Hybrid Project Management

3Project Roles

You can have an awesome schedule and a great risk management plan, but those won't get the project done. It is people who get projects done. In this chapter we will look at roles that are commonly found on projects in a predictive environment and those commonly found in an Agile environment.

Understanding the responsibilities and characteristics of the key project roles will help you tailor project staffing to meet the needs of hybrid projects. We'll review five key project roles:

• Project sponsor;
• Project manager;
• Product owner;
• scrum master; and
• Project team.

Once these five roles are defined, we will look at options for staffing a hybrid project.

PROJECT SPONSOR

A project sponsor is a person, usually in a management role, who provides resources and oversight for the project and support for the project manager. In this context, resources include financial resources as well as team resources. In many organizations it is the sponsor who charters a project.

Sponsor: The person who provides project resources and supports the project manager in meeting the project objectives.

The sponsor's position in the organization is consistent with the size and importance of the project. For example, a project that spans the entire organization, such as an acquisition project, would likely have a sponsor in the C‐suite (chief operating officer, chief financial officer, etc.). For a project that only involves one department, it may be the manager or director for that ...