Project Coordinator and Project Expediter Roles
Organizational Structures for organizations that do not have a full-scale project management environment.
Guide to the PMBOK, 4th Edition, defines Project Manager as “The person assigned by the performing organization to achieve the project objectives.” (Pg. 444). In full scale project management environments, the project manager devotes his full time to managing projects or, as a program manager, managing programs of projects.
This is in contrast to a Functional Manager, which the PMBOK Guide, 4th Edition defines as “Someone with management authority over an organizational unit within a functional organization. The manager of any group that actually makes a product or performs a service. Sometimes called a line manager.”(Pg. 26, 436)
Many organizations do not have a full-scale project management environment. This is particularly common in IT environments, although, thanks to the growing recognition by organizations of project management as a profession, this is rapidly changing. When the organization has a functional management structure and does not support a full-scale Project Management environment, the following project support roles may be used.
Project Expediter
The Project Expediter monitors and reports on the status of the project to senior management. This role has no authority.
The Project Expediter acts as a communication coordinator only and cannot enforce any decisions.
Project Coordinator
The Project Coordinator role is similar to expediter, but has some limited, referential authority. The project coordinator may report to someone higher on the management food chain than the expediter. The Project Coordinator has some authority to make decisions.
In IT, this person may be what recruiters refer to as “a PM who can roll-up his sleeves and debug code” or “PM/Business Analyst who can create project documentation and supervise others.” These are actually team member roles and not true project manager roles. However, in addition to his/her hands-on, team-member, tasks, this person also has some limited supervisory responsibilities as well project monitoring and status reporting responsibility.
These two roles are not limited to organizations that do not have a full-scale project management environment. These roles can also be utilized in situations where a project manager (PM) or program manager (PgM) has responsibility for large, complex, project or program. Some components of the project monitoring, reporting, may be delegated to a junior person (less than 3 years of PM experience). In addition, where the scope of the PM’s or PgM’s work is large, tasks that are not appropriate for a PM or PgM or can be taken off the PM’s plate, such as requirements gathering, setting up meetings, identifying resource availability, writing management reports, creating presentation, can be delegated to a project coordinator.
In some cases, where the project is very small or the project effort is short (less than 3 months, less than 50 person-days, less than 3 team members plus the lead), a project coordinator can be assigned to supervise the day-to-day work and ensure that targets and committments are being made.
In PMOs (project/program management offices), a PMO analyst (often miscorrectly refered to as “the PMO”) may also take on project coordinator tasks such as helping the PM develop the project schedule, project scope, generate communications, collect and report project status.
Do not confuse these, very different roles. In particular, do not confuse these roles with that of a project manager or a program manager. Occassionally, due to the economy or, more rarely, by choice a project manager by profession may take on one of these roles, usually on a contractual basis between full-time jobs. However, while the person is a project manager by profession, he/she is not performing in that role while taking on one of the above, more junior, project roles.
Jerry Bucknoff, MBA, PMP
Tags: project coordinator, project coordinator role, project roles, project teams
