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Assigning Responsibility
Quantitative Analysis · Chapter 7: Project Planning with PERT and GanttSection 7.4 · lesson 34 of 5512 min · free with a free account
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In this lesson
How project teams are structured and work is broken down.
- Distinguish functional, projectized and matrix structures
- Describe the duties of the sponsor and the project manager
- Construct a RACI matrix with exactly one A per row
- Build a multi-level WBS that satisfies the 100\% rule
Transcript
Everything said in the video, section by section (1,741 words). Read along, or search it.
Project Planning with PERT and Gantt · Section 7.4
Assigning Responsibility
A plan is only as good as the people positioned to execute it. This section turns the lens onto the human side of a project. Who is organised where, who is empowered to decide, and how the total work gets split. First, the project organisation structure, which fixes how much authority a project manager holds. Second, the roles and responsibility framework, including the RACI matrix. Third, the Work Breakdown Structure, which decomposes the total scope into manageable pieces. By the end, you should be able to tell a functional structure from a matrix, and from a projectized one. You should be able to build a RACI matrix with exactly one accountable owner per row. And you should be able to break scope into work packages that satisfy the hundred per cent rule. Defining who does what matters as much as defining what needs to be done.
Where The Project Sits
Three Archetypes, One Continuum
Before any task is assigned, an organisation has to answer a structural question. Where does this project sit inside the reporting lines that already exist? It decides how much authority the project manager actually has. It decides how easily people and equipment can be deployed onto the work. And it shapes how communication flows between team members. Three archetypes anchor the discussion. Functional at one end, projectized at the other, and matrix in between. The matrix itself comes in weak, balanced and strong flavours. Treat this as a continuum rather than three tidy boxes. Most real organisations sit somewhere along the line, and project manager authority rises as you move along it.
The Two Extremes
Functional and Projectized
Start with the two extremes, because everything else is a blend of them. In a functional structure, team members never leave home. They stay in engineering, finance or marketing, still reporting to their functional managers. The project manager is often a part-time coordinator. That manager has limited authority, and must negotiate for every hour of somebody's time. The payoff is cost: this is the lowest overhead of the three structures. You also get deep expertise inside each silo, and clear career paths. The weakness is speed: cross-functional coordination is slow, and project work competes with daily duties. So the functional structure fits small, low-risk projects that live inside one department. The projectized structure inverts all of it: members are dedicated for the whole duration. They report straight to the project manager, who owns scope, schedule and budget. You get a single chain of command, a strong team identity, and fast decisions. The bill arrives as high cost, and as uncertainty for the team when the project ends.
The Hybrid
Matrix: Weak, Balanced, Strong
Most organisations choose neither extreme. They use a matrix, in which a team member reports to two managers. One functional manager, and one project manager. It is the most common arrangement in practice, because it balances flexibility with real accountability. It also creates the famous two-boss problem. When both managers want the same specialist on the same Tuesday, somebody has to negotiate. The matrix comes in three flavours, defined by where authority actually sits. In a weak matrix, the project manager is a coordinator or expediter, closer to functional. In a balanced matrix, project and functional managers share authority roughly equally. In a strong matrix, the project manager holds primary authority over the team. The label describes power, not paperwork, so ask who really controls that person's time.
Side By Side
Comparing the Three Structures
Line the three structures up attribute by attribute, and a pattern repeats. Project manager authority runs from low or none, through limited to high, to full. Resource availability for the project runs from low, through shared, to dedicated. Ownership of the team moves from the functional manager, to both, to the project manager. Coordination cost climbs from low, to medium, to high. Every one of those rows moves in the same direction: authority, dedication and cost rise together. One row breaks the pattern, and it is the interesting one. Communication overhead is low at both ends, and high in the middle. A functional team has one chain of command, and so does a projectized team. The matrix has two, and that dual reporting is what makes it expensive to run.
Two Central Roles
Sponsor and Project Manager
Even the cleanest organisation chart fails if individual ownership is fuzzy. Two roles sit at the centre of any project. The sponsor is the executive champion of the work. The sponsor authorises the project, secures funding, and clears obstacles the manager cannot resolve alone. In practice that means resources. Money, headcount, and access to people across the organisation. It means visible support: endorsing the project, aligning it with strategy, and settling escalated conflicts. And it means approving major scope, schedule or budget changes beyond the manager's authority. The project manager plans, executes, monitors and closes the project. That manager is accountable for the triple constraint of scope, schedule and budget. Scope is defended through requirements management and change control, not through good intentions. The manager also leads the team, and is the single point of contact for status and risk.
Four Letters
The RACI Matrix
A RACI matrix is a small table with a large job. For every deliverable or decision, it marks each role with one of four letters. R is Responsible, the person who performs the work, and there can be more than one. A is Accountable. That is the single owner who answers for success or failure. Only one A per row, ever. C is Consulted, which means two-way input, sought before the work is finalised. I is Informed, which is one-way. They are kept in the loop after decisions are made. Consulted means you get a say before. Informed means you get told after. This tool exists to prevent two classic project failures. The first is that everyone thought somebody else was doing it. The second is that two people thought they owned it, and built conflicting versions. So keep the R column lean, and if three people are Responsible, split the work further.
The Scope Backbone
The Work Breakdown Structure
If the organisation chart answers who, the Work Breakdown Structure answers what. It is the most important decomposition tool in the planner's kit. Estimates, schedules, budgets and risk registers are all built on top of it. A sound structure makes the rest of the plan straightforward, and a flawed one corrupts everything downstream. Formally, it is a hierarchical decomposition of the total project scope. Scope is broken into progressively smaller components called work packages. A package can be owned by one person, estimated for cost and duration, and verified against criteria. The golden law here is the hundred per cent rule. The structure must capture the whole of the project scope. No more, and no less. Anything in scope that is missing will never be planned, estimated or budgeted. Anything outside scope that appears is scope creep, arriving as a quietly added package. And at every level, the children must sum to the parent, with no overlaps and no gaps.
Levels And Detail
From Levels to a WBS Dictionary
A breakdown structure is drawn from the top down, and level zero is the project itself. Level one holds the major deliverables, the largest chunks of scope. These often correspond to product components, or to project phases. Level two and below holds the work packages, sized so one owner can plan, execute and verify them. Activities, the steps needed to finish a package, are held in the schedule instead. Every work package earns an entry in the WBS dictionary, which pins down what it means. That entry carries a code, a title, and a description of what is included and excluded. It names the responsible party, which links straight back to the accountable role in the RACI. It records estimated effort and cost, acceptance criteria, and dependencies. One more idea keeps all of this honest. Rolling wave planning. You cannot detail the final phase like the first, because the information does not exist yet. So plan the near term thoroughly, hold the far term as placeholders, and elaborate as you go.
Worked Example - Part A
A Three-Level WBS with Codes
Now put this to work on the example from the previous section. A university is launching a fully online bachelor's degree program. The board has approved it, the Provost is the sponsor, and you are project manager. Four functional leads are available in a balanced matrix: curriculum, technology, faculty affairs and marketing. Part A asks for a three-level breakdown with proper codes. Level zero is one point zero, the online degree program, and four deliverables sit at level one. One point one is curriculum, and one point two is the technology platform. One point three is faculty and staff, and one point four is marketing and enrollment. Each of those splits into three work packages, so twelve packages in total. Curriculum holds course design, learning outcomes, and the assessment blueprint. Now test the hundred per cent rule in both directions. Every piece of scope you would expect is present, and physical campus construction is absent.
Worked Example - Part B
The RACI Matrix for the Program
Part B turns that same structure into ownership. The rows are deliverables and work packages. The columns are roles. The project manager is Accountable on every row, which satisfies the one A rule. Each functional lead carries Responsible on the items inside its own domain. On curriculum, the curriculum lead is Responsible, and the technology lead is only Consulted. On the technology platform that flips, and the technology lead becomes Responsible. Faculty and staff belongs to the faculty lead, and marketing and enrollment to the marketing lead. In the full matrix the sponsor is Informed on six of the seven rows. The sponsor moves up to Consulted only on marketing and enrollment. Notice too that each row here carries exactly one Responsible. That is a signal the packages are already small enough for one person to own.
Key Takeaways
What to Carry Forward
Pull the three ideas back together, starting with structure, which sits on a continuum. Functional gives low project authority at low cost. Projectized gives full authority at high cost. The matrix shares authority, and pays for it in communication overhead. The sponsor provides resources and executive cover. The project manager plans, executes and closes, answering for scope, schedule and budget. The RACI matrix pushes ownership down to every single deliverable and decision. One accountable owner per row is the rule that does the real work. The breakdown structure decomposes the whole of scope, and nothing beyond it, into work packages. A dictionary keeps each package precise, and rolling wave planning keeps the far future coarse. Everything downstream, schedule, budget and risk, is built on that backbone. Next we translate the structure into a schedule, using network diagrams and the critical path method.
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