PMI emphasizes the role of the project manager as the key figure in project leadership. It is true that the project manager leads the work effort and manages all the project relationships from the project sponsors and stakeholders to the project team and including any vendor relationships for the duration of the project.
But there may be two additional roles in project leadership that are just as important.
I recently found some notes on a presentation I saw over twenty years ago that caused me to consider two additional leadership roles that are also key to project success.
The PowerPoint presentation was by Peter P. Yim, San Jose State University dated October 19, 2002. In his presentation, Mr. Yim proposes that project leadership is typically composed of three important roles.
We know the project manager’s leadership role, but he added two more leadership roles, business lead and technical lead.
Here is a brief description of the two additional leadership roles and how they relate to the project managers role:
Business Lead – Knows Why
- The owner of the purpose of the project
- The business lead crafts the idea and builds the vision
- From my perspective, the business lead may not be the project sponsor
- Perhaps the business lead is the salesperson responsible to sell the project idea to the project sponsor
Technical Lead – Knows How
- The technical lead is the subject matter expert
- The technical lead understands the solution, the technology, the system internals
- Responsible for deep dive technical discussions, presentations, benchmarks
Project Manager – Knows When and Knows Who
- The leader responsible to plan and execute the plan to achieve the vision
- Assembles the project team and drives the schedule to accomplish the goal
Mr. Yim concludes the presentation by stating all three roles must know What Must Be Done to accomplish the goal.
Did Mr. Yim define a new project leadership model, or did he simply expand and define some of the roles that are traditionally lumped into broad categories such as “stakeholders” or “team members.”
What do you think?