What in the world is a Project Owner?

by Brodi Miles on August 2, 2012 in Management with 2 Comments

Project resources typically include a Project Manager, a Business Analyst, and a multitude of development and quality assurance engineers, depending on the size and scope of the project. Project Managers are responsible for planning, execution and monitoring a project while Business Analysts ensure that the requirements for a project are documented and communicated to the stakeholders, including development and quality assurance engineers. The requirements articulate a project’s vision, success criteria, and functional user stories. The requirement artifacts are then used as tools for the planning and execution of the project.

In Agile methodologies, project resources are redefined. Planning is more adaptive and requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. Cross-functional teams generally include Development, Quality Assurance, and Operations. A Scrum Master manages the various aspects of a project so the development team has the ability to deliver the sprint goal/deliverables. The Scrum Master is not the team leader or a Project Manager, but acts as a buffer between the team and any distracting influences, removing any impediments.

With Go Daddy evolving into a more Agile way of thinking about the Project Management and Business Analyst roles, we are moving towards consolidating the two into the role of a Project Owner similar to the Scrum Master. With the roles consolidated, the Project Owner should have the necessary information to plan, monitor, and control a project as a result of the requirements collection process and discussing overall scope with the stakeholders. The Project Owner’s time should result in an 80/20 time split – 80% on requirements and planning and 20% on monitoring and controlling the project.  The Hosting Organization’s Business Analysis staff is also managing projects and the consolidated role appears to be successful. We are currently gathering the data to measure and report the success using Kanban and capacity planning metrics.

A Project Owner is also uniquely positioned to understand changes that may need to be made to the development process. They see, firsthand, any challenges in the development life-cycle as a result of planning, executing, and monitoring projects, providing them an opportunity to suggest process improvements for future projects.

What does it really mean to be a Project Owner? We created a RACI chart that includes a list of the 58 tasks that may occur on any given project such as initiating projects, documenting the requirements and overall communication. The Project Owner is accountable for 48% of those tasks. Ultimately, the Project Owner is responsible for mobilizing people and facilitating the flow of information to mitigate missed requirements and scope creep. Their goal is to drive efficiency, communication, and quality throughout the entire project life-cycle.

Project RACI

Tasks

Roles

Product

Project

Development

Test

Operations

Initiation

 PM-BA Initation and engagement

R

C

A

R

C
Represent project to PRB

I

A

C

C
Creates Master Projects / Kanban Milestone status and dates

C

R

A

C

C
Researches and Identifies other development teams impacted

C

A

C

I
Project Team Assignment and Resource Planning

I

A

C

C
Schedules Project Kickoff Meeting

A

Leads Project Kickoff Meeting and Establishes Business Owner

A

Schedules and coordinates Executive Review

C

A

C

C

C

Planning

 Architectual Spike, Prototypes, POCs, Communicating with Ent Architecture

I

A

R

Negotiating time to fit appropriate performance and bug fixes into the schedule

I

A

R

Ensures project is reviewed by Architecture Review Board

I

A

R

C
Network Design

I

A

R

C
Storage Design

I

A

R

C
Monitoring Design

I

A

R

C
Performance Design

I

A

R

C
Security Design

I

A

R

C
Attend Privacy Review

I

A

C
Facilitate Hardware Acquisition

I

A

R

R
Ensures a Test Plan is created

I

C

A

C
Proper codes are in place for metric assessments

I

A

Communications with Resellers/Exec Accounts/Marketing/Communications

A

R

C

Creates and Maintains Business Requirements document (Vision)

A

R

C

C

C
Creates and Maintains Functional Requirements document (user stories)

R

A

C

C

C
Creates visual diagrams and models

R

A

C

C

C
Schedules and coordinates Legal Review

C

A

C

Schedules BA Requirements Gathering Meetings & Facilitates Elicitation

C

A

C

C

C
Works with UX to generate 1st draft wireframes and comps

R

A

C

C

Works with UX to update/finalize the wireframes and comps

R

A

C

C

Execution

 Create Release Plan and manage team to Release Plan

I

A

C

R
Schedules and leads Red Zone Meeting

I

A

R

R
On Call during deployments and running playbook

I

A

R

R
Support Deployment

I

R

R

A
Notify call center and Stakeholders this has deployed (blog, help, rep training)

A

R

C

C
Deployment Checklist – technical details

I

A

C

C
Hardware Acquisition

I

A

R
Perform hotfixes

A

R

R
Playbook Creation – high level team and timing

I

A

R

C
Privacy Review

I

A

C

C
Works with Technical Writer to generate Help files

A

R

C

C

C

Monitoring

 Updates Status of projects on roadmap

R

I

Updates Master Projects / Kanban Milestone status and dates

A

R

C

C
Communicates requirement changes and updates to all impacted teams

R

A

C

C

C
Review app against requirements doc (Once product has reached Test environment) Determine if deviations are acceptable.

A

R

C

C

C
Identify and document items for later phases/fast follow projects

R

A

C

C

C
Coordinates issue resolution during Dev/QA phase

A

C

C

C
Risk Analysis & Updates

I

A

C

C

C
Lead Daily Stand-Ups and communicate changes in scope

A

R

R

R
Follows up with dependencies on status / update team on dates

A

C

C

C
Attends Change Approval Board

I

A

R

R
Pre & Post Deployment Traffic/Usage/Performance Metric Assessments

I

A

R

C
Report reason for deviation from originally planned target date

A

C

C

C
Reporting and frequency needed from this release

A

C

C

C
Issue Tracking and Progress Reporting

I

A

C

C

C
Weekly Meeting – coordination to resolve issues / risk mitigation

I

A

C

C

C

Closure

 Schedule & Lead Lessons Learned Meeting

C

R

A

C

C
Update Roadmap – move project to deployed

A

Pre & Post Deployment results

A

R

I

I

I
Whate teams are impacted? Do they have time to prepare?

A

R

Service Desk Change Order

I

A

R

R
Key:
( R ) Responsible – This position is responsible that work is done (they are “doers”).
( A ) Accountable – position with responsibility and authority to approve/disapprove task or action
( C ) Consulted – person(s) who has to be consulted about task or action and who need to provide an input. They are “kept in the loop” by two-way communication.
( I ) Informed – person(s) who need to be informed about the task or action. They are “kept in the picture” by one-way communication.
Brodi started at Go Daddy as a Business Analyst in 2008 and was eventually promoted to Hosting’s Director of Project Management, Quality, and Process. Brodi leads a team of project management and quality professionals to deliver value-driven products to Go Daddy customers. She spends most of her time evolving the Quality Assurance organization from a manual to an automation- focused organization and building the Business Analysis team. Connect with Brodi on Google+

2 Comments on "What in the world is a Project Owner?"

  1. Karen Miles says:
    August 30, 2012 at 1:27 pm

    I know you wrote this out for me so I finally get the whole idea of what you do! Thanks Brodi so I can actually sound intelligent for a minute!
    Love you!
    Mom

  2. Michael Braden says:
    October 8, 2012 at 11:20 pm

    Excellent responsibility matrix summary for those unfamiliar with program/project management.
    I intend to share your knowledge with professionals in various disciplines. As a program/project/construction manager with over thirty years experience, I’m consolidating a knowledge database of
    Program/Project Management (Project Owner) Matrix & Performance Metrics. I would enjoy hearing more about your organizations sucess.

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