Project Roles & Responsibilities

Owned by Tom Williams
Last updated: Nov 16, 2020
3 min read

Overview

Before you begin working on an implementation project it is necessary to identify your internal Project Team. Identifying your team will provide clarity to your staff and to our implementation team. This section identifies the three roles and gives a description of the responsibilities for each.   

  1. Project Manager
  2. Subject Matter Experts
  3. Decision Makers 

Project Manager (PM)

The Project Manager should be one individual who manages all the administrative aspects of the overall project including staff scheduling and communication between your team members and between your team and the NLP Team. The primary duties of the PM include:

  • Interacting with the NLP Project Manager on a daily/weekly basis
  • Coordinating and booking your staff for meetings with NLP
  • Coordinating and booking your staff for internal project meetings
  • Communicating project status with your staff
  • Ensuring that all open project issues get resolved
  • Ensuring your staff is meeting timelines on their tasks
  • Approving Project Status Reports
  • Approving and Scope of Work Changes
  • Approving Billing

Some things to consider when deciding on the PM include:

  • The PM should be one person, not shared among multiple people
  • The PM must possess strong organizational skills
  • The PM must be someone with adequate availability to manage the project.
  • The PM will not be the only person working on the project but rather the project coordinator
  • The PM should be able to make decisions or ensure they are getting made quickly

Subject Matter Experts (SME’s)

The Subject Matter Experts are needed to answer questions about the day-to-day needs of the users. Their primary role will be to ensure the solution covers all the required scenarios and provide direction on how things “should work”. Each functional area should consist of two to four individuals with a good understanding of how things need to work (your desired future) that can provide enough input to ensure everything is covered. The SME’s should be assigned based on their functional knowledge. For example, an individual with expertise in payables would be ideal to use as a SME for purchasing but not inventory. This group should be knowledgeable on what it takes to run your operations efficiently. While these may be your advanced system users, it is possible to include others with a good working knowledge of the company. It is likely that the same people may be assigned to multiple areas, but you may also want to separate them.  

Decision Makers (DM’s)

The Decision Makers have responsibility for making project decisions. Whereas SME’s focus on identifying the needs, it is the job of the DM’s to prioritize and set boundaries. Although this group may attend the requirements gathering meetings it is not required. This team should include between 1 and 3 individuals that understand your operations and have the authority to set project boundaries and/or corporate policies. The three most common challenges you can expect are:

  • Separating "How-to's" from "Requirements" 
  • Making decisions on conflicting requirements
  • Scaling back where necessary to meet time and budget goals

Separating “How-to’s” from “Requirements” 

One challenge you should expect, will be separating “how-to’s” from “Requirements”. The goal of this project is to implement a system to improve your operations, not to implement a replica of the existing system. It can be difficult for some to separate how they do things today with the "requirements". While input on “how-to’s” is helpful, it is important that it does not create false constraints. One of our primary roles will be keeping requirements separate from how-to’s.

Making decisions on conflicting requirements

These decisions will focus on questions pertaining to project direction and company policy. As we get into the heart of the project, we will uncover conflicting goals between individuals, departments, and Plants. For example, one group feels strongly that something should be mandatory, and another believes it should be optional. The DM’s will need to look at these types of issues and make decisions.   

Scaling back where necessary to meet time and budget goals

It is expected that the meetings with the SME’s should uncover everything they know about the functional requirements of the system and provide us with a good representation of their “Wish List”.  However, it will be the job of the DM’s to determine project scope and set priorities. For example, when we are discussing a functional area there will most likely be several “bells and whistles” that will be discussed. While they should all be documented, the DM’s may determine that some of them are not necessary or should be postponed. This will be a critical step in ensuring we meet the stated timeframe. As part of the requirements gathering, we will attempt to ascertain how important a requirement or feature is so that when these types of decisions are needed, the right one is made.