and mistakes. This article focuses on people perspective as an aspect of project management and provides an overview of roles and their responsibilities within a project team. Team compositions and organisation charts are also mentioned. Members of a project team can use this article to identify the team structure, to understand their role and allocated responsibilities or to deepen their knowledge of the subject. The model can be used in any industry where people are presented to perform work. Effective collaboration is crucial to the success of a project.

Background

Definitions and Importance

These definitions can be found in the PMBOK® Guide:

• Role - The function assumed by or assigned to a person in the project. Examples of project roles are civil engineer, business analyst, and testing coordinator. Role clarity concerning authority, responsibilities and boundaries should also be documented.

• Responsibility - The assigned duties and work that a project team member is expected to perform in order to complete the project’s activities.

As it can be seen in these definitions, a role is not a responsibility and vice versa. Responsibilities represent values according to which roles are defined. Depending on the needs of the current state of the project, multiple roles can be related to one job. Each role implies a set of matching responsibilities and expectations that can vary during the life cycle of the project, not substantially though.

The initial people related process is important as it brings all project stakeholders together. Formal roles and responsibilities are defined in order to clarify each participant's expectations through the project. This enables management to identify required specifications and competencies for a particular position. It is essential that team members understand their duties and are aware of their level of authority to make decisions when needed. As a result, they can experience advantages such as:

• Improved collaboration: Individuals perform better results when objectives are assigned and described accurately. Disputes and possible misunderstandings are eliminated, especially those that are authority related.
• Prosperous teams: Successful teamwork can be only performed when members stay focused on tasks they are responsible for and do not interfere their surroundings.
• Overall effectiveness and efficiency: All mentioned above contributes to better quality of work, higher productivity and overall vital environment.

Project team structure

A project is typically a unique set of processes, into which more organizations and groups may contribute. The management structures of the parties involved in the project are likely to be different – with different authorities, priorities, objectives and interests to protect.

It is not simple to define one universal structure that is applicable to projects of any kind. As mentioned before, a project is unique and so is its team structure.

A possible way to design a team formation can be inspired by PMBOK® Guide where the Project management staff is the main representative, and one lewer lower is the Project staff. Besides these stakeholders, Supporting experts, User or Customer Representatives, Sellers, Business partners and Business partners members are involved in the entire spectrum.

Very simple team organization can be derived from an article published on Villanova University's website. The article describes only five roles - Project project manager, project team member, project sponsor, executive sponsor and business analysts'.

The composition of a team varies regarding cultural aspects, scope, and location, and may be formed as a combination of full-time and part-time resources. These may be both internal and external. Based on this information, PMBOK® Guide gives these two main examples of project team composition:

1. Dedicated. In a dedicated team, all or a majority of the project team members are assigned to work full-time on the project. The members usually report directly to the project manager and are fully focused on the project’s objectives.

2. Part-Time. Some projects are established as additional temporary work. In this case, the project manager and team members work on the project while remaining in their original companies, where they keep they functions and responsibilities at the same time. The functional managers are accountable for monitoring of the progress and team members activities. Part-time team members may also be assigned to more than one project at a time.