What are the Roles and Responsibilities of a Project Manager

Project manager carries essential roles and responsibilities in an organisation by planning, executing the plan, monitoring the activities, controlling the overall projects and associated people and successfully closing the project.

He is also responsible for day-today’s project management work while taking care of the different areas of the project like strategy building ,scheduling, looking after finance, understanding the risk factor, ensuring the high quality of the product or service and handling each and every aspect of the different resources. 

One of the very important roles and responsibilities of a project manager is making the right decision, because a right decision can bring benefit and growth into the business, in the same manner even a wrong decision can cause severe damage to the project and ultimately the business.

The role and responsibilities of a project manager is versatile, which means they have to handle several roles and responsibilities in day-today’s life.  The roles and responsibilities can vary according to the industry the project manager is working in.

Here below are some of the essential role and responsibility of a project manager in almost each and every industry:

• Creating plan and developing project strategy
• Monitoring the activities happening in the project 
• Scheduling and controlling overall functions
• Establishing regular communication with the stakeholders of the project
• Looking after and managing the entire project team
• Identifying and understanding the risk related to the project
• Taking decision wisely according to the risk and opportunities 
• Looking after and managing all the project scope
• Preparing the project budget and controlling
• Make sure that the project provides maximum customer expectation
• Continuously analyzing the functions taking place in the project
• Prepare report according to the project status
• Always taking the best initiatives for bringing steady and continuous growth to the business 

Common roles and responsibilities of project manager

1. Planning the project related activities

The project manager is responsible to develop the project strategy which lists each and every activity that must be taken to accomplish the success of the project. Developing the strategy is the first thing that a project manager must do in his planning.  You also need to understand the score of the project and prepare the project schedule according to that. 

2. Organizing an effective team to accomplish the project goal

 As a project manager you need to organise your team in the appropriate manner, so that all of their potential is used in the most efficient manner in order to reach the goal of the project with the best possible performance. Managing all the effort of the team and continuously leading them towards the best result helps in accomplishing the project goal.

3. Understanding the potential of the team member and assigning them responsibility accordingly

A project includes varieties of tasks to be accomplished,Therefore it becomes very important that the job responsibilities are allocated wisely to the team.  It is a good leadership quality that a project manager is able to identify the actual potential person  to carry out a specific type of task.  It is very easy to blame the team and find excuses, but understanding the actual potential team member and delegating them the appropriate task will always make the person a better project manager.

4. Time management and Controlling 

A project manager must set the deadlines which are achievable,Distribute the task among the team and manage to accomplish the project within the deadline. Managing the time well and completing the project successfully creates a good impression on the stakeholders and client. 

5. Monitor the project and evaluating the result

A project manager spends a lot of time monitoring the status and progress of the project.  Once the project is started successfully, the project manager needs to keep his eye continuously on the project and from time to time evaluate the result. He needs to continuously assess if the project is running according to the expectation or if not modifying the needed steps, so that the project is successfully accomplished.

A day in the life of a project manager

Project manager’s  day to day life intimately connected to the projects of an organisation. Planning for new projects, looking after the existing project, Setting the goal and achieving it, are all  some of the most important work project managers do everyday. 

Project manager is also responsible for utilising different project management tools and skills to make sure that the project is running with maximum efficiency, on time and fulfilling the expectation.

Some of the daily activities of a project manager include:

• Working together with the project team and contributing the best
• Rectifying the mistake, finding out every opportunities and scope, securing all the resources etc
• Preparing  project budget and maintaining it regularly
• Creating common project objectives and ensuring that entire project team is contributing to achieve them
• Preparing the milestones according to the timeline and ensuring that entire project is moving towards progress as pre-defined plan
• Imparting innovative ideas and creative thoughts
• Understanding the business opportunity and possible risk  to manage the project in the most productive manner
• Arranging the several project meetings and facilitating them,  which may include kick off meeting,  kick start meeting, meeting regarding  risk assessment, meeting regarding regular project progress and launch review etc.
• Looking after all the documentation and maintaining its transparency
• Establishing a strong communication process among the every contributors in the project
• Make sure that all the data entry taken place are  error free
• Distributing the responsibilities to the project team members according to their skill and ability
• Continuously monitoring the entire activities regarding the project and the contribution of the team members
• Assessing and evaluating the result and communicating with the team accordingly

Roles and Responsibilities of a Project Manager

The project manager is responsible to plan and organise all the architectural activities regarding the projects of an organisation. He also coordinates the relationship between the project team and the client and leads that entire team to accomplish the project successfully. In order to become a successful project manager you must be able to use your resources wisely and in the most productive manner.

Some of the roles and responsibilities of a project manager are:

• Preparing project budget
• Developing proposals
• Establish strong client relationship and maintaining it
• Preparing the project execution plan
• Understanding each and every scope and preparing the schedule accordingly
• Utilizing all the best communication tools, software
• Delivering the responsibility to the the team members
• Assisting the team members in every possible manner
• Identifying the project risk and assessing them wisely
• Providing the leadership to the entire project team
• Developing the milestone for the project and  meeting those milestones on time
• Developing financial commitments 
• Ensure acquiring solid understanding of the project requirements
• Inspiring strong relationship between the internal and external stakeholders
• Providing smooth and quality delivery of the project
• Regularly reviewing the project and identifying the best methods and opportunity
• Contributing the most effort to provide the quicker delivery of the project
• Monitoring the process and assessing regularly in order to impart improvement into the project 

Qualifications needed to become a project manager

• Master’s degree in Business Administration from a reputed  University
• Experience in managing the project by working in several projects
• If you have bachelor degree then you should have at least 4500 hours of project management experience
•  In case of having diploma, you need to have  experience of working with project for 7500 hours

Experiences and skills for becoming project manager

• Possessing experience in dealing with several projects
• Ability to think creatively and solve problem
• Excellent verbal, non-verbal and written  communication skill
• Solid organizational skill
• Ability to provide leadership by leading, providing coaching and developing the people
• Ability to deal with different types of conflict and providing resolution
• Flexible to adopt different changes and to perform most productively in a dynamic environment
• Must be an result oriented person
• An enthusiastic and proactive person
• Identifying different source and providing best solution
• Innovative person with risk taking ability
• Ability to develop networking and comfortable with the teamwork
• Knowledge of Advanced Technologies and ability to adopt the change quickly
• Must be a motivated person to inspire everyone in regular basis
• Strong command on different marketing tools
• Ability to use Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint and other related software
• Strong analytical skill 

Takeaways from the roles and responsibilities of a project manager

The project manager plays a leadership role in order to create and lead the entire project of an organisation and complete the project successfully on time providing the best result. A project manager has to deal with several aspects of the projects during the project life cycle. Each and every area of the project is very important for successfully accomplishing the project. He uses different project management tools to make the work easier yet effective.

Some of the most important task of a project manager are:

• Planning  and creating strategies for new projects
• Providing the leadership to the existing projects
• Creating the goal to be achieved and preparing milestones 
• Executing the project and contributing to bring success in achieving the goal of the project
• Distributing the tasks to the stakeholders according to their skill and ability 
• Leading the entire internal and external team, those are contributing to the project

Looking after the projects regularly and taking care of the minute details, managing each and every task and strategy, assessing the project progress are some of the very important roles and responsibilities of a project manager. 

A project manager must also be prepared to face any kind of mishaps or unwanted incidents and must be able to handle them in the most efficient way.

He is also required to provide strong leadership to the entire project team and manage them for the most productive result in the day-today activities. As he plays the most important role by being the leader of the entire project, he is responsible for the success or disaster of the project. Because of this he must be very careful that the project planning is appropriate, it was executed in the specified time frame, it is being run through the right people, being monitored regularly, evaluated results frequently and following the budget and achieving the objectives and milestones. 

The project manager should also be able to establish the branding of the organization as the cost of retention is much cheaper than acquisition and it makes people care more about the organization.

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