Bookmark-able guide to project roles
A good rule in communication is: clear is kind. Softly messaging key information may feel gentle, but it obscures clarity. That's why it's important to build a team or project team by identifying and clearly defining folks' roles.
You'll ensure that team members know what's expected of them—and you'll ensure that you're including the right people at the right times in decision making and escalation. It's easy to say "I'll make sure to include project stakeholders in making any decisions about business rules", but you might find yourself making tough decisions about who's a stakeholder halfway through the project if you haven't made those roles explicit.
You can use different titles for these roles and you can choose to have different roles in different types of team operations—not every organization is the same and not every effort needs a full formal team. But keeping the list of project roles and their definitions will help you build a shared vocabulary in your organization for who's accountable for what. And that kind of clarity builds trust and clear communication that you can rely on year after year.
Project owner: The project owner is ultimately responsible for delivering the project. They make day-to-day project decisions and work with functional leads to execute the project.
Stakeholders: These are the leaders who identified the need for the project, authorized its resources and set its requirements. If there is a needed change in scope, timeline, or resources, stakeholders will weigh in.
Project manager: The project manager owns developing and driving the project infrastructure, which is to say they will facilitate defining the project requirements, resources, and timeline, ensure the team is working together towards implementing poject work, facilitate communication and decision making when red flags or major issues arise, and step in to handle administrative issues that otherwise don't "belong" anywhere else.
Functional leads: When multiple groups (whether departments, teams, locations, etc.) are represented in a project or initiative, identify a "lead" from each group to act as their representative. This person will monitor all the work happening within their group in addition to whatever work they're driving themselves, and be able to participate in regular status updates and project discussions.
Dig into our Project Management Handbook to learn more about how project roles impact communication and developing an effective team. We'll talk more about accountability matrices in future post.
