Project Management>The Role of the Project Manager and Required Skills

The Role and the Responsibilities of the Project Manager

The role of the project manager is one of great responsibility. It is the project manager's job to direct, supervise and control the project from start to end.

Project managers don’t usually carryout the project work, usually managing a project is enough. 

The role of the Project Manager is to:

1. Define the project, reduce it to a set of manageable tasks, obtain appropriate resources and build a team to perform the project work (produces work breakdown plans)
2. Sets the final goal for the project and motivates his/her workers to complete the project on time (produces a project plan)
3. Inform all stakeholders of progress on a regular basis (produce project status reports)
4. Assess risks to the project and mitigate them (maintains a risk and issues log)
5. Adapt to change  -  as no project ever goes 100% to plan

Project Manager Required Skills

A project manager must have a range of skills including:

- Leadership
- People management (customers, suppliers, managers and colleagues)
- Communication (verbal and written)
- Negotiating
- Planning
- Contract management
- Problem solving
- Creative thinking

Many things can go wrong in project management. These things are often called barriers. Here are some possible barriers:

1. Poor communication
2. Disagreement
3. Misunderstandings
4. Bad weather
5. Union strikes
6. Personality conflicts
7. Poor management
8. Poorly defined goals and objectives
    

Good project management disciplines will not eliminate all risks, issues and surprises, but will provide standard processes and procedures to deal with them and help prevent the following:

1. Projects finishing late, exceeding budget or not meeting customer expectations
2. Inconsistency between the processes and procedures used by projects managers, leading to some being favoured more than others are
3. Successful projects, despite a lack of planning, achieved through high stress levels, goodwill and significant amounts of overtime
4. Project management seen as not adding value and as a waste of time and money
5. Unforeseen internal or external events impacting the project
    

Therefore a good project manager will have good Project Management skills and will be capable of creating an environment and conditions in which a defined goal or objective can be achieved in a controlled manner by a team of people. Therefore, good organisation and communication skills are essential.

Go to Project Management Knowledge Base

See also

 

Go to Analysis Knowledge Base
Go to Process Change Knowledge Base
 

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