Roles and Responsibilities of Technical Management

This topic is to help figure out who is responsible for what on your job.  There is a worksheet at the bottom of the page you can download to tailor to your organization/process model.

Project leadership is typically divided between four specialties:

• • Functional Management : technical management of personnel assigned to project (Software, Electrical, Procurement, etc.)

  • Program Management for project business issues, 

  • Project Engineering for project planning and coordination,  and 

  • System Engineering for project technical approach and compliance. 

Functional Management provides qualified manpower, and may assume responsibility for some of these.  

For small projects, it may be the same person that handles all project responsibilities.  For larger projects, there may be several people covering each of these.  I worked on one job as one of four project engineers, with three program managers, and up to six system engineers.   Other functional departments may take specific responsibilities.

I have included an example list of allocated project responsibilities, below, by function.  Most, if not all, should have a single name as the lead.    For very small projects they all may be the same person, but as the job gets larger, this is less and less likely.  Then you amend the list to add the broken out responsibilities.

This is not an all inclusive list of what each individual is responsible for.  Rather, this is a list of the responsibilities that I have found to overlap between the Program Manager, Project Engineer, System Engineer, and Functional Management.

Your worksheet would have peoples names, or (grudgingly) the names of your responsible departments.  You can expect to differ from the example.   

A downloadable version of this table is below, for your use.  You will almost certainly need to modify it to fit your organization.  

I highly recommend filling out this sheet for your project - it is a good exercise to understand your organization.  You will find that some of the responsibilities are very heavily claimed, others not so much.  I recommend interviewing the managers or getting their charter and trying to fill out the sheet yourself from what you know.  Only see them about the ones that are not clear.  You may discover some old fights, but you have to know what you and others are responsible for.  The better agreement you have here, the better project you will have.

There is a tendency for some organizations to try to duck defining these responsibilities by saying that "everyone" will have responsibility for one or more of the areas.  This is ok for a few items, but believe me, these are the items that will be the most troublesome.   The fewer of these, the better.   If many items are in this category, it is going to be a bumpy ride.       

A table like this is very handy when it comes to organizing reviews - who presents what.  If you are having trouble getting closure on responsibility, it is also a good place to start the discussion.  Who will prepare the info for reviews?  Who will present?

Here is a list of designations I have used for responsibilities.  Of course, your organization will likely be different.

• • A persons name

  • Program Manager

  • Product Manager

  • System Engineer

  • Expediter

  • Functional Groups - Software, Hardware, Mechanical, Packaging, Quality, Training

  • Sales

  • Marketing

  • Customer Communications

  • Project Engineer

  • Project Manager

  • Configuration Management

  • Customer Support