17 sie
Why do I need a Project Manager in my project?
The job title „project manager” is fairly common today. But the roles and responsibilities of a project manager can be confusing if you’re not familiar with them. I imagine that many people who hear the term „project manager” don’t understand what it entails, so how do they know why they need such a man in their project?
What does a Project Manager do?
According to the most common definition a project manager is:
- “the person assigned by the performing organization to lead the team that is responsible for achieving the project objectives.”
So he is basically the person responsible for managing the project and the person responsible for its success. Nevertheless, there are many factors that go into achieving these goals. Below you can find four reasons why projects need professional and experienced project managers on top of them.
1. PM ensures the project is well organized to achieve the project goals
Teams need to communicate frequently, know the status of milestones and know how to handle key project issues well. It is important that the project schedule is know for each team member. There must be maintained a weekly status report, or updated project schedule, to keep each team member informed of project progress. Therefore – main goal here is to avoid lack of organization.
An experienced project manager will help keep those factors in line by ensuring the project is organized for success. A bit of pre-planning will be needed here, clarifying roles and expectations to achieve the goal. Without organization, teams can unnecessarily churn needlessly thinking that they are making progress.
2. One point of communication and accountability
Project manager is a one person who gathers all team and is responsible for the final result. We can count on him that his leadership deliver the effect the customer is hoping for. Projects work best when decisions are made quickly and follow rules and protocols. This happens when the responsibility rests with one person. An effective project manager is that one who can take calculated risks and arrive at decisions on time while taking responsibility for results.
Project management is a leadership role that helps deliver the project, but communication is the key to deliver this project on time and in the form the customer expects. Therefore communication is the essential skill project managers use in getting stuff done. We should look at communication like as a lifeblood of a project.
Active and engaging communication can help to harness the talents of project team member and inspires the others. It can also build trust, boost the morale of the team and ultimately produce better project results.
3. Experience and one more time experience
Professional project managers bring extensive experience and knowledge based on thousands of hours worked on successful projects. A good PM must have the ability to apply frameworks and methodologies, such as agile and SCRUM, throughout the project lifecycle.
If team is implementing a project in a new field or a it is a totally new case for them, adding a project manager with past experience will be critical to the success of the project. Otherwise, the project may be more time and cost consuming.
An experienced PM can prove to be a time saver, helping with timely approvals, defending change requests and areas needing immediate improvement. His expertise in understanding complexity and making quick decisions can sort unwanted show stoppers on the way to a successful project.
4. Staying in budget
Everything always comes down to money😉. It’s a good idea to have someone on the project who keeps an eye on how many hours (and therefore how many dollars) are being spent on specific tasks. A developer simply doesn’t have time for that, because his main goal is to focus on the code.
Wouldn’t you like to know how many hours were burned on a specific task? Taking time to put together that type of report means time taken away from writing good code. PM hour of work is probably cheaper than developer’s one😉. Both of them should focus on their jobs and tasks they know best, so we should leave budget watching to the PM and coding to the developer.
Conclusions
Many factors contribute to project success, but investing a lot of money in the project and trying to avoid additional costs seams like cutting corners and hoping for the best. It could end tragically. Are you willing to risk project failure? Without PM, teams and clients are exposed to chaotic management, unclear objectives, a lack of resources, unrealistic planning, much more higher risk, poor quality project deliverables, projects going over budget and delivered late.
If you start something, we recommend doing it by the book to get the desired result.
