Are you thinking about becoming a project manager? If so, this is the blog for you. I’ve been a project manager for over ten years and I’m going to explain the key responsibilities of a project manager.
If you’re thinking about becoming a project manager, it’s important that you understand these responsibilities so that you have the background you need to make that career decision. The answer to these questions is very similar across all disciplines of project management, but the examples I’ll use will be specific to technical or IT projects.
First, let’s start with the basics. What is a project? Here is a definition from the association of project management –
A project is a unique, transient endeavour, undertaken to achieve planned objectives, which could be defined in terms of outputs, outcomes or benefits. A project is usually deemed to be a success if it achieves the objectives according to their acceptance criteria, within an agreed timescale and budget. Time, cost and quality are the building blocks of every project.
So, that is the definition of a project. As a project manager, you would typically manage a team of people, along with a budget, to deliver the project by the agreed deadline. Now let’s go over the key responsibilities a project manager has. It’s worth noting that you will need the help of other people for the majority of your responsibilities.
- Define the scope
The project scope tells us what the project is delivering. Most projects will have a primary objective that is easy to grasp. For example, in the case of technical project management, the objective might be to upgrade a system (e.g. Windows 7 to Windows 10). However, there is usually more to it than just the primary objective. For example, are we also upgrading the infrastructure the application sits on? Are we building any new test environments? The project scope will capture all the core objectives of the project but it won’t go into low level detail. It is your responsibility as the project manager to define the scope, but you will do so with the help of people who have the required knowledge.
See my blog https://projectmanaverse.com/2022/04/13/what-is-scope/ for a detailed breakdown of how to write the project scope.
2) Estimate the cost
Before a decision can be made as to whether or not a project should be mobilised, we must have an idea of what the project is going to cost. At the early stage of the project you can only provide a rough estimate, as coming up with an accurate costs needs a lot of detailed planning (which we won’t start doing until the project is approved). So, you need to work with subject matter experts (SMEs) in the business to think about the resources (which are usually mostly people) that might be needed to deliver the outcomes, how long it might take to deliver them, and also consider things like hardware and licence costs. From there you can provide a rough estimate for the project.
3) Write and present the business case
The business case is the document that states why we should do the project. In order for the ‘big wigs’ to decide whether a project should be done, they need to know some basics –
- Why are we doing the project?
- How much will the project cost?
- How long will it take?
- What are the risks?
- What happens if we don’t do the project? What will the impact be?
The business case will answer these questions and more. As the project manager it is usually our job to present the business case to at least one approval forum. These forums can be tough and we usually get a grilling. Why? Because there usually isn’t enough budget to do all the projects – so the big wigs will prioritise the most important ones. So, when we present our business case we better be prepared!
4) Create and manage the project plan
One of the most important deliverables is the project plan. You need to work with your team to break down the scope into components, agree who is going to deliver those components, agree what order they should be delivered in and how long they will take. Once you have the plan, it’s now your responsibility to make sure it stays on track. We call this ‘managing the plan’. A big part of the project manager role is chasing up/nagging people to make sure they are doing what they are supposed to be doing, when they are supposed to be doing it.
5) Manage Risks and Issues
When you are in the thick of a project, you will have issues crop up all the time. On some projects you will have new issues everyday. Issues are problems that stop you from delivering your plan. You need to resolve them quickly and you will rarely be able to solve issues single handedly. Be resourceful and use your team and others to help you. Resolving issues is a core part of project management, you can think of it as problem solving.
Risks are just issues that may occur in the future, so you need to work with your team to reduce the likelihood of those risks occurring, and plan for what you will do if they occur.
6) Manage the budget
Every project will be given a specific amount of money or budget so that the resources needed to deliver it can be paid for. As a project manager, it is your responsibility to make sure you don’t run out of money or go over that budget. At the start of the project you should plan out how much you should be spending each month, and then track that carefully throughout the project. Sometimes you will have to ask for more money, but as I’m sure you can imagine these requests are not well received.
7) Manage the stakeholders
By ‘stakeholders’ we mean anyone who has an interest in the project. For example, the person paying for the project, the business area who uses the system you are upgrading, the Company Risk Department, etc etc. It is critical that you keep your stakeholders well informed of the project’s progress. You need to keep your stakeholders happy but you also need to ‘keep them in line’ to some extent. This is called stakeholder management. Poor stakeholder management will often lead to problems and blockers on your project that could have easily been avoided with good stakeholder management.
8) Do the administration
Projects usually come with administration tasks or ‘paper work’. This could range from approving time sheets, to quote requests forms, to whatever various paperwork that is required to move through the project’s or organisation’s governance or approval processes.
9) Implement the project
This is more relevant for technical or IT projects. Implementing the project means getting the thing you have built into the business, the market or even the world. For example, implementing a new system and getting it live so people can actually log on and use it. Implementations can be very complex and you’ll usually be able to bring in an Implementation Manger to plan and run the implementation for you, but sometimes you’ll need to do it yourself!
What you absolutely need to do as a project manager is manage the ‘Implementation Readiness’ activities. This is making sure that all the things that need to happen before the implementation have been done so that the project lands smoothly and all the stakeholders are ready for it.
10) Handover and close the project
It can sometimes be difficult to ‘escape’ a project, even years after you have delivered it! When you have managed a project from beginning to end, you know it inside out and become somewhat of an expert. It’s therefore understandable that people will continue to come to you with questions or issues even after the project is closed. We don’t want that. We want a clean break so we that we can move on to new projects. To get that clean break, we need to handover the finished project to someone else, usually someone ‘in the business’. We need to make sure they understand everything that they need to understand, the support model has been agreed, and that they formally agree to take on whatever the project has delivered. Once the project handover has completed and been documented, you can officially close down the project and move on.
I hope this has helped you to understand what a project manager does. If you’d like to learn about the key skills a project manager should have, please visit the this blog post.
Project Manaverse 