Build Your Own Dream Team: Project Roles and Responsibilities

As a project manager, you are responsible for making sure a group of people can come together to achieve a common goal using shared tools and systems.

When identifying people resources, we need to carefully consider the project needs and use that info to guide our decision-making. When choosing a team, consider:

Required roles: project manager will make a list of roles that they’ll need on their team to complete each task.

• The project manager is accountable for the overall initiation, planning, execution, and completion of a project, the person in each role is accountable for specific tasks within the project life cycle.

Team size: project manager decides how many people they’ll need on their team.

• This can vary greatly depending on the project size. For small projects, a team may only need three or four people to complete the deliverables on time, and for larger projects, a team might include dozens.

Necessary skills: a project manager needs to think carefully about skills.

• It’s on the project manager to ensure that everyone on the team has the right skills to do the job. It’s also important to remember that skills can be taught. If someone doesn’t have a certain skill initially, they might still be a great fit for the team. Maybe this person brings a positive attitude and attention to detail — perfectly good reasons to have them on your team. Just keep in mind that if a teammate doesn’t have the necessary skills, it’s important that they are trained in time so as not to cause project delays.

Availability: a project manager also has to factor in each person’s availability and whether they’ll feel motivated to complete their assigned tasks. Motivation is a key ingredient to great work. It’s a good idea to pick people who are excited to get involved.

As a project manager, it’s up to you to decide who you need on your team. You have to ask yourself questions on things like staff experience, availability, the workspace, team member workload on other projects, and more.

It can be helpful to look deeper into each task on the project. Always ask yourself these key questions: how many people do I need on my team each step of the way? Which team members do I need and when? Are those experts already busy on other projects? Who makes the final decisions on project resources?

Once you lay the foundation for your project by outlining your goals and expectations, it is time to build your dream team! Though before we can build our dream team, we need to figure out how many people we need. This number will largely depend on the size of the project itself. Complex projects with large divisions of work will usually require larger project teams. Simple projects with straightforward expectations may only require a few people on the project team. As a project manager, it is your job to help find the right balance based on what is needed.

Technical skills are the skills specific to the task that needs to be performed.

Interpersonal skills, also known as people skills or soft skills, such as patience and conflict mediation, can help team members. This allows the team to blend their technical expertise with collaborative skills in order to get the job done.

When a team applies their interpersonal skills, they can minimize team-related issues.

Problem-solving skills are a must for all team members, especially when it comes to large, complex projects. As a project manager, you will not be able to solve every problem for your team. At some point, they will need to use their own judgment to problem-solve and get the work done.

An underrated skill set for project team members is leadership skills. Strong leadership skills help team members navigate organizational boundaries and effectively communicate with stakeholders to generate buy-in.

In projects, the availability of your team is always a big concern. This is especially true in Matrix organizations, where team members have multiple bosses. It is not uncommon to pull a team member onto another project before your project is complete.

You may find that you don’t get to pick certain members of your team at all, which is called a pre-assignment. In these cases, the sponsor assigns team members to your project.

Keep in mind that you need to value diversity early on when building your team. On diverse teams, everyone is able to use their unique professional and personal experiences to contribute to a more successful project.

Diversity is best leveraged when it is acknowledged and highlighted as an asset. Many people avoid discussing their differences, but if you encourage those conversations, you will find a richer understanding and greater creativity that comes from people working together across identity differences. To do this effectively, it is important to dedicate time early on in the team-building process to develop trust between team members. Team members who understand one another are more likely to trust each other and feel safe sharing different points of view or offering a competing perspective. This will also allow them to more easily offer constructive feedback or be supportive if the team dynamics face challenges at any point.

Be sure to take note of the motivation level of your team members and the impact it may have on your project. Just because a person is pre-assigned to a project, doesn’t necessarily mean they have low interest in it, but a person who proactively volunteered for it may have additional motivation to do the work.

As a project manager, it is your responsibility to engage your team and keep them motivated. This is where your influence as a leader is required to keep the team engaged and ready to overcome any obstacles that may appear. Engaging in a respectful manner and maintaining a positive outlook with your team during times of adversity are simple ways to keep your team motivated.

In summary, team size, skills, availability, and motivation are the building blocks to creating your very own dream team. Always keep in mind that a project manager does not just select dream teams, they create dream teams through collaboration under great leadership. This is the leadership that you will provide as a project manager.

You really need to have confidence and trust that the people around you have the skills and motivation to do the work well.

To feel confident in your team, you need to know each person’s role from the start. Clearly laying out the responsibilities for each role helps everyone know what project tasks they’re accountable for.

Sometimes team members need to adapt and take on more than one role at a time. This usually happens if the company is small or resources are limited. For example, at a small firm, you might be the project manager, designer, and marketer.

Whether they’re fixed or not, we always have these project roles. Project sponsors, team members, customers or users, stakeholders, and of course, the project manager.

A project sponsor is a person who is accountable for the project and who ensures the project delivers the agreed-upon value to the business. They play a vital leadership role throughout the process. Sometimes they fund the project.

• The sponsor will probably communicate directly with managers and key stakeholders.
• The project sponsor is the Director of Product. They approve the project’s budget and ensure that everything stays aligned with the vision
• The project sponsor is another primary stakeholder. A sponsor initiates the project and is responsible for presenting a business case for its existence, signing the project charter, and releasing resources to the project manager. The sponsor is very important to the project, so it’s critical to communicate with them frequently throughout all project phases. Advocate for alignment with senior management, advise on key business decisions and approve budget and resources.

Team members are the heart of the operation. They’re the people doing the day to day work and making the project happen.

• Project team members are also considered primary stakeholders since they play a crucial role in getting the job done. Your team members will vary depending on the type, complexity, and size of the project. It’s important to consider these variables as you select your project team and begin to work with them. Remember that choosing teammates with the right technical skills and interpersonal skills will be valuable as you work to meet your project goals. If you are not able to select your project team, be sure to champion diversity and build trust to create harmony within the team. Work independently and collaboratively, contribute to individual project objectives and possess specific expertise.

In some situations, we have both customers and users for a project, and we need to differentiate between the two.

The customers are the people who will get some sort of value from a successfully landed project. Since the project aims to deliver something useful to the customers, the customer’s needs usually define the project’s requirements. You can think of them as the buyers of the project.

Users are the people that ultimately use the product that your project will produce.

Stakeholders are anyone involved in the project; those who have a vested interest in the project’s success. Primary stakeholders are people who expect to benefit directly from the project’s completion, while secondary stakeholders play an intermediary role and are indirectly impacted by the project.

• Secondary stakeholders may be contractors or members of a partner organization, but both primary and secondary stakeholders help project managers define project goals and outcomes.
• Secondary stakeholders won’t play active roles throughout all phases of the project but still, need to be informed as they are a component of what the project needs to succeed.
• When we talk about “stakes,” we are referring to the important parts of a business, situation, or project that might be at risk if something goes wrong. To hold a stake in a business, situation, or project means you are invested in its success. There will often be several parties that will hold a stake in the outcome of a project. Each group’s level of investment will differ based on how the outcome of the project may impact them.
• Stakeholders are often divided into two groups: primary stakeholders, also known as key stakeholders, and secondary stakeholders. A primary stakeholder is directly affected by the outcome of the project, while a secondary stakeholder is indirectly affected by the outcome of the project.
• Primary stakeholders usually include team members, senior leaders, and customers.
• Each project will have a different set of stakeholders, which is why it’s important for the project manager to know who they are, what they need, and how to communicate with them.

Project manager: the person who plans, organizes and oversees the whole project.

• Project manager. You’re the one managing the information, people, and schedule to carry this project to a successful landing.
• The project manager is responsible for the overall success of the team, and ultimately, the project as a whole. A project manager understands that paying close attention to team dynamics is essential to successfully complete a project, and they use team-building techniques, motivation, influencing, decision-making, and coaching skills, to keep their teams strong.
• Project managers integrate all project work by developing the project management plan, directing the work, documenting reports, controlling change, and monitoring quality.
• Project managers are responsible for balancing the scope, schedule, and cost of a project by managing engagement with stakeholders. When managing engagement with stakeholders, project managers rely on strong communication skills, political and cultural awareness, negotiation, trust-building, and conflict management skills. (Monitor quality of work, manage the budget, plan and direct project work, scope accurately, use team-building techniques and manage the timeline)