What are the major duties and responsibilities of a project manager?

No matter what the size of a project is, there is a need for an ambitious leader who has an ability to boost the productivity that considered as an important role of a project manager. Leading the team isn’t the only duty performed by a project manager as they also have to set up all the activities related to the project management. As we all know, there are tons of roles and responsibilities that come under the project manager. In fact, there is a complete pressure on the shoulder of a project manager on which team effort and efficiency depend.

On top of that, the project managers stay in huge demand when it comes to the job market. So, there is confusion in your mind regarding what exactly is the project management and the responsibilities needed to performed; then this post is the perfect place for you. We will begin it with basics and give you brief information in this area.

What is project management?

Project management can be defined as a discipline that set by an organization for achieving certain outcomes. It includes established procedures, policies, and principles that help a project team to complete a particular goal. There is a need for implementation of a great set of principles and procedures to make sure a project gets completed within a stipulated time. According to the Project Management Body of Knowledge principles, there is an involvement of five different phases in project management.

Each of them is interlinked with each other and comes under the duties of a project manager. We have explained about each of them below:

Initiating

The main motive of this phase is to begin a project and to set the root. That’s why this one is called the initiation phase in the project management. It assists in maintaining the focus of the team on the project’s status. Also, this phase assists in calculating whether the requirements of the business are successfully met or not.

Planning

When it comes to project management, even the experts consider this one as one of the important phases. A great portion of the project manager’s duties is covered in it. The work standards are created by a project manager in this step. In fact, the activities required to perform in all the phases are defined in this case. Along with that, resource planning, time estimation, and cost related things also done in this step.

Executing

Without any doubt, it is one of the most efficient phases performed in the project management process. A variety of things like testing, development, and implementation identified in the phase of execution. Here, the project manager has to perform the duty of building a team, giving details, and leading others in the team for completing the process. In simple language, we can say that a project manager performs the role of the coordinator in this phase.

Monitoring & maintenance

A project manager monitors the status of the project in this phase along with detecting the significant modifications. Also, the needed adjustments made in the project to ensure it caters the requirement of clients. Additionally, the quality is controlled and made up to the mark of needs.

Closing

The sign off process is involved in this phase along with the development of a project closure report. Also, the project completed in this phase.

It isn’t necessary that the phases of project management will be followed in the pattern mentioned above. They can be overlapped according to the requirements of the business. However, such a scenario only happen when things went out of control that is quite common in real working environments. That’s why the duty of the project manager is very important and needs to be managed carefully.

What are the advantages of project management?

There are immense benefits offered by project management that we have mentioned below:

• The duties of a project manager defined in this process that ranges from starting to the conclusion of a project.
• The outcomes of a project become predictable for the team
• A great quantity of time, effort, and resources saved if project management performed properly.
• The status of a certain work can be tracked with the help of project management. It assists in solving all the issues daily.
• The project manager gets assistance in facilitating message to the team members much easily that directly boosts productivity.
• If the project management performed properly, then the addition of a new scope and user story become possible.
• The focus of team on things related to development activities get improved as they don’t require to overhead on other aspects at all.
• The quality delivered to the clients become well with project management.
• Brilliant assistance in risk analysis along with problem-solving process.
• The collaboration in project activities gets boosted.

What are the different types of Project Management?

There are two major categories in which project management divided. However, each of them has further sub-categories that purely based on the execution mode.

General Project Management

This category divided into a variety of things that we have mentioned below:

• Adaptive Project Management
• Critical Chain Project Management
• Six Sigma Methodology
• Prince 2 Project Management
• PERT Network Chart
• Critical Path Method
• Theory of Constraints
• Traditional Project Management
• Extreme Project Management

IT Project Management

This one divided into sub-categories mentioned below:

• Joint Application Development
• Scrum Project Management
• Crystal Methods
• Kanban Project Management
• Rational Unified Process
• Waterfall Project Management
• Agile Project Management
• Feature Driven Development

What are the important skills that need to be possessed by a project manager?

There is a great variety of challenges in project management that demand versatile skills. Apart from leading the team to victory, a project manager also must control stakeholders along with checking both technical and non-technical problems. That’s not all; the whole project needs to be managed by a project manager.  In simple words, we can say that a project manager needs the following skills:

Technical skills

We aren’t saying that the project manager should be a tech Guru, but it is important to have some technical knowledge about the projects handled by them. It strongly assists in justifying the negotiation and feasibility analysis in a project. Additionally, the manager should be capable of creating visual presentations with the help of software. It can be a great option to present ideas among the stakeholders.

Business & domain skills

There will be lots of discussions in all the stages of a project with which manager has to deal with. It ranges from initiation to the conclusion of a project. That’s why it is important that the project manager should have knowledge related to the business and domain in the project.

Project Management knowledge

A project manager should possess in-depth information about the basics of project management. Lack of this knowledge can result in difficulties to tackle different situations arises in the execution process.

People Management Skills

The project managers have to perform their duty on both sides, i.e., client & team. Both of them are important for each other, and that’s why it is essential that a project manager has information about it. He/she should have the ability to manage the people in the team adequately.

What are the important soft skills needed for project manager role?

As we all know that the team is lead by a project manager and that’s why he/she has to ensure teamwork adequately for completing the project. Now, we will tell you about the major soft skills possessed by a project manager. They are mentioned below in detail below:

Team management

The role of the project coordinator also plays by a manager in a company. He/she should maintain the pace of things and keep them operational. Some of his team management skills include assigning tasks, maintaining operations, setting objectives, and tracking the performance of each member in the team.

Leadership

The important skill that should be possessed by a project manager is leadership as he/she is a major individual responsible for controlling the project. In addition to that, a project manager is also the one who lead them and take them forward in a positive manner.

Scheduling

Another important thing that considered as the major duty and role of a project manager is to schedule the tasks in a project. It is one of the key components that come under project management. Every team faces problems to complete the project within time as well as budget. That’s why the project manager should be well aware of the scheduling techniques and tools. Also, he/she should know the method to develop milestones and creating the techniques to complete within stipulated time.

Communication

In this skill, we are talking about effective communication. A project manager should be capable of communicating messages clearly among the members of the team, vendors, and stakeholders. If you believe that communication only involves verbal things, then you need to think again. It also consists of file sharing, chatting, and plenty of other things. Here, we want to say that the project manager should have brilliant communication and knowledge related to the different project management tools.

Risk management

As we all know, there are a plethora of risks involved in the different steps of a project. Many of them are left unanticipated in the planning process in many phases. At that time, there should a backup plan created by the project manager to tackle with such dangers. Additionally, he/she should be able to deal with upcoming issues at different levels. It is the main reason that PMBOK is known as one of the major areas to learn for project managers.

Task Management

The tasks are considered as the heart of scheduling in project management. That’s why there is a need for well-managed and acquainted project manager in a team so that all types of tasks can be managed wonderfully without any complexity that raised from mismanagement of the project.

Negotiating

Considered as a very important skill, the negotiating should be in the blood of every project manager. Generally, there are a huge number of demands possessed by clients related to the budget. So, the project manager should be capable of negotiating with them so that this deal turns out to be profitable for the company. It is a necessary soft skill that needs to be possessed by the manager at every cost.

Let’s now talk about the duties and responsibilities of a project manager. There is a huge responsibility on the shoulder of a manager as the performance of the complete team depends on it. We have mentioned the major ones below:

• Proper planning and definition of the scope
• Capability to breakdown tasks and plan activities according to that.
• Setting the order of tasks
• Planning about the utilization of resources
• Creating a schedule about the way tasks would be completed
• Estimation about completion time and cost
• Making a complete budget from start to conclusion
• Creating SOW and other documentation about project manager
• Creating charts to schedule things
• Guiding the team from the front
• Proper analysis of potential risks
• Management of risks and solving techniques
• Tracking how much tasks have progressed
• Organizing meetings
• Coordination with vendors
• Maintaining quality

Conclusion

To sum up, we can say that there are no restrictions on the job of project manager as he/she has to take care of the complete project. There is a huge requirement of skills, knowledge, and expertise to perform this job sufficiently. So, it is important to have a project manager certification to create a successful career in this area.  It assists in validating your skills among the companies.

If you want to receive help regarding this project management certifications, then our online training can help you. Contact us now.