Project management roles and responsibilities

When you are the only person participating in a project, then obviously there is no need to setting various project management roles and responsibilities as you are in charge of planning, doing and controlling project tasks. But when a group of people is involved in your project, then a detailed project management responsibility matrix will be required to identify roles and duties of group members. In this connection, you should properly define and assign project management duties, roles and responsibilities, so there will be no place for chaos and confusion in your project.

A project management responsibilities matrix is a detailed description of project roles and responsibilities to be assigned to people involved in your project. It is often a part of Project Chart document which is a graph representation of the project organizational structure containing references to names of project stakeholders and their interest and concern in the project. A typical project management roles and responsibilities matrix includes a description of the next roles and responsibilities:

• Project Manager Role: project manager is responsible for planning and implementing project strategies and tactics and developing the overall project plan.
• Team Member Role: team members are responsible for performing project tasks and assignments while following schedules and meeting deadlines.
• Team Leader Role: team leader is in charge of leading team members, controlling their performance and making decision within the project team.
• Project Sponsor Role: project sponsor is a person, group or organization that has a financial concern in the project and often makes investments in project planning and implementation.
• Project User Role: project user is a person, group or organization that "consumes" project results and participates in result testing and evaluation.

• Quality Manager Role: quality manager or quality coordinator takes care of inspecting quality of the project and undertaking activities for quality assurance and quality control.
• Project Board: project board or steering committee takes care of strategic project management, inspects the work of project manager and gives advice on project planning and implementation.
• Project Office: project office is organized for planning, management and synchronization of several projects and takes care of controlling project performance.

The given project management role descriptions are typical and serve as the foundation for creating more specific and detailed explanations of project management duties and responsibilities. When you plan your new project you can consider the listed project management role definitions but you should make a more specific description of duties and then try to create your own project management responsibilities matrix.

Project management software will help you plan your project and create an electronic list of project management team roles and responsibilities. For example, in VIP Task Manager you can go to Resource List view and use Roles panel to define roles for your project team and stakeholders. Then you can use Permissions panel to specify each role and set user permissions for project tasks and project groups.

 In VIP Task Manager, a role is like a project management roles and responsibilities template that includes a set of user permissions. You can use Roles panel and Permissions panel to design typical roles and assign permissions.