Project Success Through Gaining & Maintaining Authority

A primary challenge in project management is not only having the right resources in the right numbers working on the right actions at the right time, it is also having the authority to hold team members accountable for the responsibilities delegated in the project plan.  Normally the project manager’s role and authority are established at the beginning of a project and for dedicated teams, the management structure is well defined.  For matrix-structured organizations however, conflicts and politics can interfere very quickly with project success.  In the article ‘Gain and maintain authority to ensure project success’ found here, Jason Charvat discusses how the three key elements authority, accountability and responsibility are required for project success.  What I find interesting is how the last two, accountability and responsibility, are immediately applicable to the project manager for the project, but can only be delegated to the remainder of the team once authority is established.  In a worse case scenario, a project manager could attempt to launch a project, but the entire team would be directed by their functional managers to consider it their lowest priority.  What can a project manager do to avoid a situation like this from happening?

When beginning a new project, one of the key concerns a project manager should have is how much authority I will have.  In most cases, organizations know who will be on the project team, when they want the project complete, and sometimes what level of purchasing approval a project manager will have.  Rarely, however, does an organization give much thought about how much authority a project manager has to hold team members accountable.  For a project manager with extensive experience in the same organization, the project’s importance to the organization, team members and primary stakeholders are mostly known.  For project managers new to an organization though, additional effort will be necessary to assess what level of authority one has.

To determine what level of authority one has as the project manager when not defined, develop the project documentation including the project definition, schedule, and select core team members with input from the project sponsor and functional managers.  Once you have buy-in from the functional managers on the resources, continue to copy them on project scope and especially the roles and responsibilities of all team members.  This will give each manager insight as to the amount of work that is required and provide an estimate how much their department representative can dedicate their time to other tasks outside of the project.  Another advantage of involving managers from the beginning and providing continual updates is you have a direct communication path with someone that can influence a team member’s performance.  If a team member is not fulfilling their role and you don’t have the authority, “you can arrange a meeting with stakeholders who do have the authority to ‘make things happen.’ “

In my experience, I’ve also found that, as the article states, “The most successful project managers are those that are also willing to work with executives in order to get this authority.”