Essential Functions of a Project Manager
The Essential Functions of a Project Manager
A project manager (PM) is a facilitator. The ideal project manager does whatever it takes to ensure that the members of the project team can do their work. This means working with management to ensure they provide the resources and support required as well as dealing with team issues that are negatively impacting a team 's productivity. The project manager must possess a combination of skills including the ability to ask penetrating questions, identify unstated assumptions, and resolve personnel conflicts along with more systematic management skills. This person is responsible for initiating, planning, executing, controlling and closing a project.
The actions of a project manager should be almost unnoticeable and when a project is moving along smoothly people are sometimes tempted to question the need for a project manager. However, when you take the skilled project manager out of the mix, the project is much more likely to miss deadlines and exceed budgets.
The project manager is the one who is responsible for making decisions in such a way that risk is controlled and uncertainty minimized. Every decision made by the project manager should ideally be directly benefit the project.
A successful PM must simultaneously manage the four basic elements of a project: resources (people, equipment, material), time (task duration, dependencies, critical path), money (costs, contingencies, profits), and most importantly, scope (project size, goals, profit). All these elements are interrelated. Each must be managed effectively. All must be managed together if the project, and the project manager, is to be a success.
The Scope element of a project is the most important and it is the first and last task for a successful project manager. First and foremost you have to manage the project scope.
The project scope is the definition of what the project is supposed to accomplish and the budget (of time and money) that has been created
A project manager (PM) is a facilitator. The ideal project manager does whatever it takes to ensure that the members of the project team can do their work. This means working with management to ensure they provide the resources and support required as well as dealing with team issues that are negatively impacting a team 's productivity. The project manager must possess a combination of skills including the ability to ask penetrating questions, identify unstated assumptions, and resolve personnel conflicts along with more systematic management skills. This person is responsible for initiating, planning, executing, controlling and closing a project.
The actions of a project manager should be almost unnoticeable and when a project is moving along smoothly people are sometimes tempted to question the need for a project manager. However, when you take the skilled project manager out of the mix, the project is much more likely to miss deadlines and exceed budgets.
The project manager is the one who is responsible for making decisions in such a way that risk is controlled and uncertainty minimized. Every decision made by the project manager should ideally be directly benefit the project.
A successful PM must simultaneously manage the four basic elements of a project: resources (people, equipment, material), time (task duration, dependencies, critical path), money (costs, contingencies, profits), and most importantly, scope (project size, goals, profit). All these elements are interrelated. Each must be managed effectively. All must be managed together if the project, and the project manager, is to be a success.
The Scope element of a project is the most important and it is the first and last task for a successful project manager. First and foremost you have to manage the project scope.
The project scope is the definition of what the project is supposed to accomplish and the budget (of time and money) that has been created
Cited: Kerzner, H. (2005). Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling. New York: Wiley Lewis, J. P. (2006). Fundamentals of Project Management. New York: AMACOM. Lonergan, K. (2009). Management Help. Project Management. Retrieved August 11, 2009, from http://managementhelp.org/plan_dec/project/project.htm