Coordination of Work: Sorting Out Team Roles and Responsibilities

Confusion over team roles and responsibilities causes significant problems on projects. There are strategies for allocating work to team members and for sorting out the relationships among team members. A responsibility assignment matrix (RAM) documents the relation- ships among team members and project deliverables. Organization charts document the reporting relationships among team members and the larger stakeholder community.

12.4.1 Responsibility Assignment Matrices

There are several flavors of RAM. The project manager creates a RAM to document the relationship between team members and project documents and a separate RAM to document the relationship between team members and project deliverables.

Table 12.1 illustrates the RAM for project documents.

When the project manager formats the information in a matrix, he easily sees that there is a relationship between person 1 and the scope statement, person 2 and the budget, and person 3 and the charter.

12 6 ProjeC t ManageMent siMPLified

He can also see that no one has responsibility for the schedule, and person 4 is not assigned to any document. Team members easily determine their responsibilities, the project manager sees what work is not likely to be completed because no one is assigned to do the work. He also sees if there are people on the project that have no work assignments.

While this matrix helps determine any oversights in work assign- ments, it doesn’t specify the nature of the relationship between the person and the document. Instead of using X in the cells, the project manager creates a legend that better describes the relationship. For example, he might use the following:

C—Stakeholder is a subject matter expert and responsible as a

consultant or advisor.

I—Stakeholder is informed of the document or activity but does not provide anything to the effort.

R—Stakeholder is responsible for doing the activity or writing the document.

S—Stakeholder is responsible for sign off on the document or activity.

Table 12.2 illustrates the relationship between the team members and project documents.

Looking over the matrix in Table 12.2, the project manager real- izes that no one has “R” for the charter and the schedule. Since “R” denotes person doing the work, the absence of R for any document means no one is doing the work. So, the project manager easily deter- mines if there are any omissions in assignments. The stakeholders see the work for which they are responsible. In addition to a clear defi- nition of responsibilities, it helps the stakeholders plan and manage their time. A stakeholder will pay more attention to an activity on which he must sign off, than an activity where his responsibility is

Table 12.1 RAM for Team Members and Project Documents

PROJECT CHARTER SCOPE STATEMENT SCHEDULE BUDGET

Person 1 X

Person 2 X

Person 3 X Person 4

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“I” or to receive information. Every document and deliverable should have a person responsible for the work and a different person to sign off on the work. The project manager modifies the RAM on Table 12.2 to include an “R” and “S” for every document.

Table 12.3 illustrates the RAM for the deck project documents. Every document must have a person responsible (R) for doing the work and a person signing off (S) and approving the work. Project stakeholders may or may not have responsibilities for the project doc- uments. The town permitting organization, focused on the deliver- ables of permits and inspections, has no responsibilities for project documents; it does have responsibilities for deliverables as noted on the RAM for deliverables (Table 12.4).

The project manager also documents the responsibility for work packages and project deliverables and the nature of the responsibility as illustrated in Table 12.4. For example, one team member may be responsible for doing the work, another team member may be a sub- ject matter expert and responsible for providing consulting assistance or reviewing the work. Still another team member may be responsible for signing off on the final deliverable. Much as the organization chart illustrates relationships among team members, the matrix illustrates the relationships between the stakeholders and the work packages.

Appendix P contains the RAMs for the Community Gardens project.

12.4.1.1 Checkpoint Create a legend for your project and build two project RAMs. Develop a matrix documenting the relation- ship between stakeholders and project documents. Identify the

Table 12.2 RAM for Relationship of Team Members and Project Documents

PROJECT CHARTER SCOPE STATEMENT SCHEDULE BUDGET

Person 1 R

Person 2 S

Person 3 C

Person 4 I R

Notes: C—Stakeholder is a subject matter expert and responsible as a consul- tant or advisor; I—Stakeholder is informed of the document or activity

but does not have to provide anything to the effort; R—Stakeholder is

responsible for doing the activity or writing the document; S—Stakeholder

12 8 ProjeC t ManageMent siMPLified Ta bl e 1 2. 3 RA M f or D ec k P ro je ct D oc um en ts PLANNING PHASE EXECUTION CHARTER SCOPE STMT WBS NETWORK DIAGRAM SCHEDULE BUDGET LIST RISKS RANKED RISKS RISK RESP PLANS STKHLDR MATRIX ENGAGE MATRIX COMM PLAN RAM DOCS RAM WBS ORG CHART ACTION ITEM LIST

STATUS REPOR TS CHANGE REQUESTS Project manager R R RS RS RS R RS RS RS RS RS RS RS RS RS RS RS R Property owner S S S C I S Renter I I Abutter I

Town permitting organization Vendors

I

Notes:

C—Stakeholder is a subject matter expert and responsible as a

consultant

or advisor; I—Stakeholder is

informed

of the docu-

ment or activity but does not have to provide anything to the effort; R—Stakeholder is

responsible

for doing the activity or

writing the document; S—Stakeholder is responsible for

sign off

on the document or activity

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stakeholders responsible for the documents and list the stakeholder role(s) (C, I, R, S) for the document. Similarly, take the work pack- ages from the work breakdown structure developed earlier and cre- ate a second matrix. Identify the stakeholders responsible for these work packages and document the stakeholder role(s) (C, I, R, S) for the work package. Share both RAMs with the affected stakeholders to make sure they are in agreement and have the time to contrib- ute to the project at the time specified in the project schedule. These matrices are also excellent tools to communicate project relationships among all stakeholders.

12.4.2 Organization Charts

In addition to documenting and communicating responsibility for project work, the project manager clarifies and documents the rela- tionships among team members and stakeholders. Some team mem- bers report to other team members, some are peers and some manage others on the team. An organizational chart is a good technique for illustrating these relationships. Initially, the project manager creates an organization chart illustrating the relationship among different team roles. Later, as named individuals are assigned to these roles, the project manager adds individual names to the job roles listed on the organization chart (Figure 12.1).

Table 12.4 RAM for Deck Project Deliverables

1.0 MATERIAL