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 diverse skills and practical experience. They 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 appropriate project team members can be hired once the roles are clearly and precisely defined. Planning, monitoring or controlling will have no effect if the team can not collaborate or if the team members are not aware of what is expected of them. Therefore, responsibilities and accountabilities must be determined for 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 teamwork. 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 consists of aligned responsibilities and expectations that can minimally vary during the life cycle of the project.

The personal classification is important as it brings all project stakeholders together. Formal roles and responsibilities are defined 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: Team performs better results when individual 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 contribute 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 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 level 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 about Project Team Roles and Responsibilities published by Villanova University. The article describes only five roles - Project project manager, project team member, project sponsor, executive sponsor and business analysts.

Figure 1: Project Team Structure, inspired from the PRINCE2™

More coherent and complex structure can be developed according to team roles and responsibilities characterizations described in the PRINCE2™ book. It covers all possible stakeholders and shows the overall complexity of the entire system. A model of this type can be viewed as a top-down hierarchy:

1. Project Board
2. Executive, Senior User(s), Senior Supplier(s)
3. Project Manager
4. Team Manager/Package owner

-Project Team Members

Also involved, but not in the main hierarchy model:

-Project Assurance

-Change Authority

-Project Support

The composition of each team, that is responsible for particular work package 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.

Roles and responsibilities

Individual roles and responsibilities within a project team are in this article described according to the Project Team Structure model, as it frames all possible project stakeholders. Since every project across the entire industrial spectrum is always distinct from others, not all stated positions have to be performed. Short-term projects with modest scope, low risks and small budget do not usually demand the action of additional members such as Change Authority or Project Assurance. Presence of these stakeholders would increase project costs while their advance and contribution to the project deliverables would be minimal.

Project Board

The Project Board is responsible for the success of the project, has the authority to make key decisions and thereby determine the direction. It operates according to instructions from corporate or programme management. The Project Board has three roles: Executive, Senior User(s) and Senior Supplier(s). All stakeholders are involved to maximize the chance of success as all interests are represented. Executive represents the business case, Senior User(s) specify the business requirement and Senior Suppliers(s) provide the products or services to meet the business requirement. The Project Board has the authority to assign tasks to Project Assurance or a Change Authority as a response to the complexity, scale and risks of the project.

Managing Succesful Projects with PRINCE2™ divides general Project Board responsibilities into 3 groups: during start-up and initiation, during the projects, at the end of the project.