What is project manager’s sphere of influence?
Project
managers communicate with several people and organization units when manage the
project. The below figure shows the project managers sphere of influence.
The first
sphere in the figure is Project team, PPP managers and resource managers.
- Project team.
Project
managers manage the project team to deliver the expected results of the
project.
- PPP managers.
PPP
managers refer to portfolio, program, and project managers. If the project
under a program or portfolio, project manager will be in contact with portfolio
or program managers as well.
Similar and
in some cases, projects may affect each other results, in this case, the
project manager must be in communication with each other to not effect the
results of a project in bad way.
- Resource managers.
Project
team consists of resources. For example, a construction project will have
several engineers, architectures, construction works, etc. these resources
belong to functional departments in the company. In order to acquire resources
for the project, project manager must be in communication with the resource
managers.
The second
sphere include sponsors, governing bodies, steering committees and PMOs.
- Sponsors.
Sponsors
are finical supportive of the project; they are the spoke person of the project
in the organization and they are powerful people in organization. They must
support and protect the project from internal and external effects.
- Governing bodies and steering committees.
Governing
bodies or steering committees defined as a high-level structure or framework of
whole project will be managed in organization.
- PMOs.
Project
manager may be working under project management organization, in this case,
PMOs they are the influence sphere of project manager as well.
Third and
last sphere include stakeholders, suppliers, customer, and end users.
- Stakeholders.
Stakeholders
includes anyone who is effective positively or negatively from outcomes of the
project.
- Suppliers.
Suppliers
provide materials, tools, and equipment to the organization. For example, steel
reinforcement manufacturing provides steel reinforcement materials for
construction project.
- Customers and end users.
Customers
represent the client that the project is done for. For example, if software
development project will be producing website as a final product and if this
website will serve a company, this company is the customer. Anyone will use the
website or purchased products from website are end users in this example.