Leion
Project Manager
What do Project Managers do? #professional #management #graduate #japan #manager #project #institute #agile
48 answers
Michael Toland
Michael’s Answer
Seriously: A project Manager is really a jack-of-all trades type of operations role that understands schedules, budgeting, and works well with people and forms relationships. Successful Project Managers tend to be individuals who grasp technical and non-technical concepts well, and can link the concepts and communicate them out to the rest of a project team and stakeholders in clear terms that everyone understands. The actual administrative work is fairly routine, from updating schedules, assigning tasks, and ensuring project work is being done.
However, the role of a Project Manager is being migrated away from this administrative burden to the world of Agile where Project Managers are replaced with Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches who help project teams manage their works and find what works for those teams. Particularly in the technology space, there's an aversion to too much non-value added administrative tasks, so minimizing that is key, and frankly, makes a lot of business sense. A really good example of this is the Engineering Culture at Spotify (reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GK1NDTWbkY) and how they fight to stay lean and experiment. They don't have a bunch of project managers, but rather a suite of Agile Coaches to help small teams develop small bits of the entire platform, coordinate across with the enterprise architects, and build a culture of experimentation and rapid failure and learning.
If you're interested in the operations side of projects, then Agile might also just feel more natural. Traditional Project Management (Waterfall) approach is great if you know exactly what it is you're building, but most projects are sort of exploratory as they go, with some loose requirements at the beginning and grow further as they move. Construction and things like Astro-engineering tend to need really great traditional project managers, as their requirements are fixed at the start of the project.
Loved reading this, thanks!
Shaina
This is a really great explanation. Indeed these days Agile is the talk
Dipankar Ghosh
Herding cats is spot on.
Rebecca Brooks
Hi Michael - your advice is very insightful; awesome job. Thank you for sharing!
Sheila Jordan
Manuela Kamprath
Manuela’s Answer
A project manager is the person responsible for leading a project from its inception to execution. This includes planning, execution and managing the people, resources and scope of the project. Project managers must have the discipline to create clear and attainable objectives and to see them through to successful completion. The project manager has full responsibility and authority to complete the assigned project.
A project manager's position may end with the completion of the assigned project, or it may be a semipermanent position for a limited time or until a predetermined point in the project’s schedule or stage of completion.
There are many certifications offered in project management from a variety of organizations. These include Project Management Professional (PMP), Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) and Program Management Professional (PgMP).
I appreciate this, thank you for the advice.
Shaina
Jayesh Dave
Jayesh’s Answer
I think you got pretty good responses to your question. A related question, I would ask is - Who are Project Managers?
I recommend that you read the article at https://www.pmi.org/about/learn-about-pmi/who-are-project-managers.
Once you understand who they are, you will get more clarity on their responsibilities.
Hope this helps. Wish you all the best for your future endeavors.
Thank you, Jayesh!
Shaina
Good suggestion, Jayesh. many times we look at the roles and responsibilities, but less we discuss behavioral characteristics about these professions that make them successful.
Leion- check to see if you can relate to these characteristics to pursue PM career.
PINKAL GANDHI
Patricia Iraola
Patricia’s Answer
I have been Project Manager IT for 11 years, so I can tell you some about her profile and what we do. I spend a lot of time in coordination sessions and make sure things happen, that's the mantra of a PM
A project manager is a person who has the overall responsibility for the successful initiation, planning, design, execution and monitoring.
The project manager must have a combination of skills including an ability to ask penetrating questions, detect unstated assumptions and resolve conflicts, as well as more general management skills.
A project manager is a person who is responsible for making decisions, both large and small. The project manager should make sure they control risk and minimise uncertainty. Every decision the project manager makes must directly benefit their project.
Some of our activities including:
Planning and Defining Scope
Resource Planning
Developing Schedules
Time Estimating
Cost Estimating
Developing a Budget
Documentation
Creating Charts, Schedules and Presentations to report the status of the project
Risk Analysis
Thank you, this is amazing! I really needed it.
Shaina
VANDANA MAHAJAN
VANDANA’s Answer
Project manager is the owner of delivery plan .
Create and Lead the team
Monitor Project Progress and share it with all the stakeholders
Manage Issues
Manages the Cost
Ensure Stakeholder Satisfaction
Evaluate Project Performance.
Ensures Team Motivations
Christophe Carrouget
Christophe’s Answer
Hi there
Project management is
- coordination of actions
- organization and team definition ( finf the right people for each tasks)
- drive the team ( set up meetings /calls - take notes during meeting - circulate notes
- use templates for builind answer and share them with the team
- use tools (software) for achieving the goal
All these tasks will help you to meet expectations and respect deadlines
Do not forget that one key point is to be able to ask people to perform tasks with no direct management line with You
Communication skills and influencing is also a big part of being successful
More information on this web site (i am using it a lot)
http://www.apmp.org/
Cheers
John Dudek, PMP
John’s Answer
I will use this advice as I prepare for my career.
Shaina
Melissa Garcia
Melissa’s Answer
Jim Lim
Jim’s Answer
Kristen Filosa
Kristen’s Answer
Brett Carruthers
Brett’s Answer
Project Managers need to understand the vision of the work. In a role where you take on a customer experience, there are many team members that you depend on and they depend on you. The best piece of advice, understand your customers journey, the part each team member plays in that journey and help connect the dots to end up with the end product.
Meena S
Meena’s Answer
Project Managers plan and execute the projects; managing cost, timelines, resources, stakeholders and teams.
There are a lot of certification courses out there in project management. Taking up any certification course will help you get equipped with the skills you need.
bridget navoda
bridget’s Answer
Hi Adakis:
Project Managers bring organization to teams so they can define and deliver a product.
Check out what Monster.com has to say about Project Management (career overview, education, job market, salaries): http://www.monster.com/project-management-careers. You will see that almost every industry you can think of has a need for project managers!
Nathalie Charlot
Nathalie’s Answer
In technology, a Project Manager has more responsibilities - such as making sure the right team members are hired for the different roles , there's enough funding to complete the project to satisfaction, and overall making sure the customer received a quality product. To learn more about this particular role, I would highly recommend signing up with the PMI organization and volunteering as a project coordinator when there's an opportunity.
Thanks for your encouragement!
Shaina
Dawn Buss-Zmich
Dawn’s Answer
https://www.pmi.org/about/learn-about-pmi/who-are-project-managers
Best of luck in everything you do!
Ricardo McCollin, PMP, CSM, SSM
Ricardo’s Answer
- collaborate with project leadership to create and manage project plans
- Manage the project plan to ensure that the project team(s)
- facilitate meetings to ensure teams are productive and focused on prioritized work efforts
- proactively manage risks that have the greatest probability to impact the project
- work with project teams to analyze and resolve issues as they occur
- manage multiple aspects of projects such as timelines, budget, availability of resources, risks, etc.
- communicate critical project topics such as status, accomplishments, risks, issues, new work on the project roadmap, etc.
James Collins, PMP, PMI-ACP
James’s Answer
Blake Jenssen
Blake’s Answer
Project managers coordinate the project to make sure that things are on track and completed on time. This can be a simpler role of checking in on everyone involved (which is not simple at all) or can be more of a technical resource as well, using industry knowledge, management skill, persuasion and planning insight to help make a project successful. Communication is key with being a project manager in my experience. If you love working with people and getting to see all aspects of a project it is a great area to be involved in.
CAROLYN COOPER
CAROLYN’s Answer
Leaderships skills
Clear Communication
Data retrieval and analysis
Conflict resolution
Time management
Negotiation
Change management if timelines, input, personnel and other items change during the life of the project.
Vivek Kumar
Vivek’s Answer
The analysis is another thing Project Managers need to do on a day to day basis. They need to access the situation, For example, check that project deliverables will meet the required timelines if not then what is the underlying reason and how it can be resolved.
The fun part of being a project manager is that you get to learn new things. In information technology, on any given day a project manager can manage software development projects, and the next day he / she can be managing projects related to database or IT infrastructure build like servers.
Hope this helps. Please let me know in case you have any more questions or need me to explain in further detail.
Megan Schumann
Megan’s Answer
A trait that it's important to have as a project manager is what I call "encouraging persistence." Blockers come up on projects that can be demotivating and make team members want to give up. It's your job to help come up with work-arounds, escalate decisions to leadership if needed, and re-engage the teams when they are feeling low. There's also a fine line between routinely encouraging members of the team to do things, and being annoying. As a project manager you get good at nudging people to do things in ways that get them to do it, without driving people up the wall.
Ganesha Sunder Rao V
Ganesha Sunder’s Answer
Develop the big idea: We are expected to pick up an idea and turn it into an executable project plan.
Organize the project tasks: We will work with the team (requirement to figure out exactly what needs to be done to bring the project to fruition.
Assemble the team: You'll put together a team that can help bring the project idea into reality.
Engaging stakeholders: Stakeholder engagement means working with the people affected by the project to ensure that they understand the coming changes and how the changes will impact them.
Managing the money: Projects cost money, and we must be able to put together a project budget, managing how the money is spent, and controlling costs.
Lead the team: We might be required to coach, train, mentor, and develop the people who work on the project. Leading the team involves setting up and managing collaboration on the team.
Manage the handover: We are expected to provide a clear and complete handover to the team who will manage the project going forward or will be working with the output that the project team delivered.
Divya K
Divya’s Answer
Apart from knowing the project management processes ( as mentioned by others through PMI), project manager should be a very good communicator who can handle stakeholders and also internal team conflicts. A good negotiator with cross-collaboration skills.
Drew Smith-Sahnow
Drew’s Answer
- a leader to keep people moving in the right direction,
- an organizer to plan and coordinate all the moving part of a project
- a communicator to successfully relay the status, importance, and goals of the project to everyone involved in the project.
There are, of course, many layers to this and these are only a few of the things a project management must do. You will find that these skills are needed in every industry.
Santosh Jilla
Santosh’s Answer
N T
N’s Answer
- Being a manager is a blessing and a curse. It comes with its advantages and disadvantages.
- Yes, you have more responsibility, but also yes, you have the ability to delegate tasks.
- Being a manager is all about knowing how to manage yourself, your time, your tasks, but also other resources time and tasks. Because at the end of the day, it is your responsibility that the work gets done, whatever way you believe is the most efficient way to get there.
- There is no ONE way to be a manager. Everyone has got their own style, some are more comfortable being micromanagers, and being close to the tasks performed by other resources working with them, others are more comfortable being macro manager, and don't want to be involved in the details of how you get there. I think finding the right balance between the two styles is perfect, but that is up to you.
- Being a manager involves you leading the team, knowing how and when to provide instant feedback, constructive criticism about their strengths as well as development points, but you also have to listen to what they have to say, as every manager needs to know what they need to improve on for the benefit of the team.
- Last, being a manager gives you a certain level of power, the ability to lead and guide the team in a certain direction, the ability to take certain key decisions, but it also puts you in a position, where if something goes wrong, you need to make sure you are ready to take the bullet for the team, and stand up for them rather than throw them under the bus. You fail as a manager, if you don't stand up for your team when something goes wrong.
Tim Riordan
Tim’s Answer
Munazza Ilyas
Munazza’s Answer
Initiating: includes defining scope, developing project charter, stakeholder mapping etc
Planning: includes developing project schedule, human resource planning, work breakdown, defining requirements etc
Executing: includes managing resources for project execution
Controlling and monitoring: includes monitor risks, assess issues, measure performance, manages changes, manage project communication etc
Closing: includes obtaining final acceptance for the project, distributing final project report etc
Tariq Ahmed
Tariq’s Answer
The planes being projects, or components of a project.
A PM uses a number of key tools in order to achieve this:
1. Action Plans which at a minimum contain an action, owner of the action, status, and due date
2. Project Meetings to synchronize, determine next steps, and unblock tasks
3. Communication upwards and downwards to maintain a shared collective understanding of where things are at
4. Estimation and forecasting
5. Reports & visualization to monitor the health and progression of the project, including team velocity
6. Manage risks to the project
Skills wise requires strong communication, leadership, decisiveness, and organization skills.
Scott Bledsoe
Scott’s Answer
Brian Mazurowski
Brian’s Answer
Tiep Q. Hoang, PMP
Tiep Q.’s Answer
Manina Ean
Manina’s Answer
- Leads project team through internal alignment project activities
- Create and manage project plan
- Ensure all necessary parties engaged
- Manage project plan
- Ensure all project activities are completed throughout design
- Highlight risks, escalations, updates to project teams and leadership
- Manage development schedule and resources through build
- Oversee UAT and report progress to team and leaders
- Highlight risks, escalations, updates
- Oversee go live and cutover plans
- Highlight risks, escalations, updates to project teams and leadership
- Lead team through any go live issues
- Ensure post go live business stability
- Complete project retrospective
- Complete operational hand-off to Business
- Close out project documentation
David Rice
David’s Answer
Julie Kreeger, Agile Coach CSM, CSPO, CSP, ICP-ACC, ICP-ATF, KMP II, CAL-E
Julie Kreeger, Agile Coach’s Answer
Kole Tanouye
Kole’s Answer
Project Manager can do or mean a lot of things but I think it can be summed up as a communicator. The above answers talk about what a project manager does and all of the responses come from being a great communicator. Communicating to different audiences. Writing a project plan and how it addresses each team. Creating a communication that is efficient.
Kole recommends the following next steps:
Edgar Roth, CPHIMS, CSM
Edgar’s Answer
Hosna Shanks
Hosna’s Answer
A good project manager is an overarching lead integrating all the relevant tasks and task owners under an overarching E2E execution. Oversighting for proper interlocks and deliverables
Raphael Trent
Raphael’s Answer
Raphael recommends the following next steps:
Karthik SP
Karthik’s Answer
The following are the roles and responsibilities of a Project Manager.
1) They maintain a team which involves in a Project be it, software development or testing, building or machinery or any field
2) They have dead lines and project schedules to complete the project within the time frame at effective cost with utmost perfection
3) They deal with clients finalize the specifications and project deadlines are discussed with team members
4) Every team member is allocated with a part of work which involves various stages of developments
5) He is responsible for every team members growth
6) He with a collaborative environment with his team will successfully complete the project
Niteesh Bhat
Niteesh’s Answer
Project managers have the responsibility of the planning, procurement and execution of a project, in any undertaking that has a defined scope, defined start and a defined finish; regardless of industry.
Project managers are first point of contact for any issues or discrepancies arising from within the heads of various departments in an organization before the problem escalates to higher authorities, as project representative.
Kyle Guzman
Kyle’s Answer
In your exciting role as a project manager, you'll be the guiding force behind the project, keeping an eye on the scope of work, adhering to schedule requirements, and managing the budget. You'll be the go-to person for arranging resources, warding off potential risks that could cause delays, and maintaining daily communication with your team. Ultimately, you'll be the decision-maker who steers the project back on course when needed.
Just a little reminder from our previous discussions - poor project management can often be the main culprit behind a project's failure. But don't worry, the field of project management is always changing and growing, making every day a new and exciting challenge.
David Rice
David’s Answer
Shaun Thompson, MPM
Shaun’s Answer
manage a project's scope (the purpose of the project)
manage a project's issues (problem that can impact the project)
manage a project' risks (events that affect the project in a positive or negative way)
manage a project's schedule (working with the people doing work on the project to get estimates to create a schedule)
manage the project's resources (the need's of the people working on the project)
manage the project's communication (the statuses and communications that are sent to the workers and people affected by the project)
These few items are some of the important items that a project manager is responsible and thus does this in the role as project manager.
Paul Warner
Paul’s Answer
Lakshmi Vedala
Lakshmi’s Answer
Ravi RT
Ravi’s Answer
The Project Manager is responsible for delivering the project, with authority and responsibility from the Project Board to run the project on a day-to-day basis.
Role of the project manager
The project manager is the individual responsible for delivering the project. The individual leads and manages the project team, with authority and responsibility from the project board, to run the project on a day-to-day basis. Controlled Environments is the standard project management method and is applicable to all project types.
The project manager has an important role in interfacing between the project and the business area. This is important for communicating and encouraging the need for transformation and change within the business area in tandem with the delivery of new capabilities from the project. The readiness of the business to exploit the new capability is crucial to success. Without this state of readiness in the business, there are likely to be disruptions and delays in the plan for benefits realisation.
Specific responsibilities of the project manager
The project manager, operating within agreed reporting structures, is responsible for:
designing and applying appropriate project management standards for incorporation
planning and monitoring the project
adopting any delegation and use of project assurance roles within agreed reporting structures-
preparing and maintaining project, stage and exception plans as required
managing project risks, including the development of contingency plans
liaison with programme management (if the project is part of a programme) and related projects to ensure that work is neither ----overlooked nor duplicated
monitoring overall progress and use of resources, initiating corrective action where necessary
applying change control and configuration management processes
reporting through agreed lines on project progress through highlight reports and end-stage assessments
liaison with appointed project assurance representatives to assure the overall direction and integrity of the project
maintaining an awareness of potential interdependencies with other projects and their impact
adopting and applying appropriate technical and quality strategies and standards
identifying and obtaining support and advice required for the management, planning and control of the project
managing project administration
conducting a project evaluation review to assess how well the project was managed
preparing any follow-on action recommendations
In construction projects the project manager also provides the interface between the project sponsor and the supply side of the project team.
Skills and attributes needed to be a project manager
The project manager should be able to:
apply a project management approach to the specific requirements of the project
establish a good working relationship with the Senior Responsible Owner
direct, manage and motivate the project team
develop and maintain an agreed project plan and detailed stage plans
understand and apply business case and risk management processes
tailor expert knowledge to meet specific circumstances
plan and manage deployment of physical and financial resources to meet project milestones
build and sustain effective communications with other roles involved in the project
apply quality management principles and processes
Important to note
The project manager should be appropriately trained in project management techniques and processes. For substantial projects, accredited training such as Practitioner should be considered. It is essential that the skills and experience of the project manager are matched to the requirements of the project and the business should fund appropriate training.
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