What Does A Project Manager Do?

Many people think that making a list tasks and making a schedule is all there is to good project management. For those of you who have found themselves suddenly pushed into the role of PM for your company, you will need to know the basics of what is required of you to successfully manage and complete your goals.

Before we get started, lets just take a moment to quickly identify the two breeds of project mangers. There are those who decide to enter this exciting career path, study and pass the PMI PMP certification exams, and there are those who went to work one morning as normal, and there boss hands the task of managing a project that requires skills very different and diverse from your specialisation.

It is the later that need to grasp and understand the basics quickly as you are entering a new career path without forethought, career planning, and mostly without any support worth mentioning. Let's call it a 'baptism of fire' and things are going to get real hot for you, real soon!

Lets not waste any more time. I want to keep this from getting too alien so we'll avoid jargon and talk straight about how to become a project manager.

What Does The Project Manager Do?

Firstly, a project differs from organizational processes (like sending invoices every month), in that they have a start and an end, a final goal. The project mangers main responsibility is to ensure that end goal is successfully met, using whatever resources are made available to them, and working within certain constraints. Those resources will include a team, materials and equipment, tools, techniques and knowledge. The constraints will include local and national laws (for example, the need for planning permission, or health and safety regulations), as well as the organizations own rules and guidelines. Constraints will also include time, budget and resource limitations.

So basically, as project manger you're going to have to work with what you've got to successfully complete your goal, and make sure you don't break any laws while doing it.

For the newly fledged, 'baptism of fire' PM, probably the hardest challenge you face is letting go. You're probably a specialist in your particular discipline (construction, engineering, sales etc), and work to the highest standards, but the role of the project manger is to not do all the work yourself, but to delegate it to others. This can be difficult if you have known 'weak links' on your team, but your responsibility is to monitor and control and get your team to adopt and share your vision for the tasks and final goal. So instead of just being an engineer, you are now a leader and team builder. While we're at it let's look at what else you need to be in order to make the cut as a great project manger.

To start with you need to have a good level of knowledge of your industry, not just your specialist discipline. If you don't already know them, find out about health and safety, legal and other regulations pertaining to your industry and employment.

You need to be a leader. You get more out of people by bringing them along with you, getting them to share your vision. Bullying and pushing members of your team around is unlikely to work in your favor, so use your charm, wit and leadership skills to win them over and keep them involved.

You need to become a team builder too. Your team may be a mixture of contractors, full-time staff and new guys all drafted from their particular division and thrown together with people they may not know, or worse, dislike. It's your job to get the most productivity out of this team and get them all pulling together in the right direction.

That's just a start. Besides communicating with your team, it is vital you keep in regular communication with your superiors and key stakeholders. These guys are going to want to know what’s going on, and if there are any real problems that threaten the success of the project, you need to let them know early on. A delay in delivering bad news can be very costly so you don't hide the bad news.

Okay, that may all seem a little daunting, but probably the best bit of advice you will ever hear in your career as a project manager is 'keep closing'. That is, always focus on the objectives of each phase and get them closed and signed off.

Tell Me What You Think!

If you've read this far I'd love to get your feedback or please mention so resources worth sharing (need I say no Spam?). Thanks.

If you liked this hub vote it up as being useful (the button is somewhere below) and also check out more information on this and other management subjects at my new website 'manage things'.