Project Management Checklists For Dummies

Chapter 6

Tackling the Roles and Responsibilities

In This Chapter

Roles and the fit with communications

It’s about roles, not jobs

The roles you’ll need in the project

Role descriptions

Repeated surveys of the causes of project failure come up with communication problems as one of the top reasons. In turn, those communication problems frequently have their roots in roles and responsibilities. People aren’t clear on what they should be doing, and they certainly aren’t clear on what other people should be doing, so things ‘fall down the gaps’.

There were four people in the Body family. Their names were Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realised that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

Source unknown

A lot of people talk casually about roles and responsibilities ...