You will have the opportunity to fill a team role as part of your project-based work experience. You may find yourself filling one or two roles. Roles include: 

• Team leader
• Project manager
• Report manager 
• Deliverables manager
• Sponsor liaison

Read through the responsibilities of each role and choose your top two roles to write in the space provided below. When you meet with your team, you will decide who will take on which roles. Some important things to think about: 

• Consider your strengths, weaknesses, and abilities when choosing a team role. Choose a role that will enable you to boost your team and create a successful project. 
• You will have opportunities to contribute to your team's success regardless of which role you end up in. Throw yourself into your role and create success.
• Choose to learn from any role you take on. 
  

Explanation of Team Roles

Though members of the team will have many responsibilities associated with creating the work product of the project, many administrative functions of the team need to be managed across the project. The following roles are common to all projects, and it is imperative that each role be fulfilled by members of the team. Team roles should be assigned by consensus within the team and should be documented and reported on the Team tab of your Dashboard within the first two weeks of the semester. While the responsibilities of each role are vital to any project, the ownership of those responsibilities is relatively flexible. Teams should feel free to trade and delegate tasks and responsibilities as appropriate to complete their project most effectively. Also, teams with more or less than five members should feel free to assign co-ownership of responsibilities to multiple team members or for team members to have more than one role.

Deliverables Manager

• Directs project scope and deliverables negotiations with sponsor.
• Heads group discussion on deliverables feasibility and workload commitment.
• Writes an engagement letter after collecting input from the group and sponsor.
  • Delegates writing and editing tasks as needed.
• Manages quality control and editing of final deliverables.
• Maintains top-level perspective in team discussions.
• Uploads the team Engagement Letter to Canvas and your Dashboard.

Project Manager

• Keeps a journal of all reimbursable expenses and collects and turns in all receipts to TA.
• Works with Administrative TAs to clear any reimbursements.
• Crafts work plan from framework documented in the engagement letter.
  • Heads discussion on project tasks and deadlines.
  • Works with the team to assign tasks to individual team members.
  • Develop a Timeline calendar with key events, tasks, and deliverables.
  • Develops and maintains an Actions Register of responsible people/timing based on work plan and deliverables.
  • Follows up with team members on work plan assignments and implementation.
  • Prepares the work plan for upload to Canvas and your Dashboard.
  • Manages any changes made to the work plan.
  • Identifies and tracks project objectives and milestones/progress.
• Approves completion of tasks outlined in the work plan.

Report Manager

• Heads discussion on documentation and research strategy.
• Heads discussion of analysis, conclusions, and recommendations.
• Develops a preliminary report outline early in the process to direct work efforts.
• Create updates to the outline throughout the semester based on work process and findings.
• Creates midterm and final report outlines.
• Manages and delegates tasks for the creation of the midterm and final reports.
  • Tasks include formatting, writing, editing, graph creation, and so on.
• Compiles, collates, and integrates midterm and final reports.
• Gather recommendations, conclusions, and key findings from the technical report.
• Reach team agreement on critical issues to be included in an executive summary.
• Author the executive summary based on the managerial presentation approach.

Sponsor Liaison

• Maintains communication with the sponsor and coordinates weekly meeting times.
  • Be the primary contact with the client/sponsor of the project.
  • Monitor questions and responses between the team members and the sponsor.
  • Assure key sponsor contact is aware of any discussions/agreements with other client personnel.
• Collects and publishes regular (weekly) work updates to the sponsor contact.
• Moderates weekly team calls with the sponsor.
• Heads creation of the Mid-Term and final presentations, delegating tasks as necessary.
  • Prepares agenda and any presentations for the sponsor kickoff meeting.
  • Develops a mid-term presentation of project progress and status.
  • Leads development of the final presentation following executive summary outline.
  • Manages any other presentations made to the sponsor.
• Ensures submission of the final deliverables to the sponsor and uploads to Canvas and your Dashboard.

Team Leader

• Leads team discussion on assigning team roles.
• Schedules and leads weekly team meetings, which all members are required to attend.
  • Holds individual team members accountable for timely meeting attendance.
  • Reports non-compliance to Faculty/TAs so they can encourage involvement.
• Backs up team members as needed in completing assigned tasks.
• Helps team members understand roles.
• Works individually with team members to ensure ownership of the project.
• Team liaison to the Faculty/mentor TA and Instructor Experiential Learning.
• Ensures completion of role responsibilities for all team members.
  • Ensures that the Deliverables Manager submits an Engagement Letter.
  • Ensures that the Project Manager is scheduling and following up on tasks.
  • Ensures that Sponsor Liaison is maintaining regular sponsor contact and updates.
  • Ensures that Report Manager makes assignments for and completes all reports.
• Ensures all documents and meetings have been uploaded to Canvas and recorded on the Dashboard.

Next week, you will have the opportunity to meet with your team for the first time and decide on team roles. Watch the video below to see an example of a team choosing their roles.