What is your definition of a successful project?
Project Team Members – Many people would just look up to the planning and definition stages as the root cause for a project’s success. But, the underlying factor among all these stages is the team of people working on the project. This set of people what we know as project team members form a project team. It’s the collaboration among the project team members, performing their varied functions that make them a successful project team, thus, contributing to the success of the project.
While it’s the team that helps in the planning and definition stages, it is also the team that takes it through execution, maintenance, and implementation. In this article, we will look at providing you with a complete guide into the roles and responsibilities of each and every team member contributing to a project, in the best way possible.
Project Team Definition
A Project Team can be defined as a collection of many roles pertaining to a project. These many roles that come packaged for a particular project provide their clear and unadulterated expertise to the various aspects and stages of a project life cycle. Based on project type, scale, and scope, the different roles are accommodated and planned for and the number of individuals or project team members is chosen, hired for the job.
Project team members can be divided not only based on their functionality and area of expertise (logical groups called sub-teams) but also on whether they are scheduled or nonscheduled team members.
| Scheduled Project Team Member | Nonscheduled Project Team Member |
| Also known as delivery team, Scheduled project team members are those individuals for whom you would want to track the number of hours put in, the financial impact they bring about, and their utilization as a resource. | Also known as the extended team, Nonscheduled project team members can be described as those individuals for whom time is not specifically tracked while on a project and are part of the project team members brigade. |
Project Team Member Roles
We are going to look at 6 different project team member roles that exist in the world of project management. These project team member roles contribute effectively to all the different stages of the project.
A project can’t step forward towards achieving its set objectives unless its key team members are on board ready to efficiently work on their part in making a success story out of the project. Here is bringing you more clarity to the varied project team member roles and their duties.
Project Manager
This is the most important and key role within a project. A project manager is the initiator to projects and is responsible for a project right from its initiation through till its completion. This is basically the primary role within a project. A project manager is responsible for keeping the project within the boundaries of:
Project team members report to the project manager about all the proceedings of the project as per the project plan. The project manager’s duties include the following:
- Developing a project plan
- Effective communication with the project stakeholders and members
- Planning and managing the various deliverables and tasks to be carried out in a project
- Recruiting project staff
- Providing leadership to the project
- Determining the project management approach to be undertaken
- Providing timelines and schedules to be followed
- Assigning tasks and responsibilities to other project team members
- Providing a reporting and communication plan
Project Lead
Normally, this term is interchangeable with that of a project manager, but in some organizations with large project undertakings, the job is split to have a project manager and a project lead. This project lead normally reports to the project manager who is not only dedicated to one single project in the department but to multiple projects. Project leads for all these projects report their findings and progress to the project manager and works in close quarters with the project manager to fulfill the department’s objective towards the overall business strategy.
A project lead performs the same set of functions as described with the project manager, but do note that this is true for a few organizations and is mentioned in the article so that when you do come across such a situation you won’t be confused.
Project Sponsor
The driver of the project, a project sponsor is mainly a member from the senior management team who believes and invests in the project as envisioned by the project manager. The project sponsor needs to be updated at regular intervals about the progress of the project and how it’s achieving the goal it set out to achieve. A project sponsor’s duties include the following:
- Making key business decisions when it comes to high-level planning
- Project budget approvals and sign-offs
- Communication of project objectives and progress at the company level
- Providing go-aheads when it comes to resource acquiring and maintenance tasks
Project Team Member or Project Executive
Project team members include professionals and subject matter experts who actively participate and work on the different stages of a project. These project team members come in with varied skillsets and are all employed, either on a part-time or full-time basis based on the project requirement and needs. Their duties include the following:
- Providing technical expertise
- Completing individual or group tasks and objectives
- Contributing to the project objectives in all the ways possible
- Working with stakeholders and customers/users for establishing accurate project work and fulfilling business goals
- Documenting the processes
Executive Sponsor
This member from the top management or board is the actual decision maker of the projects. This individual is responsible for spearheading the various projects that are undertaken and managed within the organization in many departments. It’s the approvals from the executive sponsor that is considered as the final-approval and many project sponsors would be reporting to the executive sponsor. Their duties include:
- Accountability for the projects
- Checking and providing approval for any change in the project scope
- Providing with the approvals for various funds required to fuel projects
- Checking for project deliverables and milestone achievements
Business Analyst
A business analyst is a job role that is on a constant lookout for ways and means of defining business needs and suggesting solutions to those needs in a way to help improve the performance of organization. When dropped into a project, a business analyst is suggested to be making every effort in aiding the project manager in getting solutions to the problems the business is facing and helping in adding value to the project deliverables scoped out by the project manager. Their duties include the following:
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- Assisting the project manager in defining and scoping the project
- Gathering necessary data and information to define the project requirements
- Documenting the various business requirements and needs
- Checking for the value stream in the project deliverables
- Simulating solutions to verify the objectives
Creating Team Roles
Based on your project requirements and needs, it’s possible for you to create a team that is extremely unique and doesn’t correspond to another team. While a project team comprising of project team members can only have one project manager, project sponsor, and executive sponsor, it’s quite possible that you jiggle and juggle the remainder of your team; all these depending on the nature of your project and what you have set out to achieve.
In this time and day, where businesses are on full throttle to achieve maximum success on the basis of profits and heightened productivity, there’s a great chance that they are looking out for ROI when it comes to team members as well. Businesses are ever on the lookout to gain the best minds in the market that can make a difference to their business by contributing to the various projects and change programs initiated.
Recruiters and project managers are constantly in a rush to pick and choose the best executives and managers out there who could contribute to making this difference. So, let’s see how to do just about that.
How to Pick Project Team Members?
We’re going to look at 7 effective steps in choosing the right set of project team members for your project, who have the power to make or break your project. The right set of competencies and a perfect skill set, project managers, let’s move on to find out more.
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Project Analysis
It’s essential that you spend time and effort in completely understanding and analysis what your project is all about and what steps, tasks, and activities need to be processed in order for you to steer it into successful completion. Break down all these steps into individual tasks and tasks into sub-tasks; this way you can easily detect the resources you will need to complete the event as well as the duration based on the set productivity.
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Project Requirements
Check for any requisites put down by the management, such as time constraints, budget constraints, or resource constraints, so you will be able to plan your recruitment and project team members accordingly.
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Meeting with the HR
It’s a key step that you meet and explain your problems and predicament to the HR head. This way you will be assisted in finding out the most suitable project team members for the project and will get a great idea if there is a need to recruit project team members from outside the company. If that is so, you will need to prepare, in coordination with the HR, a recruitment drive for the project. This will be added and considered within your project budget (as subjected to consideration by the project sponsor and executive sponsor).
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Meeting with Other Managers
Along with the HR, it’s a great practice that you also meet the internal employees’ direct reporting managers in order to gain a wholesome view of the executives, personnel you want to hire for your project. You can ask them to provide ratings for their competencies, technical skills, and team-work abilities so that you will be aided in making the best decision.
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Narrow It Down
Once you’ve met and discussed, it’s time for you to make a potential list of the candidates you find are suitable for the roles. Among these individuals are your project team members who will assist you and work towards the successful implementation of the project plan in the near future. Categorize them under the skills they possess so that it will be easier for you to jot down their roles going further.
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Pick and Choose
Your next step is to evaluate your list and strike in the candidates under each category to come to the number you believe is perfect for the project. These candidates should have the right blend of skills and personal behavioral attributes to become contributing project team members.
If there’s a slight doubt in your mind regarding any of the employees in that list, you can go ahead and have a personal one-on-one or interview with them to gauge their mindset and skills, thus, helping you to make a decision.
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Analyze Your Pick
By this stage, you already have a project team in place, but all that there’s left to do is conduct a last-minute analysis to gauge if the team does indeed have the balance needed to complete this project as intended. You will also need to do a once-over to check if there’s a potential personality clash between the project team members so as to avoid quarrelsome situations and creative blockages during the execution of the project plan.
Conclusion
It’s really important that you have a completely enhanced and dedicate project management team and project team in place to be able to successfully execute the projects you undertake. The team does comprise of varied different individuals who COLLABORATE and make things happen. Without the key quality of team-work, being a part of a project team seems meaningless. These individuals bring something unique to the table and are always gunning to make things happen.
In a world where business means business, organizations are in a constant effort to make up a dream team that will fulfill their project goals and objectives and bring about raise in productivity, performance, and returns for the organization. Project team members are that driving forces that need to receive compliments in getting these done. A big congratulations to you if you are among them!
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This is a guide to Project Team Members. Here we have discussed the basic concept, How to Pick Project Team Members? with roles respectively. You may look at the following articles to learn more –
