A project team is the group of people brought together to deliver a specific project, usually for a limited time. Listing the roles is the easy part. The harder question comes next: how many people does this project need, and how much of each person’s time?
This guide covers the standard roles and structures of a project management team, then shows how to work out team size from an hours estimate, with a full example. It also explains how to set up clear responsibilities, what to expect as a new team settles in, and where staffing usually goes wrong.
What is a project team?
It is a temporary group of people with the skills needed to reach a defined project goal. Unlike a department, it exists for the length of the project, and its members often come from different functions and return to their regular work when the project ends. A website redesign, for example, might bring together a designer, developers, a tester, and a project manager for three months.
Project team roles and responsibilities
Titles vary between companies, but most project team members fall into these five roles. On a small project, one person may hold two of them.
| Role | Main responsibility | Typical involvement |
|---|---|---|
| Project sponsor | Provides budget and backing, makes major decisions | A few hours at key points |
| Project manager | Runs scope, schedule, budget, and communication | Throughout the project |
| Team lead | Directs the work of one discipline | On larger projects |
| Team members | Do the work and report progress | Full or part time |
| Stakeholders | Give requirements and feedback, accept results | At reviews and approvals |
For a closer look at the central role, see our guide to project manager responsibilities.
Project team structure: three common types
A PMI paper on organizational alternatives describes three structures for running projects, and they differ mainly in who holds authority over the people on the project.
| Structure | How it works | Main trade off |
|---|---|---|
| Functional | The project sits inside one department | Simple, but weak across departments |
| Projectized | A self contained team under the project manager | Clear authority, but people lose their home department |
| Matrix | People stay in departments and also work for a project manager | Shares specialists, but creates two bosses |
Matrix can be the hardest of the three to run. An older PMI article on the matrix notes that project staff normally see the functional manager as the real boss, since that department is the home they expect to return to. If you run a matrix, agree in writing how much of each person’s time the project gets, because that is an easy place for conflict to start.
How many people does a project need?
Start with the work and let the headcount follow from it: divide the estimated hours for each skill by the hours one person can really give the project in the time available.
As an illustrative example, take a website project estimated at 1,200 hours and due in 12 weeks. People rarely give a project a full 40 hours a week, so assume 32 hours after meetings and admin. One person then offers 12 × 32 = 384 project hours.
| Skill and estimate | Full time people needed | Team |
|---|---|---|
| Design, 300 hours | 300 ÷ 384 = 0.78 | 1 designer at 78% |
| Development, 600 hours | 600 ÷ 384 = 1.56 | 2 developers at 78% each |
| Testing, 180 hours | 180 ÷ 384 = 0.47 | 1 tester at 47% |
| Project management, 120 hours | 120 ÷ 384 = 0.31 | 1 project manager at 31% |
| Total, 1,200 hours | 3.1 full time equivalents | 5 people |
That is why “how many people?” and “how much of their time?” are different questions: the answer here is five people, but only about three full time equivalents. A tighter deadline changes the sums. In 8 weeks, one person offers 8 × 32 = 256 hours, so development needs 600 ÷ 256 = 2.3 people, which means a third developer.
Adding a person also adds coordination. The number of communication paths in a team is n × (n − 1) ÷ 2, so a team of 5 has 10 paths and a team of 6 has 15. That cost is the idea behind Fred Brooks’s well known claim in The Mythical Man-Month that adding people to a late software project makes it later. There is no universal number for team size, but the Scrum Guide says a Scrum Team is typically 10 or fewer people, which is a useful reference point.
How to build a project team in 5 steps
1. List the work and the skills it needs
Break the project into its main pieces of work and note the skill each one requires. Do this before thinking about names, so that the project shapes the team and not the other way around.
2. Estimate hours by skill
Use the hours from similar past projects where you have them. People tend to underestimate, a pattern known as the planning fallacy, so history is safer than memory.
3. Check who is really available
Look at what each person already has on their desk, including leave and other projects. Our guide to resource utilization metrics shows how to check this with numbers.
4. Make one person responsible for each deliverable
A RACI matrix is a simple way to do this. For each deliverable, it records who is Responsible for doing the work, who is Accountable for the result, who is Consulted, and who is Informed. Keep one Accountable name per line, since shared accountability is easy to lose.
5. Agree how the team will work
Settle how decisions get made and where work is tracked, then set how often the team meets. Google’s research into effective teams found that what mattered was “less about who is on the team, and more about how the team worked together” (Google re:Work), so this step deserves as much care as picking the people.
How a new project team develops
Expect a new team to need time before it runs smoothly. A widely cited model comes from Bruce Tuckman’s 1965 paper, which proposed four stages:
- Forming: people orient themselves and look to the leader for direction.
- Storming: conflict appears over roles, tasks, and approach.
- Norming: the group starts pulling together and agrees how to work.
- Performing: roles become flexible and energy goes into the task.
Tuckman based the model on a literature review, largely of therapy and training groups, so treat it as a useful map and not a timetable. Short projects may barely pass through the middle stages. So leave time at the start, and do not read early friction as a sign that the team is wrong.
Common staffing mistakes
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Assuming people are 100% available
Meetings and admin take real hours, and so do other projects. The example above used 32 hours a week, so check your own number from timesheets.
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Picking people before listing the work
Starting from who is free can leave skill gaps that surface mid project.
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Spreading one specialist across too many projects
A person at 20% on five projects has to keep switching between them, and every project waits for them.
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Leaving the sponsor out
Without a sponsor who can make decisions, disputes over scope and priorities have nowhere to go.
-
Adding people late to rescue a deadline
New people need time to get up to speed, and existing members have to help them. Look at scope and order of work first.
For the problems that appear once work is under way, see our guide to common project team problems, and for how to judge results, our guide on how to measure team performance.
Managing project teams in actiTIME
The sizing sum in this guide is only as good as its data: real hours by task and by person. actiTIME records those hours as the team works. With work assignments, a manager assigns customers, projects, or tasks to team members, so each person sees the work that is theirs. Time is logged against those tasks, and these reports then show where it went:
- The Estimated vs. Actual Time Report shows the variance between estimated and tracked time, which you can use for your next estimate.
- The Time-Track Report groups hours by project, user, or type of work, so you can see how time is really split across skills.
- The Staff Performance Report gives a detailed breakdown of each person’s time logs.
actiTIME enables us to balance workload better
I found in actiTIME all the requirements I was looking for. We are getting a lot of benefits – the tool enables us to better balance workload, have a constant view of what people are doing. I really recommend it, I evaluated a lot of tools, also had an in-house development before which demanded a lot of maintenance, and actiTIME solved all problems with no hassle.
FAQ
What are the four main roles in a project team?
There is no single standard list, but a common answer is the project sponsor, project manager, team lead, and team members. Stakeholders are often added as a fifth group.
Who are the members of a project team?
The core members are the project manager and the people who do the work, such as designers, developers, analysts, or engineers. The sponsor and stakeholders support the team without working on it day to day.
What is an example of a project team?
A website team might include a sponsor from marketing, a project manager, a designer, two developers, and a tester. The worked example above shows how such a team can be sized.
What is the difference between a project team and a project management team?
The project team is everyone who works on the project. A project management team is the smaller group that leads it, such as the project manager and team leads. On a small project, these can be the same people.
Size the team from the work
A good team starts with a clear list of work and an honest hours estimate, plus a realistic view of who is available. Do that sum before you pick names, then give every deliverable one accountable owner and leave time for the team to settle in.
To base your next estimate on real hours, start a free trial of actiTIME. It runs for 30 days with every feature included, and afterward you can keep the permanent free version for teams of up to 3 users.
