Are you planning to move your career into Project Management as a Project Manager or the case is different? Means, you are already playing role of Project Manager. In any of these scenarios, you must know about the role of Project Manager in the project. This article has brought the complete description of role of the project manager. By the end of this post, you will know what are the roles and responsibilities of the project manager along with the actions performed by a Project Manager. Let’s begin.
Table of Contents
Introduction
You know every project has objective and has to deliver value to customer and benefits to organization. Project Manager is responsible for managing the project to meet project objectives and deliver value and benefits to the organization.
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As a project manager, you must come up with project management plan that people agree to and believe that it is realistic. Project Manager is responsible for ensuring that project is completed according to project schedule and budget, including approved changes and meets other objectives. Project manager is accountable for delivering project benefits.
In today’s project environment, the people who are managing projects may have the knowledge of project management but they lack at overall details what proper project management involves and there may be some companies, which do also not understand why project management is so important in delivering benefits, which they want to realize.
People with title as Project Manager are often not the project managers at all instead their role is more of a project coordinator.
Project Manager’s level of authority may vary depending on the structure of the organization they are associated. For example, authority of the project manager also depends upon whether project manager is assigned part-time or under-contract.
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Roles and Responsibilities of Project Manager
As mentioned above roles and responsibilities of project manager depends upon authority of project manager. Let’s see the list below:
- Project Manager helps in writing the project charter in project initiation phase. It is recommended to assign a project manager with a project at the time of project initiation only.
- She/he is the in-charge of the project. It is not necessary that she/he is a project resource as well.
- There is no need of being technical expert. Project manager can have the knowledge of technologies which are involved in the project. If project manager involves herself/himself in the technological aspects of projects, it can affect project objectives.
- Project manager identifies and analyzes assumptions and constraints.
- She/he leads and directs the project planning efforts.
- Project manager analyzes unrealistic schedule requirements and takes action to produce a realistic schedule.
- She/he selects appropriate processes for the projects. She/he has authority to tailor the project processes with higher management approval.
- Project manager identifies dependencies between activities.
- Project manager develops time and cost reserves for project.
- She/he has the authority and accountability necessary to accomplish the project management work.
- Project manager integrates the project components into a whole that meets customer’s need.
- Project manager influences the project team and the surroundings where team works by promoting good communication, insulating team from politics (internal or external to the project), enhancing positive aspects of cultural differences and resolving team issues.
- She/he spends more time being proactive than dealing with problems.
- She/he ensures professional interactions between the project team and other stakeholders.
- Project manager understands and enforces professional and social responsibilities.
- Project manager assists the team and other stakeholders during project execution.
- She/he identifies stakeholders, supports stakeholder engagement and manages stakeholder expectations throughout the project.
- Project manager maintains control over the project by measuring performance and determining variances from the plan.
- She/he monitors risk, communications, and stakeholder engagement to ensure they are in the conformance with expectations.
- Project manager determines need of change requests. She/he also covers recommended corrective and preventive actions and defect repair.
- She/he can approve or rejects as authorized. Project manager manages change control board and frequently attends / sits on change control board.
- Project manager uses metrics to identify variances and trends in the project work, and is responsible to analyze these variances and trends.
- She/he works with team members to resolve variance from the project management plan.
- Project manager keeps team members focus on risk management and possible responses to the risks.
- She/he also performs project closing at the end of each phase and for the project as a whole.
- Project manager also delegates most of the activities she/he is responsible for. Project manager should have good delegation skills.
- She/he applies project management knowledge and uses personal and leadership skills to achieve project success.
- She/he:
- Communicates
- Develops the team
- Uses rewards and recognition
- Solves problems
- Makes decisions
- Manage and control resources
- Demonstrates ethics and leadership
- Says NO, the most important, project manager says no whenever necessary.
- Project is accountable for project success or failure.
Conclusion
It is nice that you have reached at the conclusion of this article. Now, you know what are the roles and responsibilities of the project manager along with the actions performed by a Project Manager.
If you have missed it, go through the points again.
Project Manager Interview Questions
Remember, project manager needs project management knowledge and skills to perform her/his role. Project manager should understand her/his professional or social responsibilities.
Do you follow above activities in your project?
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