Case Study: Who is the Project Manager?

Assigning Project Management Responsibility for Success

A project manager’s prime task is managing a project to success. The products of the

project need to be picked up by the line organisation, and if this involves change in the

organisation or ways of working, the changes must be made to ‘stick’. By ensuring that the

responsibilities for project management and business change are well assigned in a project

there is an increased chance of success.

The Dilemma

In all projects assigning the correct project manager is crucial. The choice is often not

simple. I have experienced this in the form of a dilemma: do we appoint someone who is

an experienced project manager or someone who will champion the change? Very often

the experienced project manager will come from a technical background, e.g. IT, and will

not have authority to make changes in the organisation or processes. On the other hand

the change champion will have credibility with the business unit, but often not have the

project skills required. If you can always find all of this in one person, then good luck to

you; you don’t need the rest of this article!

When is This a Problem?

There can be a problem in a project that is not part of a programme. Let’s look at the

differences between programmes and projects. I’ll use MSP™ (Managing Successful

Programmes of the OGC) to illustrate. MSP clearly differentiates between projects - that

deliver outputs - and programmes - that deliver outcomes. The main difference is that a

project that is not part of a programme delivers the output to the line organisation; the

line management is subsequently responsible for achieving the benefits (outcomes). A

programme, on the other hand, is also responsible for the benefits realisation of the
projects within the programme.

I have noticed, in our organisation at least, that projects are expected to deliver the change

in the organisation, so the outcome is not achieved if the project only delivers the output.

How Does it go Wrong?

To ensure a good mix of business change and project management, for IT projects, we have

in the past staffed projects with a project manager from the customer, a “business PM” or

BPM, and an experienced project manager from IT, the “IT PM”, reporting to them. This

can work well, depending on the individuals and how well they cooperate and complement

each other. But if the BPM doesn’t have the required project management capabilities

there can be a conflict of authority: the BPM is in charge - the “boss” - but the IT PM needs

to tell them what to do and how to do it. Hoping that the BPM and IT PM will complement

each other and work well together is not enough, we have seen this go bad a large number

of times. Roles and responsibilities, especially for the project management tasks, is the

foundation of a project and if that goes wrong it is very difficult to correct. So it’s best to

get it right at the start. Having more than one person in a project with a role of “project

manager” is confusing. There should only be one. This can be resolved by only giving the

overall project manager this role and the IT PM is called an “IT work stream lead” or “IT

team lead”. Some IT project managers have great difficulty accepting this; after all it says

“Project Manager” on their business card, and they expect that to appear as their role in

every project as well. Of course a project role and a job title are completely different

things, but we have found that this “role inflation” has crept into the way people see

project roles. My goal was to ensure that when a project was setup, it had a good foundation

to be successful. Of course the project team members still need to work together well to be

successful, but giving the team a good foundation allows them to focus on delivering

together, instead of trying to work out who they should listen to. I started looking for a
solution to this dilemma.

What did I Find?

My analysis led me to the conclusion that we needed a capable and experienced project

manager to be responsible for the project management, and someone with the right

authority and “organisational credit” to be responsible for the change in the business. As

the experienced project managers available for our IT projects are nearly always from IT

they do not have the authority or credit in the customer’s organisation. And the main

customer contacts, the potential candidates for the BPM role, often don’t have the project

management capabilities. Looking at how MSP describes the programme structure, the

key players are the SRO (Senior Responsible Owner), the Programme Manager and the

BCM (Business Change Manager). The key here is that the BCM does not report to the

Programme Manager or vice versa; and that the Programme Manager is responsible for

the day-to-day management of the programme while the BCM is responsible for delivering

change and benefits. Why couldn’t this work in a project as well? With a team of project

managers I worked through the roles and responsibilities in a typical project, with the aim

of making this work. The project managers were motivated in this too, as they had

experienced the problem first hand! The result was a proposed project structure as shown

in figure 1.

Figure 1:

Proposed Project Structure

Corporate Management

Project Steering Group

Senior User Sponsor Senior Supplier

BCM PM

Change Agents Team Members

= delivery specialists

To explain to the Steering Group, other stakeholders, the project manager and BCM how Notes

the responsibilities are split over the project manager and BCM, we have also developed

a RACI matrix and a standard role description. These are then discussed by the project

manager and BCM, and if necessary the sponsor, at the start of the project. They are then

tailored for the specific project, but have proven to be an 80-90% fit at the start.

Does This Work?

We have now started a number of projects this way, and the project manager finds that it

gives clarity on the main roles at the start of the project. Also, there is little chance that the

BCM will try and run the project, normally they have their hands full with the business

change anyway! So the BCM is happy to know that there is someone else responsible for

the day-to-day running of the project. A number of projects that started with this structure

have completed, and the feedback from the customers has been good. On review the

project managers feel that this approach works well, and also gives enough room for

tailoring to the needs of the individual project.

In Summary

This problem only occurs in projects that are not part of a programme, but in my team we

have a large number of these. Having a project manager and a BCM, with clear

responsibilities and the capabilities to match, greatly increases the chance of success in the

project team. I am aware that this is probably not the only way to solve this dilemma, and

would like to hear from people who have other ideas and experiences, even if they are
contradictory to mine!

Question:

1. Analyse the case and discuss the case facts