Dissecting Project Management Team Roles: A Guide

What do you bring to your team?

This question holds serious weight. One should fully understand their individual role on a team and how it interplays with the roles of other team members, especially for a mobile or web development project.

Knowing project management team roles will help challenging project development progress efficiently.

Some business infrastructures vary slightly, depending on their needs, but understanding all of the different areas of expertise helps create a seamless approach that meets company needs. Ideally, IT management should ensure the team understands and covers each role, so essential responsibilities are not overlooked, and that nobody takes on too much.

Success depends on team connectivity. Read on to learn web development team structure and the role each member plays to see how it all comes together!

Project Management Team Roles

Here are some of the essential software development team roles that your company could benefit from.

Leading Visionaries

These are the idea people. Their roles function to create and oversee the entire project development including the team. Depending on the size of the project, some or all of these roles may combine into one position.

They should:

Team leadership starts with them. Without the essential leadership and technical skills, the project would fall apart from the top.

Project Sponsor

Financing for the project comes from the project sponsor. Because of their investment, they get a voice on every level of development.

They work with management on development plans and deal with the issues over the product owner’s head until the program receives authorisation. They also recruit others to benefit the software program.

Product Owner

This person owns the idea for the project itself. Crucial information, instruction, requirements, and task priority all come from them, making them most responsible for the team understanding the mission and their individual roles in it. They’re the control center of the operation.

Product owners work directly with the external stakeholders to compromise on key requirements and protect the project team members and the project itself by doing so.

Requirement Analyst

This person analyses the project vision and translates it to the team in the form of technical specifications to create a software program. Along with the product owner, they design a program that fits the budget and helps the owner and stakeholders understand technical problems going on. They provide the project with technical system requirements.

Essentially, the analyst ensures that everybody with internal and external ties to the project understands all technical aspects of it.

Project Manager

Project scope, schedule, and budget responsibilities all belong to the project manager. Like the product owner, they meet directly with stakeholders, but only to discuss budgeting. Unlike the product owner, this person meets directly with the team to organise and lead these meetings.

They serve as a communicator between team and stakeholders. Additionally, they manage the team to ensure they efficiently and effectively work towards project goals.

Micromanagers

The micromanagers learn about the vision and expectations from senior management to break it down for the team and enforce it.

They require:

Enforcing regulations and managing progress play key roles in keeping the team on task.

Scrum Master

The scrum master takes instruction directly from the project owner and project manager and relays it to the project team. Communication between them and the project owner to makes sure they prioritise correctly and that they provide the team with all the essentials. Progress communication occurs between the scrum master and project manager.

Keeping the team focused on their respective task and providing proper work materials falls on them. They differ from the project manager in that they micromanage the team on a daily basis rather than idealising.

Leads

Development, quality assurance, and design sectors all need a leader to oversee their sector in even more detail than the scrum master who oversees all of them. This requires direction and implementation of required tasks. Each sector lead also needs to communicate progress and issues with the scrum master.

Special Teams

These people take the brain power and direction from management and together turn it into a software program.

Third-Party Team

If you choose to outsource instead of risking only your resources, these are the people you hire. They might include:

Anybody you hire from outside of the company makes up this team. Typically the scrum master deals directly with them.

Design Team

Taking vision into consideration, this team creates the visuals for the project. Their visuals help guide development and they support the quality assurance team with clarification they may need.

Strategists work on this team to decide the best direction to take the overall vision. Content planners also design useful tools and features within the product that shapes its overall function.

Software and Web Development Teams

A solid technical background allows the software and web development team members to follow desired specifications and develop the product.

Both teams need to work flexibly to a ccommodate any changes upper management decides on due to budget restraints or other unforeseen problems.

Software development team roles include creating the program operations for the computer or device programming, using the design teams visuals. The website developers implement the functionality into the webpage.

Quality Assurance Team

Once the other teams finish creating the product that they feel fits vision and budget, they test the end – product that could potentially face the greatest critics of all, your customers. These people decide whether or not to approve this product for sale.

A good quality assurance team understands the interplay between technical and visual design. They also possess a strong grasp on consumer demand. If they choose to send it back to design and/or development, they should do so with clear feedback to ensure the issue gets fixed quickly and properly so it can turn profitable.

Marketing and Sales Teams

You can create the most ingenious program on the planet, but if it is not marketed properly, people may never realise its value. Successful marketing requires a creative team knowledgeable in the consumer market.

Sales also play a crucial role in turning a profit with your new product. Your sales team needs to understand the ins and outs of the product specs to gain consumer trust and pique their interest, so communication with the other teams is key. They may sit last in line, but they can make or break your team.

Creating a Quality Team

Once you seek help to build a quality team framework on paper, you need to actually hire qualified experts to fill those positions and then instill a sense of connectivity in them.

Project Success Requirements

You want the best team possible. To achieve this, it takes hiring people with the correct skill sets and then training them to best serve their project management team roles.

For a successful project, you need to help instill the following team values that promote personal growth within individuals and connectivity among all team members.

Open Communication

Every single position requires continuous communication with other parts of the team. Some people make the mistake of focusing on management’s communication but forgetting about the workforce.

This creates major problems because upper management actually communicates with fewer departments than everybody else. They need to communicate effectively and promptly when there’s a problem, as time is money during a project.

Full Cooperation

Even the best communication skills fail to produce results when workers refuse to cooperate. From the very beginning, they need to understand the importance of both chain of command and team compliance in project success.

If one team member slacks off while the rest of the team works hard, people will notice and morale will go down. Some frustrated parties will work less to compensate for the effort gap. This, in turn, will hurt your project.

Create specific guidelines on your expectations for high-quality work and make sure that proper management enforces this. Cooperation comes with clear and concise rules.

Versatility

Unfortunately, things do not always go as planned. Every single project player needs to fully understand this and the importance of quickly switching gears when necessary.

For example, if the project manager spots a budget problem, the project owner needs to alter the vision, and all management levels need to learn the new direction and make sure their respective teams understand and comply.

Going backward, if quality assurance notices an issue with the design, then the designers need to change their mindset a little. This demands the developers to change theirs as well.

Creative Drive

Design and development especially need this. To help harvest theirs to full capacity, help them out by turning the walls into idea boards, for example, and building a creative environment for them.

Mutual Respect

This can be difficult, especially when two strong creative minds think outside the box on opposite ends. If the teamlacks mutual respect, you risk the entire project due to a similar domino effect with failed cooperation.

Team building exercises may take some time away from the project, but they could save you from future setbacks. Everybody needs to know not only their own role but everybody else’s role as well, to help them respect each other’s jobs. The project requires every single skillset each team member provides.

Get Help Building Your Project

Looking at all of the project management team roles might seem overwhelming. Which roles does my project need? How do I find people who fit my qualifications?

We would want to help you answer these questions and build the best project team possible. Contact us today!