Project Mangers are typically found in a projected organization. If they do exist in a functional organization, they will often be only part-time and will have significantly less authority than project managers in other types of organizations.

The project manger is in charge of the project, most of the project’s problems and responsibilities  belong to him. It is typically a bad idea of the project manger to escalate a problem to someone else. The responsibility to manage the project rests with the project manger, and that includes fixing problems.

Project Manager: Project manager may be responsible for the daily management of a given project, while the program manger is responsible for coordinating several projects at once in order to active a common goal.

Functional Manger: The functional manger is the departmental manger in most organizational structures, such as director of IT, director or Marketing. The functional manager usually owns th resources that are loaned to the project and has human resources responsibilities for them.

Stakeholder: Stakeholders are individuals who are involved in the project or whose interests may be positively or negatively affected as a result of the execution or completion of the project.

Senior Management: Sr. Management’s role on the project is to help prioritize projects and make sure the project manager has the proper authority and access to resources. Sr. Management issues strategic plans and goals and makes sure that the company’s projects are aligned with them. Additionally, senior management may be called upon to resolve conflicts within the organization.

Sponsor: The sponsor is the person providing funds to the project. He may be internal or external to the organization. Sponsor may provide due dates and other milestones, important product features and constraints and assumptions.