What Does a Project Team Do in an IT Implementation?

Updated September 2026: the original 2021 post gave a short list of what a project team does in an IT implementation. I have expanded it into a clearer explanation of who is on the team, what each role owns and how the team relates to project governance.

Whatever the methodology, IT projects succeed or fail on the people doing the day-to-day work: capturing requirements, building and testing the solution, and fixing issues quickly. That group is the project team. It sits beneath the governance structures that set direction and approve decisions.

Who is on an IT project team?

• Business users or subject matter experts: people from the client organisation who know the processes being changed.
• Business analysts: they turn business needs into documented requirements.
• Functional consultants: specialists in the product being implemented, such as an ERP or CRM system, who configure it to fit the requirements.
• Technical consultants and developers: they build integrations, reports and customisations.
• Testers: they confirm the solution works as specified.
• A project manager: they plan the work, track progress and manage risks.

What does the project team own?

Four things, broadly. Documenting business requirements clearly enough that everyone agrees what is being built. Executing assigned tasks and reporting status honestly. Meeting the project's quality standards. And building and testing a solution that actually meets the requirements, not just the letter of the specification.

How does the project team relate to governance?

Most larger projects have a steering committee of senior sponsors who set priorities and approve major changes, and a project management office or group that sets standards, tracks progress across work streams and escalates issues. The project team executes within those decisions. When the team finds that a requirement cannot be met as agreed, the right route is to raise it upward for a decision, not to change scope quietly.

What makes a project team effective?

• Business users who are given real time for the project, not squeezed around their day jobs.
• Clear ownership of each requirement and decision.
• Honest status reporting, including bad news early.
• A shared place for requirements, decisions and issues that everyone uses.

Where do project teams usually struggle?

Most often when the business side is under-staffed, so requirements arrive late or change after build, and when status reports are kept green until problems are too large to hide. Both are fixable with early, visible tracking, which is why good project managers spend more time on communication than on plans.

Keep reading

• Scoping a Service Request When Requirements Keep Changing
• Running an Offshore to Onsite Handover Call
• When the Client Changes the Plan: Handling Rework