October 2011 Issue: Project Roles & Responsibilities

Welcome to Our October Issue

The “organization” built around a project is comprised of the business and technical resources needed to ensure that critical knowledge and skills requirements are met—the ones that will help guarantee a successful project.  Everyone involved in a project has specific roles and responsibilities and it’s up to the project manager to ensure that everyone is aware of what those are. In this issue, we’ll explore some of the R&Rs found in a typical project…

Included in this issue:

• The Basics of Project R&R
• Project Management Q&A
• Client Oriented R&Rs
• How to Be a Super Sponsor
• Seven Do’s and Don’ts for Novice Project Managers
• Facilitating Success
• Project Management Fundamentals for Life Sciences

Next Issue: Coaching and Feedback

If you’re not a regular subscriber, sign up for pmPractitioner today and be notified when next month’s issue is available!

pmPractitioner is published as a service to the project management community. Each issue provides practical project management solutions and tips adapted from a variety of business publications and resources.

The Basics of Project R&R

The individual roles to be found within a project environment may differ slightly depending on the organization. However, what follows in this brief overview are the typical ones, along with some basic responsibilities:

Project Manager (or Project Leader)

Provides overall leadership to ensure commitment and accountability for project results. Forms and manages the project team and their work activities. Ensures effective communications between all parties involved in the project, internally and externally. Liaises with sponsor and senior management to ensure proper sign-off on deliverables, escalates issues (if necessary) and keeps them apprised of project status.

Project Core Team Member

Participates in strategy/development and planning meetings, produces assigned deliverables per specifications, communicates status and other information based on communications plan, raises issues and opportunities as necessary, and supports and collaborates with PM and other team members.

Functional Manager

Ensures adequate skills and availability of resources assigned to the project, aids project manager to clear project roadblocks and provides functional expertise as needed.

Senior Management Team

Understands and supports the organization’s project management approach, sets clear performance criteria for managing projects, agrees on key programs and projects for the organization, and ensures effective decision making at appropriate levels.

Sponsor

Charters and approves the project, funds, allocates and/or ensures necessary resources, negotiates agreements for support, ensures that the project supports business direction and goals, participates in project reviews, provides political support and helps resolve issues in a timely way, as needed.

From Action for Results, Inc.

October Project Management Q&A

Test your project management knowledge with these questions or use them as an exercise to help prepare for your PMP certification exam.

1. In procurement management, it is necessary to evaluate proposals from sellers in terms of their overall capabilities. These might include technical capability and financial capacity. If you are involved in this process, you are dealing with an output called:

2. You have been asked to attend a meeting and bring certain documentation to present to the team. One of the documents you have been asked to present is a document that governs execution of the entire project. This document is known as:

Answers appear at the end of the newsletter.

Client Oriented R&Rs

The next time you assemble a project team, try the following when you develop the project organization’s roles and responsibilities. To encourage excellence in individual performance, add ‘service’ to job descriptions. Ask team members to treat others around them as they would treat their own personal customers.

Have each team member draft their own job description including answers to the following questions:

• Who do I serve?
• What do those I serve need/want from me?
• With whom do I collaborate to help make it all happen?
• What resources do I have available to serve those identified?

Adapted from Rewards That Drive High Performance, Thomas B. Wilson, AMACOM

How to Be a Super Sponsor

The project sponsor is the individual who helps secure authorization for the project and who has the political and organizational influence to drive the project to its completion, including ensuring that the project has access to the right resources. They are the ones who vest the project manager with the authority and responsibility to manage the project. Sponsors are outside the project team – they are not team members!

A super sponsor does everything in their power to ensure a successful project, including:

• Maintaining objectivity about the project.
• Managing the project manager for purposes of the project.
• Providing the right level of support and partnering, including timely decisions and issue resolution.
• Allowing the project manager and team to do their work – not micromanaging them!
• Being open to hearing “bad news” and helping to find solutions and alternatives, even when facing constraints.
• Motivating the project team and stakeholders.
• Knowing when cancelling the project is appropriate.

Adapted from Sponsorship Essentials, Action for Results, Inc., 2007

Seven Do’s and Dont’s for New Project Managers

First PM assignment?  Even though there is no way to guarantee project success, these three fundamental tenets will help minimize your risk of failure: A) Plan thoroughly, B) Keep your communication channels open and C) Be flexible.

To elaborate, here are seven do’s and don’ts that will serve you well throughout the early days of your project management career.

1. Don’t allow yourself to be bullied by anyone.

2. Do approach more experienced practitioners; network.

3. Don’t be afraid to say ‘I don’t know.’

4. Do remember; communication is vital.

5. Don’t be concerned with spending excessive time planning.  Charging off in the wrong direction is much worse than ‘paralysis through analysis.’

6. Do use a systematic approach: Aim, Plan, Do and Review.

7. Do identify risks, but don’t take them unnecessarily.

Adapted from Why Projects Fail , Karl Cusing, Computer Weekly

Facilitating Success

At times during a project, it can make sense to have one person act as an objective facilitator, especially in major project meetings, where there tends to be larger groups or more diverse viewpoints. The verb “facilitate” means “to make easier or less difficult” and a competent facilitator makes it easier for a group to generate the right outcomes through an effective process. Their role is to effectively manage the process of the group but remain neutral about the content.

Facilitation is a key leadership skill for project managers and team leaders that recognizes humanity in all of its richness and builds the spirit for empowered action.

The role of a successful facilitator is to:

• Remain neutral to the content (separate between your “other roles” and that of a facilitator – call out which hat you are wearing if you move from one role to another in the same situation).
• Draw out and balance participation.
• Encourage productive dialogue and diverse perspectives.
• Provide structure and process for group work.
• Listen actively (and ask everyone else to do the same).
• Record, organize, and summarize inputs and decisions.
• Move the group through stages of decision making, resolving conflicts in a productive and positive way.
• Protect group members and their ideas from attack or from being ignored.
• Make it easy for the group to tap into their collective knowledge, experience and creativity.
• Engage the team in evaluating its own progress and development.
• Keep everyone focused on the outcomes that are needed.
• Motivate progress by helping the group find a path by which they can achieve their goal.
• Ensure quality of outcomes and unity in execution through a process that balances facts and emotions.

Adapted from Facilitation Skills for Projects, Action for Results, Inc., 2011

PM Fundamentals for Life Sciences Workshop, Nov 8-9

Action for Results is excited to be partnering with the Biotech Employee Development Coalition (BEDC) to present a unique workshop that looks at project management from the life sciences perspective. This heavily discounted learning and networking event will be taking place on November 8-9 and will be hosted by Alere, Inc. in San Diego, CA.

Biotech projects, by their nature, are high risk, costly and lengthy. Project management creates predictability in the midst of this uncertain environment and provides a framework for understanding and managing risk. 

This 2 day workshop is designed to equip project team members in biotech and pharmaceutical environments with the practical knowledge and skills needed to successfully initiate, plan, manage and complete projects. It has been customized to address the level of complexity encountered in typical life science projects and the connection between project management and the product development life cycle will be explored.

For more details, visit www.mscholar.com/pmls today.

Answers to October Q&A

1. The correct answer is ‘a’ (Source selection criteria).

This is an output of Plan Procurements. In addition to technical capability and financial capacity, other examples might be management approach, warranty and past performance of sellers.

[Planning] PMBOK Fourth Edition pp. 327-328

2. The correct answer is ‘d’ (Project management plan).

According to PMI, the project management plan – which is a collection of subsidiary documents such as risk and quality – guides execution of the entire project.

[Planning], PMBOK Guide, Fourth Edition p. 78