The role of the project manager
Project
manager plays a vital role in ensuring project objectives of the project.
Project managers lead the team, and he is the ultimate responsible of project
success.
- Involvement level of project manager may vary in organization.
In some
organization, project manager leads and goes in details of every phase of a
project from initiation till the closure. In other organization, project
managers may follow the high-level progress from these activities.
- Authority and responsibilities.
Authority
and responsibilities of project managers must be in balance. If you give a
higher responsibility but a little authority to the project manager, he or she
will not have a power to complete the project success. Similar, if you give a
lower responsibilities and high authority to the project manager, he or she
will have the power to use but will not be responsible in ethical level.
- Membership & Roles.
There will
be different membership & roles in project team. Consider a software development
project, there will be analysis, software engineers, software test engineer,
etc. responsibilities, task and roles of each project member will be different.
Project must have the knowledge of this diversity and coordinate different
membership and roles in the project.
- Responsibility for team.
Project
manager is directing the project; therefore, he has the responsibility for the
outputs of the team. Project manager coordinate, assign, monitors, and controls
the activities of a project team, therefore, he has the responsibility for the
team.
- Knowledge and skills.
Project
manager must have required knowledge and skills to manage the project. For
example, the project manager must have project management knowledge, but this
is not sufficient, he should also have soft skills such as people management,
negotiation management, conflict management, etc. because he is management the
team and producing a result or product with the team. Therefore, the project
manager must have the required skills to manage and control the project.
- The different between project manager and functional manager or operation manager.
Project
manager roles is distinct from that of a functional manager or operation
manager in organization. Software development line manager, analysis group
manager, HR department managers are examples of functional managers in
organization.
Functional
managers manage the employees and provide management over side from the
business unit respective.
For
example, software development line manager is responsible for providing
technical expertise and resources for the software project. Call centre manager is an example of
operation manager, his duty is managing a call centre employee and reaching to
the service level agreement targets. For instance, he aims to answer the
customer calling within 30 minutes.
Different
from functional and operation manager, project manager is responsible for
achieving project objectives. Each project has objectives and project manager
aim to produce the design targets and reach objectives by manage project team.