Chapter 6

Tackling the Roles and Responsibilities

In This Chapter

Roles and the fit with communications

It’s about roles, not jobs

The roles you’ll need in the project

Role descriptions

Repeated surveys of the causes of project failure come up with communication problems as one of the top reasons. In turn, those communication problems frequently have their roots in roles and responsibilities. People aren’t clear on what they should be doing, and they certainly aren’t clear on what other people should be doing, so things ‘fall down the gaps’.

There were four people in the Body family. Their names were Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realised that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

Source unknown

A lot of people talk casually about roles and responsibilities without ever thinking about what that phrase means. In projects the use of the word role is crucial in two dimensions:

• Roles are about function and not status. A person who is very senior in the organisation may be a team member while someone who is their junior may be the Project Manager. The project organisation can take normal organisational reporting lines and turn them upside down.
• Roles allow you to fit the project organisation around the specific needs of the project. One person may have more than one role, and some roles can be shared between more than one person.

Figure 6-1 shows how the roles in the project fit together. This organisational structure is ISO compliant and builds in the important divide between the governance of the project (making sure that it’s being run properly) and the operational aspects of the day-to-day management.

Project Roles Checklist

Use this checklist along with Figure 6-1 to make sure that you have all the bases covered when it comes to filling the project roles. The first three roles on the list make up the Project Steering Group (PSG), which is the small group of managers with overall responsibility for the project. The PSG is the Project Manager’s boss.

• Sponsor: The ‘business’ interest in the project and in overall charge.
• Project User(s): The manager(s) representing those who will use what the project is delivering.
• Project Supplier(s): The manager(s) supplying most of the staff resource needed to run the project.
• Optional PSG roles: You may need someone extra to liaise with a programme level or to make sure that the whole of the business change runs smoothly.
• Project Audit: The person or persons responsible for checking the project to make sure that everything is okay.
• Project Manager: The manager responsible for the day-to-day running of the project.
• Optional management roles: Exceptionally, you may want to consider appointing someone to a specialised role to help the Project Manager, such as to keep an eye on business change or risk.
• Team Leader: Where the project has more than one team, you will normally need a Team Leader for each one.
• Project Administration: The person or people giving administrative support to the project. Administrative support could come from a Project Management Office if you have one.

Project Steering Group Checklist

The Project Steering Group (PSG) is made up of the three roles of Sponsor, Project User(s) and Project Supplier(s). Each role has specific responsibilities and you’ll find those on individual checklists following this one. This checklist is about the joint responsibilities of the PSG.

In some organisations the PSG is known as a Project Steering Committee while in others it’s called the Project Board. If you are unfamiliar with some of the terms used in this book, have a look at Chapter 21 in the Part of Tens which gives alternative names for documents and roles. You may well find that your organisation has exactly the same thing but uses a different label.

• Ownership: The project is not the Project Manager’s project, it’s the PSG’s project. The PSG must take that fact on board and ‘take ownership’.
• Project governance: Just as the senior managers in a department must make sure that the department runs well, so the PSG is responsible for making sure that the project is managed well. That involves checking that the project is set up properly at the start and then controlled properly throughout.
• Review: Following on from the previous point on governance, the PSG must have regular reviews to check that the project is running well. That doesn’t mean putting undue pressure on the Project Manager, but it does mean getting the right information and actually checking it.
• Audit follow up: Considering the findings of Project Audit and ensuring that action is taken where that is justified.
• Change: Considering change requests that are beyond the authority the PSG has delegated to the Project Manager
• Risk: Deciding if the overall risk exposure is acceptable and then ensuring that the agreed risk management actions and procedures (such as how staff notify new risks) are actually working.
• Quality: Ensuring that the required quality is actually being achieved, not just talked about.
• Support: Just like any group of senior managers, the PSG members must support the Project Manager. The same principle holds true in projects as it does in general management – if your staff succeed, you succeed.

Don’t accept a PSG role unless you can handle the responsibility and are available to take it on. If the project goes wrong because of poor management and poor control, you will be held to account by corporate management. That’s not to say that the Project Manager isn’t culpable too, but rather to emphasise that it’s the PSGs project and the PSG members were appointed to their roles to make quite sure that the project was run properly. If that sounds a little harsh, just think about normal organisational management. If poor management somewhere within a department leads to failure, then it’s the fault of the senior managers of that department and especially the head of department. An important element of a senior manager’s function is to make sure that things don’t go wrong and to put the appropriate checks and controls in place to monitor the work being done.

Sponsor Checklist

So, you’re the Sponsor for the project? Congratulations. Here’s a list to help you understand what your role involves, alongside your shared responsibilities as set down in the last checklist on the PSG. As Sponsor you are ultimately responsible for the project and of the three views of business, user and supplier, you represent the business view.

• Leadership: you are in overall charge of the project, even though day-to-day management of the project is delegated to the Project Manager. You must show that leadership to the point of encouraging and even inspiring the project staff.

Napoleon Bonaparte was an inspiring leader. The Duke of Wellington said of him that when he was on the field of battle he was worth 40,000 soldiers. Don’t underestimate the value of being out and about and encouraging project staff. However, do your encouraging carefully without undermining the management position of the Project Manager and the Team Leaders, and without getting in the way. And don’t go round asking silly questions; be an intelligent and informed leader, not a tourist.

• Communication: You must communicate as necessary with the corporate managers who appointed you to run the project. When it comes to senior organisational managers, you speak for the project; it’s not the Project Manager’s place to do that.
• Business Case: It’s mostly down to you to ensure that the Business Case is sound and accurately compiled. That means checking that the benefits estimates are realistic and correctly calculated. You must also ensure that the Business Case is kept up-to-date throughout the project and that the project continues to be viable.
• Value for money: You must ensure that the project is value for money. Even if the project is mandatory, is it being done in the most cost-effective way?
• Business impact: You should check the impact the project will have on the rest of the organisation and ensure that other areas are aware of it. If you’re running the PRIME project management method you must personally sign the Business Impact Statement, and that action indicates your personal responsibility for it.
• Chair the PSG: As Sponsor and the business interest in the project, you will chair PSG meetings. Those meetings are notably the Stage Reviews (progress meetings) and Stage Gates (the meeting at the end of each Delivery Stage to check the project and approve the next stage).
• Decision making: You will listen very carefully to the views of the other PSG members and also to those of the Project Manager. Normally the PSG will reach decisions on the project by consensus, but if there is disagreement you must make the final decision even if that goes against the views of all the other PSG members. It’s like being a head of department.
• Guidance and direction: You must be available personally for the Project Manager when she needs direction or input from time to time. For example, she may want to talk to you about the impact of a newly discovered risk and get your views on it.
• Emergency action: If something goes wrong in a stage, or across the whole project, that’s beyond the authority of the Project Manager to deal with, she will refer the matter to you. You must now step in and take charge of the situation. You’ll listen carefully to the Project Manager’s recommendations and to other PSG members, but you must now resolve the matter. That resolution may be to shut the project down.

Project User Checklist

So, you’ve been appointed to the Project User role on the Project Steering Group. It’s an important role so have a look at this checklist to help you understand what it involves. This checklist accompanies the earlier checklist on the shared responsibilities of the PSG. Of the three views of business, user and supplier, you represent the user view. You may hold this role on your own, or alongside one or two other Project Users from different areas that will be affected by the project.

• Fit for purpose: As Project User your primary responsibility is to ensure that the project is delivering what the users can use.
• Staff resource: Most projects need user staff involved to help specify what’s needed and then to test that the deliverables are okay, but the degree of involvement may be even more. Part of your role is to supply that user resource.
• Project champion: As well as bringing user information into the project, you’re responsible for the reverse information flow too. You should be ‘championing’ the project in the business areas.
• Guidance and direction: You must be available personally for the Project Manager when she needs direction or input from time-to-time. For example, she may want to talk to you about the relative priorities of changes that have been requested by user staff.

Be totally realistic when you work with the Project Manager to discuss what user resource is needed and what is available. When you sign the plan, you commit that user resource, so make very sure that you can provide it. If you are not in personal control of all the user staff needed on the project, you may need to get agreements from other managers before agreeing to the resource provision on their behalf as well as on your own.

Project Supplier Checklist

Of the three views of business, user and supplier, you represent the supplier view. Congratulations on your appointment to the Project Steering Group. The supplier side covers those actually doing the work of the project – the project teams.

You may be alone in the Project Supplier role, or there may be someone else sharing the role. It’s common, for example, to have one Project Supplier authorising staff resource from within the customer organisation and another Project Supplier from an external supplier company authorising their staff’s involvement in the project.

Here’s a checklist to help you understand the Project Supplier responsibilities. The responsibilities go in parallel with your joint PSG responsibilities as listed in the PSG checklist earlier in the chapter.

• Advise on supply matters: Advise the PSG on the supplier aspects of the project, including that the approach being taken is technically sound and achievable.
• Translate: Where the project involves technical things, other PSG members may struggle to understand what is involved and that will make it harder to make sensible management decisions. Part of your role is to explain any necessary technicalities to other PSG members in terms that they can understand.
• Standards: Ensure that any applicable technical standards will be met and that they are listed correctly in the Quality Plan.
• Plans: Work with the Project Manager on project resourcing and say what staff resource you will be able to supply and when.
• Guidance and direction: You must be available personally for the Project Manager when she needs direction or input from time-to-time. For example, she may want to talk to you about the implications for team resourcing if the project starts to run ahead of schedule.
• Supply team resource: You will authorise the team resource for most of the project work. The only staff resource you won’t supply is user staff (they will be provided by the Project User on the PSG).

Check the Project and Stage Plans carefully and make sure that you can provide the supplier staff resource that they show. When you sign a plan be very aware that you are committing the supplier resource shown on it.

You may not be in direct personal control of all of the supplier resource – for example if different departments are providing staff. In that case you will need to get agreements from others, perhaps signed, before you sign a plan to commit all of the supplier resource needed for the project.

Optional PSG Roles

You really want a ‘lean and mean’ PSG with up to three people, but no more than six. However, sometimes it may be helpful to have an additional person in one of two specialised roles.

• Change Manager: If the project will require substantial change elsewhere in the organisation, you may want to have someone on the PSG keeping a special eye on this and making sure that all other areas will be ready at the point that the project delivers. An alternative is to have a Change Manager helping the Project Manager.
• Programme Liaison: Where the project is part of a programme, it can help considerably to have a member of the programme management team on the Steering Group to maintain a strong link between the project and programme levels.

Project Manager Checklist

As Project Manager, you have day-to-day responsibility for running the project and you’re accountable to the PSG for that. If you already have some project management experience you might think that it would be simpler to have a checklist of what you’re not responsible for in the project, but here goes anyway. Sharpen your pencil because predictably, it’s a long checklist with a lot of boxes to tick.

• Plans: You’ll normally be planning at two levels; project level and stage level.
• Business Case: Although the Sponsor has primary responsibility for the Business Case, you’ll be doing a lot of the ‘spadework’ to research and write it.
• Project Charter: You’ll be the driving force in writing the Project Charter, the strategic view of the project. Have a look at the template in Chapter 11 if you’re not clear on the contents.
• PMP: The Project Management Plan or PMP is primarily your responsibility, though you will get input from others such as PSG members. It’s a set of plans including the Project Plan and Risk Plan. Again, have a look at the templates in Chapter 11 if you’re unclear on the contents.
• Flow of work: You are responsible for controlling the flow of work to teams (or individuals if it’s a smaller project) with Work Packages (work assignments).
• Control: Once the project is underway and the teams start on the first Work Packages, your job is to be at the helm to keep the project in general, and the stage in particular, on track.
• Risk: You’ll be keeping an eye on identified risks and their related control actions and examining any new risks.
• Quality: There’s no point in delivering unusable garbage on time and within budget. An important part of your function is to ensure that the project is delivering to the specified level of quality.
• Plan updates: A plan is no help for control unless it’s up-to-date, so updating the plan must be a regular and routine part of your management.
• Reports: You’re responsible for reporting to others, as set down in the Communications Plan in the PMP. Notably that’s keeping the PSG informed of progress but there’s other reporting too such as at the end of each stage (Stage Completion Report) and at the end of the project (Project Completion Report).
• Change: You’re responsible for dealing with change requests and looking at the value and impact. For each change you can decide on it if you have the authority, or refer it to the PSG if not.
• Problem solving: It’s absolutely normal for any project to hit problems. Part of the challenge of your role is solving them, but with input from others when you need it.
• Co-ordination: Where your project interfaces with other work (perhaps in a programme and perhaps not) you need to keep in touch with other project managers and organisational managers to make sure that everything works together.
• Motivation and encouragement: Although you may have Team Leaders running the teams, you have an important function to help motivate and encourage those doing the work.
• Stage Gates: At the end of each Delivery Stage you are responsible for preparing for the Stage Gate with all the information that the PSG will need to assess the project.
• Lessons: Note lessons that you’ve learned in this project, both good and bad things, which might be of help to future projects.
• Capturing ‘actuals’ and maintaining records: Hopefully you’ll have a Project Administration function to cover this aspect. However if you don’t then this job is down to you.

Optional Management Roles

The Project Manager is in day-to-day charge of the project, usually with Team Leaders reporting to her. In some circumstances, though, it’s a good idea to have specialised managers working for the Project Manager but not involved in leading one of the teams.

• Project Risk Manager: In a very high risk project you may appoint a Risk Manager to assist the Project Manager and concentrate solely on risk.
• Project Change Manager: Where the project involves substantial organisational change outside the direct control of the project, you may find it helpful to have a dedicated Change Manager. If someone more senior is needed then this role could be at PSG level as described earlier in the chapter.

Team Leader Checklist

As Team Leader you’re responsible for managing a team to work through one or more Work Packages (work assignments) in a stage. Here’s a checklist to help you make sure that you’re covering all of the important areas of responsibility.

• Assist with stage planning: Your input will be invaluable to the Project Manager when planning the stage. It will also help you to think through what will be involved in your own management.
• Plan the Work Package: If a Work Package is complex and the Stage Plan doesn’t give sufficient detail to control it, then produce a Work Plan with the level of detail that you do need.
• Control the work: Keep track of the work as your team builds the products in the Work Package. Check that everything is on-track, and make adjustments if it isn’t.
• Check quality: Make sure that products are being built to the right quality level as set down in the Product Definitions, and that tests and checks are being carried out properly.
• Report progress: Keep the Project Manager up-to-date with progress on the current work. That will be as instructed when you were given the Work Package and could be by report or by giving the same information in a Team Leaders’ meeting for example.
• Report problems: Inform the Project Manager of anything that could affect the final delivery date of the Work Package or affect the stage in other ways.
• Monitor risks: Monitor the risks associated with the Work Package and inform the Project Manager of any new risks you see in the project or any change of status in existing risks. It follows that you need to be familiar with the risks in the project Risk Log.
• Advise: Advise the Project Manager as required, such as on the impact of a change that has been requested.

Project Audit Checklist

In Chapter 19 you’ll find a whole range of checklists for auditing specific areas of the project. This simple one in the ‘Roles and Responsibilities’ chapter is about the role itself.

This checklist is rather different from others in the chapter because as well as saying what you are responsible for, it also makes clear what you’re not responsible for. It’s important that you’re clear on your function because there are a lot of misunderstandings about, not helped by fuzzy thinking in some project methods and approaches.

What you’re responsible for

These are the main areas of responsibility for Project Audit. The exact auditing requirements will be established at the start of the project and may be largely influenced by an organisational approach to project governance and audit.

• Helping the project to succeed: This may sound a bit odd as a first point, but it’s important. Be balanced, helpful and constructive; don’t nit-pick on trivia and make the life of the Project Manager more difficult than it need be.
• Business Case: Checking that it’s sensible, not overstated, accurate and clear.
• Appointments: Ensuring that they’re suitable both in terms of the competence of the people appointed and that those people have sufficient availability to do the job.
• Completeness: Making sure that documents such as the Project Charter and Project Management Plan are complete, as consistent with the needs of the project.
• Plans: Checking that plans are realistic, achievable and accurate. For example, that there’s sufficient contingency and that work hasn’t been scheduled by mistake over public holiday periods.
• Standards: Ensuring that any required standards are being met and in an appropriate way. That means looking out for where projects are exceeding requirements and incurring unnecessary overheads as well as where they may be failing to meet necessary parts of the standards.
• Procedures: Making sure that procedures within the project are functioning properly. So, when someone in the project notices a new risk and sends in a Project Memo, is it being correctly picked up and processed?
• Actions: Ensuring that intended actions are actually being taken. So if a regular monthly action has been planned to avoid a risk, is that actually being done?
• Quality: This point is related to the last one but worth spelling out separately. If a quality action such as a test is supposed to have been done, has it been done, and has it been done by the right people?

If you’re doing your job correctly in Project Audit, the Project Manager should find you a real help and welcome you warmly when you visit. You should be like a helpful colleague and a ‘second pair of eyes’, in that you find errors and omissions. That doesn’t detract for one moment from your independence and if the Project Manager is ‘blindsiding’ the PSG for example, you will report it.

What you’re not responsible for

This isn’t everything outside your role in Project Audit but just things that are confused sometimes or are just plain wrong.

• Appointments: you shouldn’t be suggesting people for project roles. You can’t audit to evaluate if an appointment is appropriate if you suggested that person in the first place. If you’re familiar with a leading project management method and think that I’m criticising it in making this point, you’re absolutely right: I am.
• Project work: You mustn’t be involved in any way in the project work, even if you consider that to be a different role (‘I’m a team member for four days a week and the Project Auditor on the same project for one day a week.’) You can’t be independent if you’ve been involved in doing the work.
• Corrections: You shouldn’t be directly involved in correcting things that you found to be wrong. If you do, you lose your independence in any later check to ensure that corrections have been properly handled.
• Finding something wrong: Don’t think that you have a responsibility to find something wrong in the project to justify your existence. If there’s nothing wrong then say so in your audit report; you’ve still done your job. Also, keep a sense of proportion. Be very careful not to exaggerate minor things and report them as major things so that it makes the audit seem more worthwhile.
• Running the project: The PSG is responsible for the project. You are not there to instruct the PSG members on how to do their jobs any more than the financial auditors instruct a Finance Director on how to do hers. Neither should you give instructions to the Project Manager; remember that her boss is the PSG, not you. You can report problems or errors that you discover in your audit checks, but it is for the management of the project to take any necessary action.

Project Administration Checklist

In a Project Administration role you can make an enormous contribution to the success of the project. The important thing is to recognise that you are in a support function. Your role is not to run the project but to help the Project Manager (and possibly Team Leaders) run the project. If you’re tempted to think that isn’t very important, just think how essential a good PA (personal assistant) is to a top manager in a large organisation. That PA needs to be practical, intelligent, highly professional, thoroughly competent and thoroughly reliable … and so do you.

Here’s a checklist to help you get to grips with the range of things where you can provide very real help and assistance.

• Planning: Assist the Project Manager and others with drawing up comprehensive and pragmatic project plans. You need to be fully familiar with product planning, activity planning, resource planning and budgeting.
• Project setup: Assist and perhaps advise the Project Manager on suitable records and record formats for the project. Your objective here is to help put in the right degree of control without unnecessary overheads. You may advise on simplifying forms and procedures for this particular project.
• Meeting administration: Making arrangements for meetings including sending out any invitations, booking rooms and ordering refreshments. Then in taking and distributing notes of meetings.
• Logging ‘actuals’: Entering ‘actuals’ such as timesheet and spending information into spreadsheets and project management software tools.
• Drafting reports: Doing the initial work to prepare reports such as progress and financial reports.
• Giving advice: Advising the Project Manager and Team Leaders on areas of project planning, control and administration, such as on the detail of using project management software tools.
• Checks: Making sure that documents are complete and accurate. For example, you might unobtrusively check the draft Project Charter to ensure that all sections have been completed, and warn the Project Manager if she’s forgotten something. You might also check the mathematics of the benefits calculations in the Business Case to be sure that they’re correct.
• Version control: Depending on the nature of the project, you may control the versioning system for the project to keep track of versions of technical products, such as design drawings, and management products such as the Business Case.