Project Management Part III: Owners, Champions & Stakeholders
In this, the final blog post related to the topic of Project Management, I wanted to discuss the importance of the project owner, champion and stakeholders, specifically these key players' roles and responsibilities.
Roles and Responsibilities
Although a project is a "team effort" the roles of project owner, champion and stakeholders have unique and specifically designated responsibilities.
The role of the project owner is usually filled by a member of the C suite, a VP or department head. If the project is a CPOE implementation the project owner may be the chief medical officer (CMO), chief medical informatics officer (CMIO) or there may be joint or co-project owners such as the CMIO and the VP of patient care or chief nursing officer (CNO). If the project is limited to an application that supports one department (radiology or surgery) the project owner may be the director of surgery or the manager of radiology. In the role of project owner the individual or individuals are expected to:
- Provide leadership, especially related to unresolved issues, final decision making, and authority to approve needed policies and procedures to support the project;
- Ensure that the project has the needed funding and resources.
The project champion can also be the project sponsor but more commonly the project champion is a peer of the clinicians most impacted by the clinical initiative. If it's a CPOE initiative the project champion is a physician who is viewed as an official or unofficial leader of his/her peers. The project champion is expected to:
- Act as an agent of change and encourage adoption;
- Ensure domain- discipline-specific input is reflected within the project planning.
The primary stakeholder in all clinical initiatives should be the patient. A stakeholder is defined as anyone who has a "stake" in the outcome of the project and those who will benefit from the successful completion of the project. Patients, project owners, champions, board members, clinical and non-clinical staff, project work group members, build teams and ad hoc committee members are all project stakeholders and thus responsible for:
- Actively participating in and contributing to their designated committees, work groups and teams.
Risks vs. Issues
Finally, all projects experience risks and issues. A risk can be defined as: a complex issue that has a significant potential to detrimentally affect one or more of the project objectives. Anything that could cause the project to fall short of established project targets. An issue can be defined as any problem that needs to be corrected but is not a show stopper.
Here's to wishing that none of your projects' "issues" become "risks." Good luck in managing your projects!