Project team members
All project team members need to understand how Dynamics 365 works. They should know the out-of-the-box capabilities and supported methods to customize and extend the application to meet the needs of the customer. The following sections describe the most common project team roles.
Project manager
A project manager is a key resource for working with other project roles and stakeholders to define and control the implementation strategy, monitor and report on performance, and coordinate activities. Project managers help ensure the project stays on track and aligned with the defined goals and timelines.
Functional consultant
Functional consultants gather and analyze business requirements to build solutions that modernize processes. They can help increase the return on investment (ROI) while conforming to industry-recommended practices. Functional consultants serve as key resources in implementing and configuring applications to meet business requirements. Functional consultants understand application implementation processes including system configuration, data migration, testing, and support.
Functional consultants typically specialize in customer engagement business areas, or in finance and operations business areas. Within each business area, they often specialize further into one or more feature sets, such as Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, Finance, or Supply Chain Management.
While this may seem like a daunting list of knowledge, don’t worry. You are not expected to be an expert yet, you will gain this knowledge over time as your experience and interests grow.
Typically, functional consultants specialize in one or more feature sets of Microsoft Dynamics 365. An overlap exists between these specialties. It's common to find a consultant who specializes in sales and is also capable as a consultant on a customer service project team.
Developer
Developers work with Dynamics 365 to implement and extend applications to meet the requirements of the business. Developers can provide fully realized solutions by using standardized application coding patterns, extensible features, and external integrations. Developers might use custom code to enable Dynamics 365 apps to be extended to handle a variety of unique customer requirements.
Solution architect
Solution architects are responsible for the successful design, implementation, deployment, and adoption of an overall solution. A solution architect makes sure that the solution meets the organization's needs now and in the future. Solution architects use their technical expertise to integrate and optimize technologies across an organization, tailoring solutions to meet business needs. Specifically for Dynamics 365, solution architects tend to specialize in areas such as customer engagement, finance and operations, or core platform.