Role of Project Team in successful completion

Successful projects are usually the result of careful planning and the
talent and collaboration of a project's team members. Projects can't
move forward without each of its key team members, but it’s not always
clear who those members are, or what roles they play. Here, we’ll
describe five roles – project manager, project team member, project
sponsor, executive sponsor and business analyst – and describe their
associated duties.
Project Manager

The project manager plays a primary role in the project, and is

responsible for its successful completion. The manager’s job is to ensure
that the project proceeds within the specified time frame and under the
established budget, while achieving its objectives. Project managers
make sure that projects are given sufficient resources, while managing
relationships with contributors and stakeholders.
Project manager duties:
o Develop a project plan
o Manage deliverables according to the plan
o Recruit project staff
o Lead and manage the project team
o Determine the methodology used on the project
o Establish a project schedule and determine each phase
o Assign tasks to project team members
o Provide regular updates to upper management

Project Team Member

Project team members are the individuals who actively work on one or
more phases of the project. They may be in-house staff or external
consultants, working on the project on a full-time or part-time basis.
Team member roles can vary according to each project.
Project team member duties may include:
o Contributing to overall project objectives
o Completing individual deliverables
o Providing expertise
o Working with users to establish and meet business needs
o Documenting the process

Project Sponsor
 The project sponsor is the driver and in-house champion of the project.
They are typically members of senior management – those with a stake
in the project’s outcome. Project sponsors work closely with the project
manager. They legitimize the project’s objectives and participate in high-
level project planning. In addition, they often help resolve conflicts and
remove obstacles that occur throughout the project, and they sign off on
approvals needed to advance each phase.
Project sponsor duties:
o Make key business decisions for the project
o Approve the project budget
o Ensure availability of resources
o Communicate the project’s goals througout the organization

Executive Sponsor

The executive sponsor is ideally a high-ranking member of management.

He or she is the visible champion of the project with the management
team and is the ultimate decision-maker, with final approval on all
phases, deliverables and scope changes.
Executive sponsor duties typically include:
o Carry ultimate responsibility for the project
o Approve all changes to the project scope
o Provide additional funds for scope changes
o Approve project deliverables

Business Analyst

The business analyst defines needs and recommends solutions to make

an organization better. When part of a project team, they ensure that the
project’s objectives solve existing problems or enhance performance,
and add value to the organization. They can also help maximize the
value of the project deliverables.
Business analyst duties:
o Assist in defining the project
o Gather requirements from business units or users
o Document technical and business requirements
o Verify that project deliverables meet the requirements
o Test solutions to validate objectives
What Is Project Scheduling?
Project scheduling is a mechanism to communicate what tasks need to get done
and which organizational resources will be allocated to complete those tasks in what
timeframe. A project schedule is a document collecting all the work needed to
deliver the project on time.

But when it comes to creating a project schedule, well, that’s something few have
deep experience with.

What and who is being scheduled, and for what purposes, and where is this
scheduling taking place, anyway?

A project is made up of many tasks, and each task is given a start and end (or due
date), so it can be completed on time. Likewise, people have different schedules,
and their availability and vacation or leave dates need to be documented in order to
successfully plan those tasks.

Whereas people in the past might have printed calendars on a shared wall in the
water-cooler room, or shared spreadsheets via email, today most teams use online
project scheduling tools. Typically, project scheduling is just one feature within a
larger project management software solution, and there are many different places
in the software where scheduling takes place.

For example, most tools have task lists, which enable the manager to schedule
multiple tasks, their due dates, sometimes the planned effort against that task, and
then assign that task to a person. The software might also have resource
scheduling, basically the ability to schedule the team’s availability, but also the
availability of non-human resources like machines or buildings or meeting rooms.

Because projects have so many moving parts, and are frequently changing, project
scheduling software automatically updates tasks that are dependent on one
another, when one scheduled task is not completed on time. It also generates
automated email alerts, so team members know when their scheduled tasks are
due or overdue, and to let the manager know when someone’s availability has
changed.

Project scheduling is simple when managed online, thankfully, especially since the
software does all the hard part for you!

How to Schedule a Project

Before going deeper into project scheduling, let’s review the fundamentals to
project scheduling. Project scheduling occurs during the planning phase of the
project. You have to ask yourself three questions to start:
1. What needs to be done?
2. When will it be done?
3. Who will do it?

Once you’ve got answers to these questions, then you can begin to plan dates, link
activities, set the duration, milestones and resources. The following are the steps
needed to schedule a project:

Define Activities
What are the activities that you have to do in the project? By using a Work
Breakdown Structure (WBS) and a deliverables diagram, you can begin to take
these activities and organize them by mapping out the tasks necessary to complete
them in an order than makes sense.

Do Estimates
Now that you have the activities defined and broken down into tasks, you next have
to determine the time and effort it will take to complete them. This is an essential
piece of the equation in order to calculate the correct schedule.

Determine Dependencies
Tasks are not an island, and often one cannot be started until the other is
completed. That’s called a task dependency, and your schedule is going to have to
reflect these linked tasks. One way to do this is by putting a bit of slack in your
schedule to accommodate these related tasks.

Assign Resources
The last step to finalizing your planned schedule is to decide on what resources you
are going to need to get those tasks done on time. You’re going to have to
assemble a team, and their time will need to be scheduled just like the tasks.

How to Maintain Your Schedule

Once the Project Is Initiated
Once you’ve got all the pieces of your schedule together, the last thing you want to
do is manually punch it into a static document like an Excel spreadsheet. Project
management software can automate much of the process for you. But not all
project management software is the same.

There are programs on the market that are great for simple scheduling duties, but
when you’re leading a project, big or small, you need a tool that can adapt to the
variety of scheduling issues you’re going to need to track. Like noted above, there
are three tiers of scheduling: tasks, people and projects.
Scheduling Tasks
What you want when scheduling tasks is not a glorified to-do list, but a smart
software that gives you the flexibility to handle the variety of responsibilities
attached to each tasks in your project.

An interactive Gantt chart is crucial. You can add tasks and dates into your Gantt
chart to have a visual representation of each task’s duration. Better still, as dates
change—as they inevitably do—you can simply drag and drop those changes and
the whole Gantt chart is updated instantly.

There’s also automating processes to help with efficiencies. Email notifications are a
great way to know immediately when a team member has completed a task. When
they update, you know because your software is online and responding in real-time.

Continuing with automation, it’s one way to scheduling tasks more efficiently. If
there are recurring tasks on a project, they can be scheduled in your PM tool so
that once set you don’t have to worry about scheduling the same task over and
over again.

Scheduling People
Your tasks aren’t going to complete themselves. That’s why you have assembled a
team, but if that team isn’t scheduled the way you have carefully scheduled your
task list, then you’re not managing your project.

Over the course of a project’s lifecycle team members are going to take off for
holidays, personal days or vacation. If you’re not prepared for these times, and
have scheduled other team members to pick up the slack in their absence, your
schedule will suffer.

Integrating your calendar into a project management software is a simple way to

stay on top of your resources. There’s no reason to use a standalone calendar that
sends you to another application every time you need to check on a team member’s
availability.

Another way to stay on top of your scheduling is by integrating your task

scheduling view on the Gantt chart with resource and workload scheduling features.
You can schedule your team’s workload through color-coding, so you know at-a-
glance who is behind, ahead or on schedule with their tasks.
Scheduling Projects
We’re gone from the task level to the resources level of scheduling, but there’s no
law that says you’re not working on a portfolio of projects. How can you keep on
scheduling when juggling so many balls in the air at once?

The project dashboard is your best friend, whether you’re working on one or many
projects. The dashboard is collecting all the real-time data collected by you and
your teams, and then it’s organizing it according to any number of metrics to show
you a picture of where you stand in real-time on the project or many projects.

With a project dashboard you can note where tasks are being blocked and
immediately adjust your schedule to resolve delays before they become a problem.
You can also use the graphs and charts the dashboard automatically generates to
drill down deeper and filter or customize the results to get the information you
need, when you need it.

And that’s just a fraction of what we could say about project scheduling. Our
ongoing series explains and explores new and relevant terms in project
management, focusing on a specific definition and summarizing what it means for
anyone leading a project.
Project Cost Control
Introduction
Almost all the projects need to be guided right throughout in order to receive the required and
expected output at the end of the project. It is the team that is responsible for the project and
most importantly the project manager that needs to be able to carry out effective controlling
of the costs. There are, however, several techniques that can be used for this purpose.
In addition to the project goals that the project manager has to oversee, the control of various
costs is also a very important task for any project. Project management would not be effective
at all if a project manager fails in this respect, as it would essentially determine whether or not
your organization would make a profit or loss.

Cost Control Techniques

Following are some of the valuable and essential techniques used for efficient project cost
control:

1 - Planning the Project Budget

You would need to ideally make a budget at the beginning of the planning session with regard
to the project at hand. It is this budget that you would have to help you for all payments that
need to be made and costs that you will incur during the project life cycle. The making of this
budget therefore entails a lot of research and critical thinking.
Like any other budget, you would always have to leave room for adjustments as the costs may
not remain the same right through the period of the project. Adhering to the project budget at
all times is key to the profit from project.

2 - Keeping a Track of Costs

Keeping track of all actual costs is also equally important as any other technique. Here, it is
best to prepare a budget that is time-based. This will help you keep track of the budget of a
project in each of its phases. The actual costs will have to be tracked against the periodic
targets that have been set out in the budget. These targets could be on a monthly or weekly
basis or even yearly if the project will go on for long.
This is much easier to work with rather than having one complete budget for the entire period
of the project. If any new work is required to be carried out, you would need to make
estimations for this and see if it can be accommodated with the final amount in the budget. If
not, you may have to work on necessary arrangements for 'Change Requests', where the client
will pay for the new work or the changes.

3 - Effective Time Management

Another effective technique would be effective time management. Although this technique
does apply to various management areas, it is very important with regard to project cost
control.
The reason for this is that the cost of your project could keep rising if you are unable to meet
the project deadlines; the longer the project is dragged on for, the higher the costs incurred
which effectively means that the budget will be exceeded.
The project manager would need to constantly remind his/her team of the important
deadlines of the project in order to ensure that work is completed on time.

4 - Project Change Control

Project change control is yet another vital technique. Change control systems are essential to
take into account any potential changes that could occur during the course of the project.
This is due to the fact that each change to the scope of the project will have an impact on the
deadlines of the deliverables, so the changes may increase project cost by increasing the effort
needed for the project.

5 - Use of Earned Value

Similarly, in order to identify the value of the work that has been carried out thus far, it is very
helpful to use the accounting technique commonly known as 'Earned Value'.
This is particularly helpful for large projects and will help you make any quick changes that are
absolutely essential for the success of the project.

The Additional Steps for Project Cost Control

It is advisable to constantly review the budget as well as the trends and other financial
information. Providing reports on project financials at regular intervals will also help keep
track of the progress of the project.
This will ensure that overspending does not take place, as you would not want to find out
when it is too late. The earlier the problem is found, the more easily and quickly it could be
remedied.
All documents should also be provided at regular intervals to auditors, who would also be able
to point out to you any potential cost risks.

Conclusion
Simply coming up with a project budget is not adequate during your project planning sessions.
You and your team would have to keep a watchful eye on whether the costs remain close to
the figures in the initial budget.
You need to always keep in mind the risks that come with cost escalation and need to prevent this as
best as you can. For this, use the above techniques explained and constantly monitor the project costs.
Procurement in Context: Project Procurement
Project Procurement is also a process used to acquire goods and services, but what
distinguishes project procurement from other forms of procurement are the series of
procurement activities carried out during the execution of a project, some
interdependent and some not. Project objectives are predetermined primarily in the
project proposal, and there are a corresponding set of procurement activities
undertaken in accordance with the project procurement plan over a period of time to
achieve the project objectives.

Project procurement is dependent on the objectives and goals of the project which it
supports. It is a fundamental part of project management because it is crucial to the
success of the project that procurement activities are appropriately planned and
executed; hence, project procurement planning and strategy development are vital
to the implementation and successful outcome of a project.

For our purposes project procurement will be classified, based on the sector served,
as public sector project procurement and private sector project procurement.

Public Sector Project Procurement

Public sector project procurement supports projects funded and developed to meet
the objectives of government, including the provision of public goods and services to
the population. These public sector projects (building of roads, bridges, dams,
electric power plants, hospitals, schools, ferries, etc.) can be donor funded,
government funded, a combination of both, or funded through public private or
public-public partnerships; however, regardless of their funding arrangement, their
distinguishing factor is that the purpose these projects serve is entirely public.

Private Sector Project Procurement

Private sector project procurement focuses on procurement activities that satisfy the
requirements of projects done for private sector entities, such as small, medium or
large businesses and corporations, and which are primarily profit-making in nature
given that their main objective is the monetary benefit of the owners or shareholders
of the business.

To conclude, based on the sector served, Procurement can be classified as follows:

• Public Sector Procurement,

• Private Sector Procurement,
• Project Procurement (further classified as):
• – Public Sector Project Procurement and
• – Private Sector Project Procurement.

Our Procurement Classroom will focus primarily on Public Sector Procurement and
Contract Administration, and to a lesser extent to Public Sector Project Procurement
(primarily donor funded).
What is 'Project Finance'
Project finance is the financing of long-term infrastructure, industrial projects and public services
using a non-recourse or limited recourse financial structure. The debt and equity used to finance
the project are paid back from the cash flow generated by the project. Project financing is a loan
structure that relies primarily on the project's cash flow for repayment, with the project's assets,
rights and interests held as secondary collateral. Project finance is especially attractive to the
private sector because companies can fund major projects off-balance-sheet
Project Finance – Key Concepts
One of the primary advantages of project financing is that it provides for off-balance-sheet
financing of the project, which will not affect the credit of the shareholders or the government
contracting authority, and shifts some of the project risk to the lenders in exchange for which the
lenders obtain a higher margin than for normal corporate lending.
• Typical Project Finance Structure
• Off-Balance-Sheet
• Non-Recourse Financing

Typical Project Finance Structure

The typical project financing structure (simplified for these purposes) for a build, operate and
transfer (BOT) project is shown below. The key elements of the structure are:

• Special purpose vehicle (SPV) project company with no previous business or record;
• Sole activity of project company is to carry out the project – it then subcontracts most aspects
through construction contract and operations contract;
• For new build projects, there is no revenue stream during the construction phase and so debt
service will only be possible once the project is on line during the operations phase (parties
therefore take significant risks during the construction phase);
• Sole revenue stream likely to be under an off-take or power purchase agreement;
• There is limited or no recourse to the sponsors of the project (shareholders of project company
are generally only liable up to the extent of their shareholdings);
• Project remains off-balance-sheet for the sponsors and for the host government.
As can be seen, there are a number of contracts and the arrangements are complex. The
interrelation between the different parties needs to be carefully provided in the
agreements.

Off-Balance-Sheet
Project financing may allow the shareholders to keep financing and project liabilities off-
balance-sheet. Generally, project debt held in a sufficiently minority subsidiary is not
consolidated onto the balance sheet of the respective shareholders. This reduces the
impact of the project on the cost of the shareholder’s existing debt and on the shareholder’s
debt capacity, allowing the shareholders to use their debt capacity for other investments.
Clearly, any project structure seeking off-balance-sheet treatment needs to be considered
carefully under applicable law and accountancy rules.
To a certain extent, the government can also use project finance to keep project debt and
liabilities off-balance-sheet, taking up less fiscal space. Fiscal space indicates the debt
capacity of a sovereign entity and is a function of requirements placed on the host country
by its own laws, or by the rules applied by supra- or international bodies or market
constraints, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the rating agencies. Those
requirements will indicate which project lending will be treated as off-balance-sheet for the
government.
Keeping debt off-balance sheet does not reduce actual liabilities for the government and
may merely disguise government liabilities, reducing the effectiveness of government debt
monitoring mechanisms. As a policy issue, the use of off-balance-sheet debt should be
considered carefully and protective mechanisms should be implemented accordingly.

Non-Recourse Financing
Recourse financing gives lenders full recourse to the assets or cash flow of the shareholders
for repayment of the loan in the case of default by the SPV. If the project or SPV fails to
provide the lenders with the repayments required, the lenders will then have recourse to
the assets and revenue of the shareholders, with no limitation.
Project financing, by contrast is “limited” or “non-recourse” to the shareholders. In the case
of non-recourse financing, the project company is generally a limited liability special
purpose project vehicle, and so the lenders' recourse will be limited primarily or entirely to
the project assets (including completion and performance guarantees and bonds) in the
case of default of the project company. A key question in any non-recourse financing is
whether there will be circumstances in which the lenders do have recourse to part or all of
the shareholders' assets. The type of breach of covenant or representation which gives rise
to this would typically be a deliberate breach on the part of the shareholders. Applicable
law may also restrict the extent to which shareholder liability can be limited, for example
liability for personal injury or death is typically cannot be limited.