Six Essential Project Management Roles and Why You Need Them to Succeed.

Projects are complex to manage and organisations that undervalue project management see over 50% of their projects failing (1). If you want to make sure that your organisation isn’t in that 50%, then being clear on the roles needed to make your project run smoothly and successfully deliver its objectives will be vital.  

We’ve created this blog to help you understand the roles and responsibilities for each person in a project team.  Knowing this as either a project sponsor or a project manager will help you set your project up with the best foundation.

Depending on the size of your project these roles may sometimes be combined, however we wouldn’t recommend that your Sponsor is your project manager.  The reason for this is your Project Sponsor needs to be that step away from the detail so they can help navigate risks and issues, and make decisions to support the successful implementation.

The other role that is sometimes overlooked in projects is the change management role, as people often assume it’s wrapped up in the project manager role.  We’ll share with you our thoughts on why it’s good to have separate roles and to give change management the resources it needs to successfully embed the change.

Project Sponsor

The project sponsor is the strategic lead who may sit on the Exec team who is ultimately responsible for the success of the project. 

The key elements to their role are:

• Owning, preparing and presenting the business case.

• Defining and agreeing the scope and project deliverables.

• Owning communications about the project to stakeholders and the wider business.

• To manage and hold the overall project budget.

• Identifying and recruiting / obtaining resources to deliver the project.

• Being ultimately responsible for the overall timeline.

• Managing stakeholder relationships and engagement.

• Monitoring overall progress against the plan.

• Managing, mentoring and coaching the project manager.

• Analysing risks and supporting problem solving.

• Maintaining motivation within the project team.

As you can see by this list, this isn’t for the faint of heart and definitely isn’t for the ‘hands off’ type of leader. 

One of the key reasons projects fail is due to the project sponsor either not being clear on their role and responsibilities or that the project sponsor is aware but doesn’t engage with the project.

According to the Project Management Institute’s research, less than two in five organisations place high priority on creating a culture that recognises senior management involvement as a key driver of better project performance.  However, if organisations place high priority on creating this type of culture and having engaged project sponsors they report that 71% of their projects deliver the original goals and business objectives. (2)

Picking the right project sponsor and ensuring they spend quality time with the project manager to agree roles, responsibilities and expectations will mean that your project is off to a good start.

Project Manager

The project manager works closely with the project sponsor to plan and scope the project and obtain sign off for the business case.  If you think of the project sponsor as Batman the Project Manager as Robin!

They take the overall vision of the project and help the workstream leads / subject matter experts create and co-ordinate the overall plan.

The key elements of their role are:

• Encouraging the project team to collaborate and work together - they are the glue that helps it all stick together.

• Supporting the team to create and communicate the project vision.

• Creating the project plan and note key milestones.

• Creating the project governance structure e.g. set up and coordinate the key meetings, manage change requests and document risks, issues and decisions consistently.

• They need to be an ace problem solver - the idea is they help the project teams solve problems so that only the serious issues are escalated.

• Monitoring quality of work and compliance to the plan.

• Making sure the project is running to time and budget.

• Managing risks and issues - escalating when further support is needed.

• Coach, mentor, motivate and support the project team - projects can be tough, a good project manager acts as the team's cheerleader.

Project Coordinator

This role may also fall to the Project Manager depending on the size of the project.  The project coordinator is a master of organisation and time management.  They need to be determined and persistent.  A good project coordinator is like a baby rottweiler snapping on the heels of the project team asking them if they’ve done that action yet!

If you are a work-stream lead, our best advice would be to make friends with them and quickly.  They will be hugely supportive in making sure you don’t go to a project meeting without having completed your actions and save you from getting roasted for it.

The key elements of the Project Coordinator role are:

• Monitoring the progress of actions and documenting completion and updates.

• Coordinating meetings, workshops and training for the project team.

• Working with the Project Manager to produce regular reports on project progress.

• Creating presentations to obtain feedback and sign off for various parts of the project.

• Documenting meetings, decisions and actions.

• Highlighting any issues to the project manager.

• Monitoring things like holidays and other key activities and highlighting any peaks of activity or clashes that could impact project delivery.

Workstream Lead / Subject Matter Expert

These are often your functional project leads, representatives from each team impacted by the project e.g. Finance, HR, Operations, IT etc.  It may also include representatives from key suppliers for example if you are upgrading to a new HR system, the new supplier may form part of the project team.

How this role is recruited can make all the difference to the success of the project if someone volunteers they will be excited at the prospect of the project and motivated.  If they’ve been ‘voluntold’ and to top it all they have to manage this massive project on top of their day job it’s a whole different story.

One of the Sponsors roles is to ensure that the workstream leads have capacity to balance their business as usual and the project and if they don’t to address it with the relevant Manager.

The key elements of the Workstream Lead / Subject Matter Expert role are:

• Assess the impact of the project on their area of responsibility.

• Identify actions and activities that need to take place in their team to deliver the project and feed this into the project plan.

• Take ownership of the actions identified and be proactive in scheduling and completing them on time.

• Providing regular updates to the project coordinator and/or manager.

• Highlighting any risks or issues with their area of responsibility.

• Working on solutions to problems, issues and risks.

• Keeping their team members and line managers informed on project status.

One of the key success factors for a good work stream lead is taking accountability and one of key problems for a project manager is a lack of accountability in these roles.  

If you’re a project manager and struggling with this issue try to find out the cause.  Is it because the person doesn’t understand the project vision, the timeline or their role?  Is it because they don’t have time to do the work?  Maybe they don’t see the point.  By understanding the cause you can then take action to tackle the problem.

Change Manager

How is this different from a project manager and why is it important?  The project manager manages the organisation and tracking of the project, the change manager looks at the impact of the change on people, process and policy and then identifies ways to make the change successful.

The key elements of the Change Manager role are:

• Understanding the need for change and helping to create a compelling vision and communications plan.

• Managing the people impact of the change process.

• Assessing the impact of change across the organisation and creating a strategy and plan of action to manage the impact and maximise the employee adoption of the changes.

• Working to overcome resistance to change.

• Supporting the teams to redesign and change processes.

• Helping the organisation understand the need for change and their role in it.

• Monitoring and managing how well the change is understood across various teams and roles.

• Monitoring the benefits of change and ROI and sharing these successes.

• Carrying out training needs analysis, creating training plans and supporting the design and delivery of training.

• Coaching project teams through change and giving them support to lead their teams through the change.

As you can see this is a very different role to a project manager and is vital to your projects success. 

According to Prosci, a global change management company’s research, only 1 in 8 projects succeed if they have poor change management.  This success rate increases threefold if you apply ‘fair’ change management and excellent change management increases it by 7 times.  So the motto here is it is better to do something, because doing nothing in this space is pretty much a guarantee for failure. (4)

This is why we believe that having support in both the change management and project management of your project is key.

The Project Board or Steering Committee

The final role we cover is the Project Board or Steering Committee.  This is usually a collection of senior stakeholders, who have an interest in the project and usually comprises Finance, IT, HR and Operations.  They tend to be executive level decision makers and are the ultimate sign off for the initial business case and any subsequent changes to project budget, resource, scope or timeline.

They help unlock issues within their respective areas and help manage and mitigate risk.  Their role is to view the project from a strategic perspective and make sure that it delivers the return on investment and benefits that it originally intended.

Keeping a clear log of any decisions taken at these meetings will pay dividends when you’re six months into the project and someone challenges why you’re doing something.  By being able to refer back to the log you’ll be able to push back on any challenges or if change is needed funnel it through to the project board.

Summary

In this blog we’ve covered off the main roles within a project and given you a good understanding of their responsibilities. So if you’re setting up a project, you know who you need to recruit and what expectations there are for each project team member.

We’ve also shared some of the challenges we commonly see with setting up and managing your project team to help you avoid and manage them.  

If you want some help setting up your project for success, we facilitate project kick off meetings where you share or even create the vision, we use DISC profiling to help your team understand how to communicate well with each other and start to plan initial actions.  If this sounds like something you want to include in your project get in touch.

References:

1. https://teamstage.io/project-management-statistics/

2. https://www.apm.org.uk/blog/effective-sponsorship-is-key-to-success/

3. https://www.prosci.com/blog/the-correlation-between-change-management-and-project-success

The information contained above is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this blog are not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of this blog. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this blog. Snow Limits Coaching disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this blog.