8 Key Roles and Responsibilities of a Project Manager

1. Resource and Activity Planning

While researching your project management career path, you’ll notice that planning is instrumental in meeting project deadlines. Accurate and thorough planning is essential for businesses to meet deadlines, and many projects will fail without proper organization. The best project managers define a project’s scope before allocating the resources necessary to execute the task.

You’ll need to set a realistic time estimate while knowing what your team members’ capabilities are. It’s your job to create a concise plan based on multiple factors – including unpredictability. A lot can happen in your time frame, so it’s essential to make adjustments on the fly before the due date. If you account for human error, sick days, vacations, or ability, you will ensure that your team will finish the project before the due date.

2. Motivating and Organization

Many industries think of a project manager as an overseer or a parental figure because one of the best ways to lead a team is by setting a good example. If you’re playing your part by supporting the team while also approaching each member fairly, you can motivate them through any project. Staying confident yourself will inspire your team.

After all, long projects will be full of long checklists, spreadsheets, and plenty of meetings. It’s easy for your team to become discouraged after a period if the tasks seem never-ending. Project managers will place their team first to steer them into maximizing their full potential without interfering with bureaucracy.

3. Time Management

Clients judge projects based on timeliness and not necessarily on how properly your team executed the task. Once a deadline is placed, think of it as non-negotiable. Your clients have their own deadlines, lives, and priorities, so it’s crucial you put their needs first and foremost. With that in mind, be sure to set realistic deadlines.

If you’re unsure your team can meet a deadline, tell the client during the initial meeting, and explain why. Most clients will be flexible during the planning process. Develop a schedule, estimate each duration of each activity, and discuss with the client how you’ll execute each sequence to establish trust.

4. Budgets and Cost Estimation

Failure is estimated with multiple factors during a project; one of these factors is cost management. If a company continually goes over budget, bankruptcy will be over the horizon, and it’s bad business to go to your client in the middle of the project to ask for more money when terms are set. Therefore, you need to become an expert at estimating costs.

Executing your duties properly will ensure customer satisfaction, which is the lifeblood of any business. Satisfied customers will leave good reviews and tell their other associates, which will help you stay in business. One of the best ways to keep a customer happy is by minimizing uncertainty and avoiding the unexpected.

5. Keeping Customers Happy

Executing your duties properly will ensure customer satisfaction, which is the lifeblood of any business. Satisfied customers will leave good reviews and tell their other associates, which will help you stay in business. One of the best ways to keep a customer happy is by minimizing uncertainty and avoiding the unexpected.

Plenty of business owners want to know exactly what you’re doing during the project’s lifetime because they probably need to relay this information to other associates. Good project managers will maintain effective communication to keep their clients up-to-date.

6. Analyzing Risk

Risk plays a role in every project because it’s inevitable that a project won’t go as planned. Most bumps in the road aren’t a cause of concern as good project managers account for potential mishaps, but some incidences could prevent you from reaching a deadline. The bigger the project, the bigger the risk, but every job could run into catastrophic failure.

Expecting that things won’t go as planned is a healthy mindset for any project manager, and flexibility will help you navigate most pitfalls. As always, it’s important to discuss with the client the possibility of success and failure so you have more room to identify and evaluate potential risks so you can minimize the impact if a problem does occur.

7. Observing Progress

Most project managers need to keep tabs on what their team has accomplished during a specific timeframe. Similar to monitoring spending, a project manager also needs to discuss with their team daily to see if the time frame they established is followed. If you’re behind schedule, you can adjust to prioritize specific tasks.

Remember: being behind on a project doesn’t spell out failure as long as you remain flexible. You can implement corrective measures throughout the day to prevent the project from derailing further by honing it where and why these discrepancies occurred.

8. Creating Documentation and Reports

Project managers need to know how to draft reports and documentation that is clear and concise while also implementing the company’s message and brand. Your client may need to read this report, so establish a good impression by making the document error-free, correctly formatted, and professional.

Whether this report is created for your business or the client, you need to follow strict guidelines so another associate can understand the project’s scope, including the history and the people involved. It’s also helpful to establish what you’ve learned from this project, so you can implement changes that will streamline a process in the future.