Introduction to Project Manager Functions
Being a Project Manager can be daunting! While you steer a project towards crossing the finishing line, you will need all the help and knowledge possible to make a success story out of the project that you’ve undertaken. A successful Project Manager is one that perfectly balances the project on their shoulders while dealing with multiple interruptions and obstacles that might come ahead of them.
Get to Know More About The Project Manager Functions
A juggler is a perfect example of ultimate balance and skill and loads of hard work. Take this to an organizational setting, subtract the juggling pins and clown clothes, add a formal setting and loads of activities and reports, and there you have it… a Project Manager. As daunting as it sounds, it is very much achievable and can make up for some great experience to build on your personality.
Projects are entities that are intended to push a problem or an issue out of the way of achieving a company’s vision or objectives. These projects can either be an improvement or an introduction to a system.
Project management is the glue that brings all these efforts, towards creating this change and improving systems, together. It’s a discipline that needs a strong and confident individual leading from the front. Project management over the years has evolved to include many tools and techniques, such as Agile, Kanban, JIT, Lean, Six Sigma, and much more. These tools and techniques have been instrumental in getting strategies to be implemented in a systematic and step-by-step manner, thus, encouraging businesses to grow and expand at the same time.
Amidst these all, we have the Project Manager who carefully puts two and two together to get the desired outputs. Managing varied situations and implementing methodologies in a clear and concise manner is a sign of an excellent Project Manager, and if you, at this time, don’t feel like you’ve reached that level yet, this article will prepare you mentally to hold on to that dream of becoming a successful Project Manager in this highly competitive world.
Who to be a Successful in Project Manager Functions?
Who exactly is a Project Manager? What do these Project Managers do? What role do they play in the grand scheme of taking the project from its initiating stage through until the closing stage? Who does become a Project Manager? Well, I had these exact questions in my mind earlier, but after being exposed to the project management scene and carrying out a lot of research, I found out and today through this article will throw some light onto the mystery of who a Project Manager is or, better still, whoa successful Project Manager is.
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Project Managers are personnel who take up projects and while understanding each intricacy of them, steer them into successful completion with minimal roadblocks. A successful Project Manager very meticulously works at maintaining a strong balance among the triple constraints within project management. These constraints are focal points within a project and managing them is the key to managing the project. The triple constraints look like this:
Balancing time and resources if the budget is tight is a necessity for quality. Balancing resources and budget if the time allotted is less is necessary for quality, and balancing time and budget if the resources are scarce or aplenty is necessary for quality; a Project Manager’s job would be revolved around this while managing a project.
Communication in such cases needs to be given utmost importance as it is through communication that all these can be easily handled. Project Managers look at all the aspects that can remotely affect a project; project plans, schedules, handling of reports, and much more. All these do put you in the spot of a good Project Manager, but what makes you stand out and ensures complete success is being able to keep yourself organized and the team close-knitted and happy to work for the project.
Quality is another aspect of a successful Project Manager. Ensuring quality not only in the final product to the customers and clients, but quality in every task and activity undertaken for the project.
Taming wild weathers is what can bring the potential and caliber of a Project Manager to the forefront. If you go through a plan or a situation and expect every step to go as planned, you must be mistaken. Projects have a very volatile in nature and are subject to changes every now and then. These changes can be risks or can be opportunities. It is here that the Project Manager can be instrumental in making sure that focus is on the strategy deployed and the objective to be achieved, and make informed decisions and calculated steps to counter risks and damages or avail of opportunities.
What Responsibility Does A Project Manager Functions Have To Carry?
We already have a very fair idea of who a successful Project Manager is, so it will come easily to you to decipher the responsibilities they carry while administering a project and pushing through the skills of quality control, communication, and people management.
Efficiency is a keyword when it comes to being a Project Manager. A lot is concentrated on this job role, right from planning to budgeting and all other operational work. It’s the Project Manager’s responsibility to ensure that the 3 factors are looked after while carrying out this function:
- Quality
- Timeliness
- In line with business objectives
Project Managers have the responsibility of showing strong leadership skills alongside their managerial prowess, as it’s leading from the front that makes it possible for systems, people, and processes to come together into a wonderful amalgamation within the project management world.
Top 8 Project Manager Functions
Project management isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and, if you’re the one holding the cup right now, it’s in your best interest that you get to these top 8 moves or steps for you to deploy, to get success on the chart for all the projects you are aiming for.
PS: These are moves that can be applied by first-time Project Managers, experienced Project Managers, and, also, Project Manager Aspirants, who want to make it big in the corporate world. So, let’s dig in and unearth a whole lot of catalysts to your successful project manager career.
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Organizing Your Work (project manager functions)
Whether it’s your workplace or workstation or it’s your work itself, organization comes across as the most fundamental move when you’re a Project Manager. The organization isn’t secluded to Project Managers experience and has come across to be an effective tool for everyone to use.
An organized individual needs to have a clear mind to concentrate on the work to be performed and making the project not only good but great! Keeping your eye on the big picture, and placing tasks and activities in perfect alignment to this big picture or vision you have in mind is also a form of organization that Project Managers experience are supposed to possess as a basic characteristic.
A project is a jumble of many things to be done in precise amounts and in a slated duration of time. Handling such humongous amounts of work needs categorization and efficiency to plan out what goes where and who does what, in such close quarters. This will need you to harbor organization as a personal skill and make efforts to hone it day in and day out.
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Sifting through the Options (project manager functions)
While we are not yet going into the field of baking and discussing sifting, we will discuss the move that’s going to help you immensely in saving time, getting the most of your decisions, and doing the absolutely necessary things in a project.
In every project, there is ample data doing the rounds and information is captured at almost every nook and cranny. Diving into this large amount of data and picking on only what’s needed can save you time and resources and can help you move on with your project in a faster manner.
Sometimes, it is important that you sift through all the inputs coming your way and only keep in mind or in view the relevant inputs or data, which can be further put to use. These come under the finer details while managing a project, and a manager who pays a good deal of attention to performing this action can very well meet a successful project. This will help them turn themselves from good Project Managers professional to successful ones.
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Communicating Effectively (project manager functions)
Communication again is a fundamental unit within the skill set of a Project Manager professional, but what can make you a successful Project Manager is the level of effectiveness you render through communication. Creative use of e-mails and status reports communicating an idea should be taken up by a Project Manager experience who is aiming at success.
Timely communication is also a factor to be considered when dealing with schedules and decisions to be made and problems to be resolved effectively. Staying true to the vision of the project, with effective communication skills, a successful Project Manager professional can ensure that work is done is being communicated to stakeholders as well. This way even they will know what’s happening with the project and can give timely inputs in case of deviation from the project plan, at any point in time.
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Listening to the Fine Prints (project manager functions)
We’ve always been individuals reading through the fine prints and performing our work in accordance with that. But, listening is an important trait that not all Project Managers professional possess. Lending a listening ear to your team members and your customers can bring about a high level of collaboration within the realms of a project.
Once you get the information from all the sources, for a successful manager, you can purely swish that magic wand and enable yourself to make decisions based on what you have heard from the people who will execute this change. This trait helps stakeholders and project sponsors to understand of your dedication to getting things right, as you will be taking notes of everything that is expected by these individuals to make a successful project, true to its objective.
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Maintaining a Domain Expertise (project manager functions)
Technically sound Project Managers have proved to be most successful as they understand the exact execution of the project tasks and activities. This added knowledge apart from project management skills, techniques, and tools can bring about an added advantage as well as these can give the Project Manager an upper hand in exercising authority and gaining strategic insight.
If you’re a Project Manager experience who is part of an industry that is apart from your own domain, then it will be beneficial for you to conduct an in-depth study into the industry in question or sit down with a team member who knows how the industry and processes work so that you can get an opportunity to suggest appropriate changes into the project.
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Being a Chameleon (project manager functions)
Flexible and adaptable like a chameleon is what a successful Project Manager experience needs to be. “Each project is different”—this is the tagline that will be the crux for Project Managers to act as needed. With each project being different, the approach towards each project should also change.
While there are best practices and standardization with regard to project management, it’s not necessary for Project Managers benefits to stick with them to the T for a successful project. Each project is unique enough for a Project Manager to add his/her tinge to it. Each Project Manager also approaches a project in a different manner, like their distinct signature. Being the one to always understand the project thoroughly can help mold and bend the approach in order to accommodate the proceedings of the project.
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Knowing Your Team (project manager functions)
You know the team members within your team and you know their designations and roles and responsibilities in a project. But, do you know what else they can contribute to? Sitting down with individual team members can bring out new perspectives and knowledge about a project team member and can also enable you to improve your pragmatic approach to project management.
Take the time and effort in knowing more about your team and use this knowledge to improve your project in any way possible. Be not a Project Manager functions but a confidant in disguise. Not into their personal life but their professional life and aspirations.
Knowing them and playing to their strengths can strengthen your stance with the project and can enable you to plan the project with them in tow, thus, getting their buy-in.
Remember that a project is not solely about you and what you do to get the desired results, it’s a team effort towards bringing about a change in the workflow of the organization and needs you to lead the team.
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Looking Forward to Work (project manager functions)
Successful Project Managers benefits have an objective in life; to take projects as a challenge, raise the bar to creativity, and put to use all project management techniques and methodologies to simplify work and bring out desired outcomes.
Enjoying what you do is extremely critical to success. Successful Project Managers benefits look at project management as a career and not just a job to go to. They treat challenges as opportunities to outdo themselves and always seek to learn and grow in the industry of their choice.
Making life and business simple is surely the best thing in the world and this is how you see it through the eyes of a successful Project Manager benefits.
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This is a guide to Project Manager Functions. Here we have discussed the basic concept, responsibility, along with top 8 Project Manager Functions in detail.You may look at the following articles to learn more –
