A Project Manager is an individual who is responsible for delivering the project. The responsibility for the success of a project lies with the project manager. The Project Manager also is accountable for day-to-day project leads and manages the project team, with the authority and responsibility to run the project on a day-to-day basis.
Harold Kerzner defines the project manager’s responsibility as “coordinating and integrating activities across multiple functional lines” (2003). This means integrating the activities necessary to develop a project plan, executing that plan, and making changes to that plan.
There are four leadership roles of a project manager – Leader, Manager, Facilitator, and Mentor. As a leader, a project manager defines the vision of the project, communicates and motivates team members to achieve it, and acts as their representative to stakeholders. As a manager, he tracks a project concerning cost, schedule, quality, scope, and performance and reports the status to the stakeholders. As a facilitator, he communicates, works towards resolving conflicts, obtains required resources for the project, and empowers his team members. As a mentor, he is a role model in terms of appropriate professional behavior and team spirit, helps team members in resolving issues as well as helping them in their career path, and displays a genuine interest in the development of the team members. (Flannes & Levin, 2005)
The major challenges faced by an IT Project Manager are described in brief below:
- Ensuring that the project meets the agreed-upon budget, schedule, scope, and quality is a major challenge for an IT Project Manager especially considering the issues that crop up in the duration of the project. These issues could be scope change, a technical issue that prevents a task from completing, resource unavailability or attrition, etc.
- Expectations management is another major challenge. The client expects a lot in return for as little money as possible whereas management expects more in return for less effort. A team member may want raise (and may also deserve it) but management does not want to give raise at this time. Managing the expectations of all concerned and ensuring that everyone focuses on the project at hand is a key to the success of the project.
- Another challenge a project manager faces is staying abreast with the ever-evolving technology (Dinsmore & Cabanis-Brewin, 2006). New wireless technologies and new methodologies constantly emerge and a project manager needs to be aware of them to ensure that projects run smoothly and better techniques are being used to ensure the success of the project.
- There is increased emphasis on security and privacy. This becomes a big challenge for certain industries like healthcare and financial services. There may be legal requirements that restrict the usage of live data for testing. Data transmitted using wireless technologies need to be encrypted. The IT project manager not only needs to be aware of these requirements but also needs to ensure that system built by him is compliant with these requirements. (Dinsmore & Cabanis-Brewin, 2006)
- Outsourcing is another big challenge for an IT project manager. The project may be partly or fully outsourced. In case the project is partly outsourced, the IT project manager not only has to manage the project done in-house but also ensure that the outsourced project is being done as per the agreement. Dependencies between in-house tasks and outsourced tasks need to be resolved as soon as possible to avoid delays in the project. Whether the project is partly or fully outsourced, the IT project manager needs to understand the contract and the associated service level agreements or SLAs and ensure that all project deliverables agreed upon are being delivered on time as per the defined SLAs. (Dinsmore & Cabanis-Brewin, 2006)
The major task influencing a project manager’s ability to complete the project successfully is to choose the right resources and form a project team. Some of the criteria used for selecting the right candidates are:
- Skills and expertise required for the project
- Availability
- Team spirit
- Result-orientation
- Optimistic about the project
- Trustworthy
- Multi-tasking
- Credibility and history of successful projects in the company
- Problem-solving ability
- Political connections (good at networking)
- Ambitious takes initiatives, and has high energy (Source: Cappels, 2004; Charvat, 2002).
Although the above criteria help select team members, two major criteria affect the final selection – experience and cost. A project manager may need to select a junior with a less hourly rate to meet the budget requirements (or maybe a senior member is unavailable). A senior member may be selected but the high hourly rate forces the project manager to use the resource on a need-basis rather than use him as a dedicated resource for the project. If time is a constraint, then using a senior member who can complete the task earlier with better quality makes sense even though the cost increases. Selecting members who are not optimistic about the project may end up de-motivating other team members and thereby affect productivity.
However, if circumstances demand using a pessimistic resource, the best a project manager can do is motivate him. Being selective when choosing team members while at the same time ensuring that the time and cost constraints are being met is the right way to go for a project manager.
References
Charvat, J. (2002). Project Management Nation: Tools, Techniques, and Goals for the New and Practicing IT Project Manager. John Wiley & Sons.
Dinsmore, P. C., and Cabanis-Brewin, J. (2006) The AMA Handbook of Project Management, Second Edition. AMACOM.
Cappels, T.M. (2004). Financially Focused Project Management. J. Ross Publishing.
Kerzner, H. (2003). Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling, Eighth Edition. John Wiley & Sons.
Flannes, S. W., and Levin G. (2005). Essential People Skills for Project Managers. Management Concepts.