Accountability

The Project Manager is typically accountable for meeting all requirements of a project, meaning he or she is the one who pays the price, or is held to account, if those requirements are not met. Project Team members may be responsible for tasks within the project, but not always accountable for the value created (or not created). While a Project Manager will suffer all or most negative consequences for project failure, he or she has the ethical responsibility to share project success fairly with his or her team.

It is important to separate "accountability" from "responsibility". Accountability can be though of in terms of "What happens after the project is complete?" or even "Why is the project experiencing slippage?". It conveys taking ownership and assuming consequences for performance, behaviors, and results.

Responsibility, however, is more task-oriented and focused on duties that an assigned person or persons have to carry out to complete a task. You can also think of responsibility as being more of a siloed approach while accountability is more of a strategic and project-centric approach.

Accountability is best summed up by remembering U.S. President Harry Truman's motto, "The buck stops here." Accountability is a cornerstone of effective Project Management and is critical to other segments of society as well, like criminal justice, recordkeeping, corporate operations, etc.