Project Team Roles and Responsibilities

Abstract

Without a doubt the human role is an inseparable part of Project Management. Hiring and involving the right people who will be committed throughout whole Project Life Cycle is of critical importance. Thus Organizational Planning plays an important role within Project Human Resources Management as its final output significantly effects project overall performance. The output consists of, among others:

• Assigning roles and responsibilities to everyone involved, which is a process of defining who does what (roles) and who decides what (responsibilities) and it is considered to be a solid foundation of every project and therefore - to be successfully executed.
• Selecting a Project Team and staffing management plan
• Creating an organizational chart

It should always link to a Project Scope, defined as "work required to output a project’s deliverable", hence nothing is omitted as well as just value adding deliverables are performed. This is why it is essential to clearly allocate roles and define responsibilities for everyone within a project team already from the very beginning of a project life cycle, namely the Initial Phase (note:to be confirmed).

This article focuses on the method of assigning roles and responsibilities to a Project Team members and applying adequate tools to ensure it is preserved and maintained properly during a project life cycle. The objective of the article is to provide project managers with instructions and application-ready templates. For superior understanding, methodology described in the article applies to a medium size projects and refers to the leading pharmaceutical industry best practices.

Motivation

It is project managers' role to build a project team, adequately assign roles and responsibilities to its members and make sure everything established is clear for everyone throughout a project life cycle. There are multiple reasons why project managers should have a careful approach to these processes.

First of all, it is essential to define a project size beforehand to support effective project execution. The more people are needed on board, the more roles and responsibilities need to be allocated among them. There are a certain roles which should be performed in medium and large projects but not necessarily in a small ones. This is also explained in detail further in the article.

Secondly, it happens that roles and responsibilities are assigned to people who do not have neither an interest nor a required knowledge or an experience to perform successfully. As a result, a project scope might become unsettled, deliverables might not be valueable as expected and in the end - a project might run behind a schedule.

Thirdly, transparency is a key for a Project Team to be effective. Once roles and responsibilities are assigned, project manager should ensure everything is documented as well as transparent and clear for everyone involved, otherwise there is a risk of not delivering what intended. Examples of tools and methods that support project managers in performing this processes are described further in the article.

Background

Before approaching a process of assigning roles and responsibilities to a Project Team, it is essential to correctly define a project size. Taking under consideration the pharmaceutical company best practices, a project size is defined mostly based on the Total Project Cost (TPC) and distributes as followed:

• Low-complexity projects (below 10 million DKK)
• Medium-complexity projects (more than 10 but less than 100 million DKK)
• Large-complexity projects (above 100 million DKK)

The article focuses on the medium-complexity projects to cover the steps that do not necessarily appear in the low-complexity projects but are relevant for project managers to be similar with.

Introduction to Project Human Resource Management

Figure 1: Project human resource management overview, adapted from the PMBOK® Guide

Project human resource management is one of the Project Management Knowledge Areas and includes a set of processes which ensures the most effective use of human resources throughout a project. According to Figure 1, which presents project human resource overview, there are three major processes within project human resource management, namely :

• Organizational Planning - identifying, assessing and documenting roles and responsibilities as well as reporting relationships present in a project
• Staff Acquisition - assigning the needed human resources to working on a project
• Team Development - developing of Project Team skills for team as a whole as well as for individual team members to increase level of project performance

The article focuses on organizational planning process, mostly on the usage of tools and techniques it contains, to generate successful output in terms of adequate assignment roles and responsibilities to a project team as well as transparent organizational chart.

Organizational Planning

Appropriate allocation of roles and responsibilities among a project team members and its transparency are crucial for successful project performance. That is why organizational planning process is done during the earliest phases of a project life cycle. Nevertheless, project managers should remember to review it regularly throughout a project, so it is ensured that just necessary roles and responsibilities are performed.

The main purpose for this process is to:

• Ensure a visible structure for overall roles and responisbilities
• Ensure clear roles and responsibilities
• Ensure fast reporting and decision making processes
• Secure sufficient resources for the project and the right competencies

It is important that a project organizational planning setup is documented, fully understood and agreed upon by all project team members to ensure clear roles and responsibilities.

Tools & Techniques Application

Once a project manager defined a project size and identified key roles and responsibilities, it is a time to form a project team out of the people who possess necessary competencies and experience. Project manager should preferably choose an internally available human resources from a parent company. Alternatively there is a possibility of hiring someone external, for instance from a consulting company, in case there is a need for a specialist who is not available in the parent company at that time.

In order to obtain desirable outcomes from a project organizational planning and hence perform this process successfully, a project manager should respectively:

1. Assign roles to a project team members - make sure to assign proper roles to proper people and ensure an organizational chart is created as an output
2. Allocate responsibilities among a Project Team members - make sure to have Responsibility Assignment Matrix as an output
3. Make sure the staffing management plan is regularly checked throughout a project life cycle

Assigning Project Team Roles and Responsibilities

Application: provide guidance on how to use the tool, concept or theory and when it is applicable

Based on Harvard Business Review, the right people need to be on board to meet project objectives. Moreover, these people need to have a clear understanding of what their roles and responsibilities are.

When it comes to the medium- and large-complexity projects, where more people need to be involved, project team is proportionally more extensive as well as roles and responsibilities can be assigned and performed both by individuals or a smaller teams within a project team. In the low-complexity projects some roles can be omitted.

Regarding to the pharmaceutical best practices within project management, a standard project team consists of: (note: make a table out of this with columns: Role, Responsibility)

• Project owner- Overall responsible for a project and anchoring in relevant governance structure
• Project manager- Responsible for driving a project in accordance with a project purpose, a project owner and other relevant stakeholders. Project manager makes sure that a project proceeds under the established budget, within the agreed time frame while being supported by sufficient resources and achieving its objectives.
• Steering committee- Responsible for decision-making on key issues and overall guidance. Project managers should avoid having more participants than necessary – only these needed for taking critical decisions should be part of a steering committee. Stakeholders that can provide relevant input, but are not needed for a decision-making process, should be handled in a reference group or individually
• Reference group (optional but recommended to apply within medium- and large-complexity projects) - People from with the specific knowledge and area of expertise who are needed to provide the necessary input for the project
• Project team members- Individual who actively contribute in one or more phases in a project. Responsible for specific work streams within a project. Ensure that the work streams are structured in accordance with the key project deliverables and as far as possible can be managed independently of the other work streams

(note: Just to mention Belbin briefly as an example of allocating roles to team members) When project managers are in doubt of how to properly allocate roles to each project team members, they may consider using some theories or tools which support their final decision, for instance the Belbin's Team Roles Tool (note: refer to another wiki article from the Conceptbox?)

Responsibility Assignment Matrix

RESPONSIBILITY MATRIX FIGURE TO BE ADDED

Responsibility assignment matrix is a tool which visualizes assigned roles and responsibilities and as a result, makes it being transparent for everyone engaged. Its layout depends on a project size. In lower-level projects roles and responsibilities are assigned individually to each of a project team members. Nevertheless, the larger a project is the more people need to be involved. Thus, in larger-level projects roles and responsibilities are assessed to groups of people rather than to the individuals.

Organizational Chart

ORGANIZATIONAL CHART FIGURE TO BE ADDED

Organizational Breakdown Structure (OSB)

How to ensure responsibilities compliance

- Feedback template

Limitations

Limitations: critically reflect on the tool/concept/theory and its application context. What can it do, what can it not do? Under what circumstances should it be used, and when not? How does it compare to the “status quo” of the standards – is it part of it, or does it extent them? Discuss your article in the context of key readings / resources provided in class. Substantiate your claims with literature

• Roles and Responsibilities need to be strongly link to the Project Scope
• Roles and Responsibilities change over the Project Life Cycle - how to keep on track so resources are not wasted if there is no need for them anymore (how should they be released - reduces cost and eliminates uncertainty)

Summary

Quality of the summary: Does the summary make the key focus, insights and/or contribution of the article clear?

Annotated bibliography

Provide key references (3-10), where a reader can find additional information on the subject. The article MUST make appropriate references to the reference material provided in class – either incorporating it as a source, or critically discussing aspects that are missing from it but covered by this article. Summarize and outline the relevance of each reference to the topic (around 100 words per reference). The bibliography is not counted in the suggested 3000 word target length of the article.

• Project Management Institute. "A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® guide)". 1996 Edition.

This book includes a relevant theory, concepts, and terminology within Project Management.