The Role Of A Project Manager
April 29th, 2008 | by Ahmed Arbab |A project manager is usually considered as the most responsible person for the success or the failure of the project. He first needs to define the project and then build its work plan. If the scope of the project is not very clear, or the project is executing poorly, the manager is held accountable. However, this does not require the manager to perform all the work by himself. There is a team work under the project manager, which helps to achieve all the objectives of the project. But, if something goes wrong, the project manager is ultimately accountable.
Project managers may need to take on multiple roles in accordance with the requirements of project. The project manager may need to assist with gathering business requirements, help to design a database management system or may prepare project documentation. The project manager can be successful if he happens to manage all aspects of a project very well. Some of the areas may include:
- Integration Management - This is developing and managing the direction of the project
- Scope Management - This includes planning, defining and managing the scope of the project.
- Time and Cost Management - This covers developing a schedule, allocating resources and managing funds for the project.
- Quality Management - This involves taking care of the quality of the process in question such that it meets or even exceeds various quality parameters set earlier.
- Human Resource Management - A manager needs to take care of his team, encourage and motivate them and make sure the team moves in the right direction.
- Communication Management - The manager needs to prepare a communication plan and make sure that there is a healthy communication, both horizontally and vertically.
- Risk Management - Various risks involved in a project should be identified and a mitigation and contingency plan needs to be developed to ensure that the project is not derailed at any point.
- Procurement Management - Various materials needed during the project need to be procured and managed with the vendors and suppliers for successful completion of the project.
