Customer roles
Every customer has their own stakeholders that you might encounter on a project who might or might not use the same vocabulary that’s listed in this section. Review the following definitions and then keep them in mind as you meet your customer’s team and discover their vocabulary.
Business decision maker – Decides whether to invest in new technologies.
Implementation project manager – In charge of making sure that a company’s implementation goes smoothly.
Business experts – People who participate in implementation projects as experts for their teams. Sometimes, they’re referred to as subject matter experts (SMEs).
Business users – People who use the system after deployment. You might have different groups of users. For example, you could have Finance, Commerce, Marketing, Sales, and Service users, each doing different types of work on the overall solution.
Developers – People who write code to integrate with other data sources, extend core system functionality, or build a complex application.
Administrator – People who provide administrative support to a manager and team.
Compliance – Depending on the organization, this role could be related to the customer’s industry, or it could be more generic, such as privacy and legal. Their involvement can be critical to ensure that your project stays compliant and doesn’t have last-minute blockers. These groups are business experts in the organization’s compliance requirements.
Influencer - People who are on every project but might not be an actual named project team member. Occasionally, you’ll encounter a negative influencer, someone who has a reason that’s unrelated to your project to be a distraction to the success of the team. Often, you’ll have an influencer for good reasons, a champion. The champion can help drive the success of the project; they're eager to observe the successful implementation and excited to share that success with others.