The Role of the Project Manager

407.1 The Role of a Project Manager

A new employee in the company mailroom noticed an older man sitting in the corner, sorting mail, weighing packages, adding postage and doing other simple jobs. He asked his supervisor who the man was.

That's Joe." the supervisor said. "He has been with the company for 35 years and is getting close to retirement."

"Really." the new employee replied. "And he's been in the mailroom the whole time?"

"No, he left a number of years ago. But he asked for a transfer back - after spending several years as a project manager."

On the surface, the role of a project manager should be easy to describe. In fact, from a textbook perspective it probably is. But the challenge to understanding roles and responsibilities is that they are different from company to company. So, although this webpage will provide an overall perspective of the role, you still need to determine what the role of a project manager is at your company, or in your organization.

General Definition

In general, the project manager is responsible for the overall success of the project. In some companies, this person might be called a Project Coordinator, or a Team Leader, however, the key aspect is that the person is responsible for ensuring the success of the project.

What does it take for the project to be a success? If you follow the TenStep Project Management Process® (www.TenStep.com), or a similar approach, you first must define the project and build the schedule. This is where the project manager's responsibilities start. If the project begins and you find out later that you are not clear on scope, the project manager is the one who is accountable. If your project is executing a poor schedule, the project manager is accountable.

The work around defining the project means that you understand and gain agreement on the overall objectives, scope, risk, approach, budget, etc. It also includes defining or adopting the specific project management procedures that will be used to manage the project.

This does not mean that the project manager must do all this work themselves. There may be an entire team of people helping to create the Project Charter and schedule. However, if something does not go right, the project manager is accountable.

Process Responsibilities

Once the project starts, the project manager must successfully manage and control the work, including:

Identifying, tracking managing and resolving project issues
Proactively disseminating project information to all stakeholders
Identifying, managing and mitigating project risk
Ensuring that the solution is of acceptable quality
Proactively managing scope to ensure that only what was agreed to is delivered, unless changes are approved through scope management
Defining and collecting metrics to give a sense for how the project is progressing and whether the deliverables produced are acceptable
Managing the overall schedule to ensure work is assigned and completed on time and within budget

Again, this does not mean that the project manager physically does all of this, but they must make sure it happens. If the project has problems, or scope creep, or faces risks, or is not setting expectations correctly, then the project manager is the person held accountable.

To manage the project management processes, a person should be well organized, have great follow-up skills, be process oriented, be able to multi-task, have a logical thought process, be able to determine root causes, have good analytical ability, be a good estimator and budget manager, and have good self-discipline.

People Responsibilities

In addition to process skills, a project manager must have good people management skills. This includes:

Having the discipline and general management skills to make sure that people follow the standard processes and procedures
Establishing leadership skills to get the team to willingly follow your direction. Leadership is about communicating a vision and getting the team to accept it and strive to get there with you.
Setting reasonable, challenging and clear expectations for people, and holding them accountable for meeting the expectations. This includes providing good performance feedback to team members
Team building skills so that the people work together well, and feel motivated to work hard for the sake of the project and their other team members. The larger your team and the longer the project, the more important it is to have good team-building skills.
Proactive verbal and written communicator skills, including good, active listening skills.

Again, you are responsible for the success of the project. If the team has poor morale and is missing deadlines, you need to try to resolve it. If team members don't understand exactly what they need to do and when it is due, then you are responsible.

Multiple Roles

Depending on the size and complexity of the project, the project manager may take on other responsibilities in addition to managing the work. For instance, the project manager may assist with gathering business requirements. Or they may help design a database management system or they may write some of the project documentation. Project management is a particular role that a person fills, even if the person who is the project manager is working in other roles as well.

For instance, a project manager might manage the project for 45% of their time, perform business analysis for 25%, work on design for 15% and write documentation for 15%. This does not mean that one of the responsibilities of a project manager role is to spend 15% of their time on design. Instead, it just means that the project is not large enough to need a full-time project manager. The project manager spends the rest of their time in other project roles such as Business Analyst, Designer and Technical Writer. Depending on the size of your projects and the way your company is organized, a project manager’ time may be allocated one of three ways.

They may have a full time role on a large project.
They may have project management responsibilities for multiple projects, each of which is less than full time, but the combination of which adds up to a full-time role.
They may fill multiple roles, each of which requires a certain level of skill and responsibility. On one project, for instance, they may be both a project manager and an analyst.

Having Project Management Accountability but not Responsibility

In some organizations, the project manager is accountable for the success of the project, but does not have the right level of responsibility. Managing the team in a matrix organization is an example of that. You are asked to manage a project utilizing people that you do not have direct management responsibility for. In other cases, you may find that your ability to resolve issues is hampered because you are not high enough in the organization to get an issue resolved quickly. In other instances, you may find that your ability to be innovative and flexible is constrained by organizational policies and inertia.

All of these cases can be cause for frustration. One way to deal with this is to define roles and responsibilities as a part of the Project Charter. This can help set and manage expectations. For instance, if you have no budget or expense approval authority, then note that up front, along with a process for expense approval. That way, if problems do arise later, everyone knows who has the right level of authority to resolve them. For most project managers, the frustration level is not caused so much by a lack of power as much as it is caused by ambiguity. If the project manager does not have the authority, it is important to know who does, and what process is needed to gain action.

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