Functional managers

Functional managers may be considered stakeholders at some point in the project, specifically if you will be borrowing resources from those departments. Functional managers are key stakeholders in functional or weak/balanced matrix organizations because they are in charge.

In a strong matrix or project-based organization, the functional managers may not have any input in day-to-day project work, but they will be the deciding factor as to who you can acquire from their team, how long you can have them on your team, and whether they will be working full- or part-time on the project.

This is why it is important to create and maintain good relationships with functional managers, because you may be negotiating with them for additional resources. It's never a bad idea to know exactly what skill sets you are looking for before you negotiate for resources.

There have been times where I've acquired resources from functional departments and walked away thinking, Well, that was easy, and later found out the resources I acquired were given easily because the functional manager wanted to unload their worst resource on me. Since I learned the hard way, I'm passing this knowledge on to you. Go to the discussion prepared!

Some items to consider during the negotiation may be the following:

• Specific skills that are necessary to perform project work
• Whether the team member can be co-located or virtual
• What type of work-authorization system you will be using to let the resource know it's go-time
• How long you believe you will need the resource and whether you can utilize them part-time, so they can still perform their functional work

• Whether you will be tracking and documenting their project performance and submitting the documentation to their functional manager for their performance reviews
• Whether training is necessary for the potential resource and, if so, how to go about setting it up and figure out how much time you think is needed for the skill transfer
• And make sure everyone understands how they will be acquired and how they will be released from the project work

 Remember, the sponsor is a key stakeholder and they are there in a support role to help you navigate functional managers and acquisition of functional resources. There is also the PMO who might be actually assigning resources to your projects without any negotiation necessary with functional managers. It just depends on your organization and how projects are run.