PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Project Management

Project Management

Part 1

On the face of it, the role of a project manager should be easy to describe. In fact, from a textbook perspective it probably is. But the challenge to understanding roles and responsibilities is that they are different from company to company. So, although this webpage will provide an overall perspective of the role, you still need to determine what the role of a project manager is at your company, or in your organization.

In some environments, the project manager holds no role in production at all. He works strictly on development and installation, midwifing the changes but never really worrying about what happens next. His knowledge of the stakeholders, the application, and the logic behind why the system functions the way it does never come into play. The operations and support teams do what they can to keep things running and use their own internal systems to respond to crisis situations. In an ideal world, the project team trained the operations and support staff to handle the situation (Kenrick, 2005: 45).

The Project Manager role plans, manages and allocates resources, shapes priorities, coordinates interactions with customers and users, and keeps the project team focused. The Project Manager also establishes a set of practices that ensure the integrity and quality of project artifacts.

For smaller projects, a single person can act as project manager and also take on a development role, such as software architect. However, if at all possible, it is generally better for the project manager to avoid taking on development responsibilities, in order to ensure that time pressure on management responsibilities doesn't cause development tasks to suffer, and vice versa.

The project manager role can usually be combined successfully with other management-type roles, such as Change Control Manager, Deployment Manager, and Process Engineer.

The project manager may require support for tasks such as gathering project status information, generating metrics, and preparing reports. When staffing the project, consider including support staff to help with these activities.

General Definition

In general, the project manager is responsible for the overall success of the project. In some companies, this person might be called a Project Coordinator, or a Team Leader, however, the key aspect is that the person is responsible for ensuring the success of the project.

What does it take for the project to be a success? If you follow the TenStep Project Management Process, or a similar approach, you first must define the project and build the schedule. This is where the project manager's responsibilities start. If the project begins and you find out later that you are not clear on scope, the project manager is the one who is accountable. If your project is executing a poor schedule, the project manager is accountable.

The work around defining the project means that you understand and gain agreement on the overall objectives, scope, risk, approach, budget, etc. It also includes defining or adopting the specific project management procedures that will be used to manage the project (Kenrick, 2005: ...