Project Management Roles

Project Manager Role

The project manager is accountable for ensuring a project meets its objectives and delivers value to the organization and stakeholders, collaborating with the team and other stakeholders.

Predictive Project Environments:

Gather information to initiate the project.
Ensure the project’s scope is completed on time and within budget, including approved changes via formal change control.
Manage communications, stakeholder, risk, quality, and procurement.
Direct planning, manage team work and resources while the team builds the product.

Adaptive Project Environments:

Monitor strategic information (e.g., organizational changes that may lead to project cancellation or significant changes).
Negotiate within the business environment and communicate decisions to the team.
Focus on organizational change management, while the team builds the product.

Process Groups Model (Predictive):

Plan the project with team and stakeholder input.
Communicate with the sponsor and stakeholders representing the customer or organization.
Ensure proper initiation, planning, execution, monitoring, control, and closure per the Process Groups model.

Exam Tip: The term “project manager” may appear in questions for predictive, adaptive, or hybrid projects. For plan-driven methodology questions, focus on Process Groups terminology (e.g., “phase” or “lessons learned”) over agile terms (e.g., “iteration” or “retrospective”).

Agile Team Leader Role (Agile Coach/Scrum Master)

The agile coach (or team lead/Scrum Master) is a servant leader ensuring adaptive methods are understood and followed, removing impediments to help the team deliver the product.

Agile Coach: Ensures the team understands adaptive methods, removes impediments, and is a team member responsible for all project stages.
Team Lead: Synonymous with “agile coach” (may or may not appear on the exam).
Scrum Master: Refers to the servant leader in Scrum methodology but may be used interchangeably with “agile coach” on the exam.

Exam Tip: Questions may mix general agile terms with Scrum-specific terms (e.g., “Scrum Master”). Focus on the role’s responsibilities to select the correct answer.

Product Owner Role

The product owner, originally from Scrum but used in various agile teams, maximizes product value and ROI by prioritizing work in the backlog.

Prioritize backlog to realize business value quickly.
Guide the development team on work item priority, pulling from the top of the backlog.
Collaborate with the team on prioritization, considering technical requirements, dependencies, and estimates.
Work daily with the team, answering questions and preparing stories for the next iteration.

Product Manager Role

The product manager liaises between business strategy, design/development SMEs, and customers, optimizing value and ROI over a product’s lifecycle.

Focus on long-term product value, unlike the project-specific product owner role.
May lead product owners within an organization or for a specific product.
Not likely to be the focus of exam questions but should be distinguished from the product owner role.

Project Sponsor/Initiator Role

The sponsor represents organizational leadership, supports the project financially, and aids in decisions beyond the project manager’s and team’s authority.

Facilitate team success and protect the project from unnecessary changes.
Ensure the project delivers its intended business value.
In agile/hybrid approaches, share value delivery responsibility with the product owner, but remain in organizational leadership.

Exam Tip: The product owner’s role may overlap with the sponsor or project manager, but they are distinct. Focus on the specific role in exam questions.

Project Team Role

The project team, including the project manager, completes the project’s work, with composition changing as needed.

General Responsibilities: Plan by creating WBS or backlog and estimates, produce deliverables, and monitor deviations from the plan.
Agile Environments: Clarify user stories, estimate and plan releases/iterations, hold reviews and retrospectives, and update tools like Kanban boards and burndown charts.
Large Projects: The project management team, a subset with project management training, assists in management activities.

Stakeholder Role

Stakeholders are anyone impacted by or impacting the project, including customers, team, sponsor, and external sellers.

Participate actively or in an advisory role, as determined by the project manager and stakeholders.
Involved in planning and managing, especially the customer.
In agile environments, customer representation occurs via the product owner or value management team.
The project manager balances stakeholders’ needs and influence with project constraints.

Functional or Resource Manager Role

Functional managers oversee departmental resources (e.g., IT, engineering) and collaborate with the project manager to meet project needs.

Maintain resource availability calendars and negotiate allocations.
Resolve resource issues with the project manager.
Involvement varies by organizational structure (matrix, project-oriented, or functional).
Project managers use communication and interpersonal skills to manage relationships.

Program and Portfolio Manager Roles

These roles oversee the broader project environment but are less likely to be exam-focused.

Program Manager: Manages related projects within a program for coordinated control, support, and guidance.
Portfolio Manager: Governs programs, projects, and operational work at an executive level.

Project Management Roles - PMP Exam Prep 2023