Sponsor: the person who holds the budget, who is responsible for the business objectives, who has the final decision making power. Usually found within the executive team.

Project Manager: the person responsible for making sure the project is delivering on time, within budget, and with full scope. Will have some decision making power, but is the liaison between the sponsor and the team.

Team Member: this person is doing the work. They will have little decision making power outside the details of the work.

For more complex projects, the PM will only fulfill their PM role and will have subject matter experts to do the work, or provide guidance and advice to the team members. The PM will often have a group of team leaders who supervise the workers in a very large project.

But, let’s look at the way PMs can balance the different hats in a small project:

PM and Team Member hats

The main challenge here is that the team member is deep in the details of the project work and the PM is supposed to be looking at the whole project and its progress.

Think of it as a garden. The PM is planning the whole garden and its future. The team member is working on the vegetable section. If you are wearing both hats, and you don’t ensure you look up from the details, you may end up with a great vegetable garden with no lawn and no flowers.

PM and Sponsor hats

This is far more challenging than the first combination because of the decision making aspect of the sponsor’s job. Using the garden analogy, let’s assume the scope was to have a lawn and a rose garden. As the PM you work with your team and design a large lawn and a small rose garden because that fits into the budget. As the sponsor, you really wanted a larger rose garden but you understand the challenge and go ahead. Then as the PM you find out that the garden needs more drainage and that will cost more money. You put on your sponsor hat and decide to spend the money even though you really wanted to keep it within the budget. What happens is a series of compromises and you don’t have a project.