Organize your Dynamics 365 project team
When you implement Dynamics 365 apps, you need a project team that works well together and delivers the best results for your business. A good project team has these characteristics:
- It aligns with your business needs and goals.
- It has active and engaged senior stakeholders.
- It promotes cross-team collaboration and communication.
- It has clear accountability and authority for project leadership.
- It defines the roles and responsibilities of each team member.
- It matches the skills and experience of team members with the solution complexity and design requirements.
- It has enough resources to handle the effort and complexity of the project.
To assess and improve your project team organization, use the questions and tips in this article.
Is your project team aligned with your business needs and goals?
Your project team should have a close connection with your business streams. A common model is to pair each business stream with a project workstream.
For each project workstream, you should appoint a lead subject matter expert (SME) from the corresponding business stream. The lead SME should be an experienced leader who can represent the business needs and goals in the project. For larger projects, you might need more than one SME per workstream.
By involving your business streams directly in the project, you can build trust and ownership between the business and the project team. You can also get better input and feedback from the SMEs. If you have too many layers between the business and the project team, you might lose the quality and clarity of the business requirements and expectations.
Are senior business stakeholders involved in the project?
Your project will be more successful if you have senior business stakeholders who are actively involved and committed to the project. You can tell if your senior stakeholders are engaged in the project by looking at these signs:
- They show interest in the status and progress of the project, especially the critical processes and issues.
- They help prioritize the tasks and objectives of the project, and align them with the business goals and strategy.
- They provide the necessary resources and support for the project, such as budget, time, and people.
If your senior stakeholders are passive or distant from the project, occasionally asking "How is it going?" or "Let me know if you need something," you might face challenges and risks that could affect the project outcomes.
Does your project team collaborate and communicate well?
Your project team should work together as a cohesive unit, not as isolated silos. To achieve this goal, you need to create a project organization and structure that encourages cross-team collaboration and communication. You can evaluate how well your project organization and structure support cross-team collaboration by looking at these factors:
Project organization: How are the project workstreams and roles organized and grouped? Do they reflect the business needs and goals, or do they create artificial boundaries and divisions?
Project structure: How are the project tasks and deliverables structured and sequenced? Do they enable the project workstreams and roles to work together effectively, or do they create dependencies and bottlenecks?
Reporting lines: How are the project workstreams and roles reporting and escalating issues and decisions? Do they have clear and direct channels, or do they have to go through multiple layers and steps?
Team leadership and composition: Do project workstreams and roles have competent and empowered leaders and team members, or do they have gaps and overlaps in skills and experience?
Communication channels: Do project workstreams and roles have frequent and open communication, or do they have limited and formal communication?
Team objectives: How are the project workstreams and roles aligned and motivated? Do they have shared and clear objectives, or do they have conflicting and vague objectives?
Delivery approach: How are the project workstreams and roles delivering and testing the solution? Do they have a collaborative and agile approach, or do they have a siloed and rigid approach?
Some warning signs that your project organization and structure might hinder cross-team collaboration are:
- Team members have to go through many layers of management to solve problems or get approvals.
- Team members rarely work with other workstreams or roles, or only do so at the end of the project.
- Team members have to report their status and issues through the project manager, instead of directly to their peers or stakeholders. This can create mistrust and confusion within the team.
- Team members only communicate through hierarchical channels, such as meetings or reports, and don't have organic or informal communication.
A good way to measure the level of cross-team collaboration is to look at how closely and how often different project workstreams or roles work together on the project. For example, you can check how the data migration workstream interacts with the functional and technical workstreams on the design and delivery of the solution.
Is accountability and authority clear for project leadership?
Your project leadership should have clear accountability and authority for the project. Accountability means the responsibility and ownership for the project outcomes and results. Authority means the power and influence to make decisions and allocate resources for the project. Your project leadership might include the project manager, the solution architect, the technical architect, and other key roles.
Some common problems that can affect the accountability and authority of your project leadership are:
- The wrong role is accountable or has authority for the project. For example, a technical role might be accountable for the business outcomes, or a business role might have authority over the technical decisions.
- The accountability or authority is diffuse or unclear. For example, multiple roles might share the accountability or authority for the project—or no one might have it.
- The person or role who is accountable or has authority for the project is too junior or inexperienced. For example, they might not have the skills or knowledge to lead the project, or they might not have the influence or support to make decisions or allocate resources.
Are project team roles and responsibilities clear?
Your project team members should have well-defined roles and responsibilities that describe what each team member does, how they contribute to the project, and what the expectations and boundaries are for each team member. This includes roles that might be assigned to the project part-time or for specific, short-term tasks.
You can assign roles and responsibilities to your project team members by following these steps:
Identify the key project workstreams and roles that you need for your project.
Define the scope and objectives of each project workstream and role; for example, what each workstream and role will deliver, how they'll measure their success, and how they'll interact with other workstreams and roles.
Assign the right people to each project workstream and role.
Communicate the roles and responsibilities to the project team members and stakeholders in a project organization chart, a project roles and responsibilities matrix, or a project team meeting.
You should also define the roles and responsibilities of the business users who aren't part of the project team, but who are involved in the project. For example, they might provide input and feedback on the business requirements, approve the business processes, or prepare and perform testing. They're critical for the project, and you should plan and manage their tasks and status.
Do the skills and experience of your project team members match the solution complexity and design requirements?
Your project team members should have the skills and experience that match the complexity and design requirements of the solution.
You should pay special attention to the key project roles that have a significant impact on the project's success, such as the project manager, the solution architect, and the technical architect. You should make sure that these roles have the right level of skills and experience, and that they can assert their expertise and influence the design and implementation of the solution.
Does your project team have enough resources?
By the end of the Initiate phase of the project, you should have a reasonably credible high-level solution blueprint, a reasonable estimate of the backlog and effort, and a high-level project plan. This should provide a good grounding for reviewing the level of resources planned for the key roles.
Your project team should have enough resources to handle the effort and complexity of the project. You should also consider the availability of the resources, such as the time and effort that each team member can dedicate to the project.
You should review and update your resource allocation regularly, as the project might change over time. You should also monitor and track your resource utilization, as the project might face issues or delays that affect your resource consumption.
Next steps
- Learn how to choose the best project approach and methodology that suit your project scope, complexity, and constraints
- Learn how to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of classic governance structures, such as change management, risk management, and issue management
- Learn how to apply good governance processes to key project areas
- Learn how to create a well-structured project plan that helps you track and improve your project progress and outcomes
- Review the main points and takeaways from this section
- Use the Success by Design checklist to assess and improve your project governance model and processes
- Read a case study of how a customer implemented Dynamics 365 with effective project governance