Project Manager Roles and Responsibilities – here’s what you need to know

The duties and the roles of a Project Manager concern the most important issues for a project, and his/her most important goal is to bring it to the end in such a way that the effect of the team’s work is as close as possible to the expectations of the client, partner or anyone else. Therefore, a Project Manager must have quite a lot of technical knowledge (despite the existing division into technical and non-technical Project Managers), but at the same time, he should have a wide range of soft skills.

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List of Project Manager Roles

Knowing that the responsibilities of a Project Manager are extensive and concern the most important issues related to the software development process, it is necessary to prepare for a wide range of roles. These are the most important Project Manager roles:

• Administrator

The Project Manager must constantly control all tasks and be well versed in what has already been done, what is currently being done by the team and what is still to be done. The Project Manager must be in constant contact with the team and know what tasks may cause, for example, that the project execution may drag on. Well-established project knowledge is required as a Project Manager: it is also useful during discussions with the client for whom the project is being created.

The Project Manager is also responsible for team time management. He or she documents the number of hours devoted to specific tasks for individual specialists and is responsible for estimations related to different phases of the project. Thanks to his work in this area, he knows how long the work on the project will last and how long the team has worked on it.

• Experienced leader

This is one of the most important Project Manager roles. We have mentioned in this text that a person in this position must have a wide range of soft skills. Not without a reason, because the Project Manager is a kind of “link” between the client and the team. He is in constant contact with the client and with specialists who participate in the implementation of tasks related to the project.

Apart from technical knowledge, which is of course very important, the Project Manager must have good negotiating skills, high personal culture and excellent interpersonal skills. The person managing the project in the eyes of the client is not only a “supervisor”, but also a business card of the company that’s implementing the project. It is also good if the Project Manager can boast of respect and sympathy from the team he or she manages.

• The organizer

The Project Manager must respond quickly to what is happening in the project. If a certain part of the project can drag on, it should implement an appropriate plan to minimize the negative effects of such a situation (e.g. through an appropriate allocation of resources). He should be in constant contact with the client to report changes in the project or to answer his questions.

One thing is certain for all roles of a Project Manager: he or she must be a well-organized and conscientious person. To achieve this, Project Managers use many interesting and helpful tools. We have described the most important tools for Project Managers – check it out!

List of the duties and responsibilities

We already know what the Project Manager roles are and what skills such work requires. However, it is worth to refer to specific tasks that a person in this position must perform. So what does a Project Manager do?

• Allocation of budget and resources

The Project Manager is responsible for creating estimates of the budget and duration of the project. Moreover, he should manage the project in such a way that it does not go beyond the existing arrangements with the client – both in terms of time and finance. Therefore, the person in this position must manage efficiently and sensibly both the time of the employees and the client’s money.

• Document preparation

The Project Manager must be proficient in fast and accurate preparation of project documents. The same applies, among others, to reports created by people in this position.

• Communication with the customer

The Project Manager is, as we’ve mentioned before, the link between the team and the client for whom the project is being implemented. He is responsible for transferring all the information from the client to the team responsible for the development.

• Motivation of the team

The Project Manager must have good contact with the team. However, this cannot be limited only to giving commands. It is good if the person managing the project is characterized by a high working culture, which he is able to implement also in communication with the project participants. It is also important that the Project Manager sets the right goals for the team – goals that are achievable and measurable over time.

• Ensuring customer satisfaction

Excellent negotiation and communication skills of the project manager are the features that allow to achieve the highest possible customer satisfaction, which is crucial in the process of creating a project. A project manager is a kind of “business card of the company” and its image and competence determine whether the client will consider the whole team to be trustworthy.

• Risk analysis

If anything can go wrong in a project, the Project Manager must know first on the basis of his analysis. It is worthwhile to prepare for any situations that may cause difficulties in the implementation of the project and counteract them before they arise.

Please note that the responsibilities of a project manager in a company can be very different – depending on the situation in the project. The person who receives a job in this position must be comprehensively prepared – flexibility in performing various types of tasks is required.

Of course, these are not all the responsibilities of a Project Manager – we have distinguished the most important of them. Depending on the company, the competences of the person in this position may slightly differ, but the basic ones remain the same all the time. What is certain, however, is that a Project Manager has very responsible tasks and his or her work is particularly important for the project.

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