Project Roles and Responsibilities

Project Sponsor

The Project Sponsor is ultimately accountable for the success or failure of the project.

The Project Sponsor has to ensure that the project is focused on achieving its business objectives and delivering the forecast benefits. The Project Sponsor has to ensure that the project gives value for money and adopts a cost effective approach which balances the demands of the business, users and suppliers. Throughout the project the Project Sponsor is responsible for the business case and needs to be able to take a balanced view of the project on behalf of the wider organisation.  

This role will normally be undertaken by someone operating at a senior level within the business organisation with significant executive and natural authority. The responsibilities of the Project Sponsor include:

• Securing budgets and ensuring appropriate financial controls are in place
• Appointing the project management team including other members of the Project Board
• Advocating the project both internally and externally
• Supporting the project manager to successfully deliver the project
• Signing off project deliverables 
• The Project Sponsor may delegate the Sign Off for certain stages of the project to the Business Owner

The Project Manager ensures that the project deliverables are produced within the agreed time and cost and of the required quality to deliver the benefits defined in the business case.

The Project Manager runs the project from day to day on behalf of the Project Sponsor.  

The responsibilities of the Project Manager include:

• directing the project team
• managing the project plan
• maintaining the risk register, issue and change control logs
• reporting on progress to the Project Sponsor and other stakeholders 

Senior Supplier

The Senior Supplier represents those groups who will design, develop, facilitate, procure and implement the project and must be empowered to make decisions on their behalf.   

This role will normally be undertaken by someone operating at a senior level within the supplier organisation with significant executive and natural authority. The responsibilities of the Senior Supplier include:

• Ensuring project plans, proposals and specifications are feasible and realistic
• Committing supplier resources and ensuring any divergence from budgeted supplier costs is appropriately managed
• Ensuring the quality of the project deliverables and the overall technical integrity of the project
• Ensuring that the project deliverables are reliable, appropriately integrated and can be maintained efficiently

In larger or more complex projects a Supplier Advisory Board can be set up to represent wider supplier interests. In such cases the Senior Supplier will chair this group.  

Procurement Adviser

The Procurement Adviser Provides professional advice and guidance for the procurement elements of the project.  This role is mandatory on projects with total external spend (across 4 years) over the OJEU threshold.  

Programme Manager

The Programme Manager is responsible for the overall integrity and coherence of the programme, and develops and maintains the programme environment to support each individual project within it.

The Programme Manager is responsible for successful delivery of the programme of which the project is part. The role requires effective coordination of the projects and their inter-dependencies, including IS and other resources, and any risks and other issues that may arise. For projects with no Senior Supplier the Programme Manager will take on the responsibilities of the Senior Supplier role.

Project Board

The Project Board provides direction and management for the project.

The Project Board is the overall authority for the project and is accountable for its success or failure.   

A project board for a small project can be very small though the roles of Project Sponsor, Senior User and Senior Supplier are essential - but an individual can be Project Sponsor and also Senior User.

Members must have sufficient authority to carry out their responsibilities effectively.  

The collective responsibilities of the Project Board members include:

• Accepting and demonstrating ownership for the project
• Working as a team to provide collective and unified direction
• Effective delegation with appropriate project tolerances and exception management processes
• Facilitating cross functional working ensuring that the project structure is recognised and respected by line management
• Commiting all of the resources required to successfully complete the project
• Effective decision making including risk, issue and change management
• Project assurance and quality control
• Ensuring timely and effective communication within the project and with external stakeholders
• Ensuring that the project deliverables are reliable, sustainable and can be maintained efficiently

All projects require an effective governance structure. As a minimum the Project Board should include the Project Sponsor, Senior User(s), Senior Supplier(s) and Project Manager. Other staff such as the Programme Manager can provide support to the Project Manager as required.