Project Manager is considered as core of the projects. S/he is the one accountable for the success and failure of the project. That’s why project manager is considered as back bone of the project. There are many misconceptions about this role and many feel that it’s a very easy job.
The reason behind this misconception is people think this role only does monitoring and the actual work is done by technical people. However there is a gap in understanding where people don’t understand that overall work a project manager do. In this article, we shall discuss on the multifaceted role of Project Manager and how s/he act as an integrator.
What are all activities Project Manager do?
Let’s first look at the different dimensions of a Project manager.
Above mentioned dimensions are just few examples of the bigger lot of activities a project manager do. Looking at this vast spectrum, we can make out how much a project manager has to look at.
- Scope management to ensure whatever is committed and contractually required is done and not less or more than it
- Time management for keeping a tab on Schedule of the overall project and its sub-components
- Cost management for keeping a tab on critical aspects of budgets
- Communicating all the different set of stakeholders of projects
- Managing stakeholders for their expectations
- Managing resources for the best out of them
- Managing quality aspects of the Project outcomes
- Managing risks, both known and unknown and making sure project is least impacted due to it
- Managing all required procurements for the project s/he working on
- In addition, project manager also has to do manage change and configuration in the project
By now, at least one thing we may agree that Project Manager has a lot to do that’s the reason this job is not that easy to do as it looks.
How Project Manager integrate?
When a project manager undertake and manage a project, different activities doesn’t happen in silos. That’s the reason project manager has to unify and consolidate all the activities in conjunction to each other.
To do so in an efficient and effective manner, Project manager has to look at the things in a connected manner. E.g. at any point of time, he can’t only look at the project quality, he has to also ensure, while looking at quality he is not taking more time also this is not over shooting the budget.
This is the reason Project Manager is called an integrator who will look at all the aspects in conjunction to each other to ensure things are under control.
Not all projects work as planned, rather none of them go as per plan and that’s why project managers are there. There are unique experiences and all we have is a Project Manager to deal with it.
To integrate all this Project Manager keep a tab on scope, time, cost and in case of challenges and risks, he ensures it’s communicated to right stakeholders in a right manner. Well it’s easy to write how a project integrate but it’s not something which can be written. Each and every project manager has its own way of doing it. Unless until he can do it in the favour of project and project runs smoothly under its constraints, everyone will appreciate the management skills of the individual
Why integration and Integrator is required?
Integration is required for the project success. No project can be run without it. In other words if I say, no project can be successful without it, it won’t be wrong. Reason is very simple, in a project things happen all the time in unified way. At the same time, budget is getting consumed, project schedule is getting exhausted, scope is getting completed, resources are getting consumed etc. etc.
And on a same line, to ensure all these things are looked at, Project manager is required. A person with a bird eye view on different dimensions and in depth detail at the dimension which is looking critical at a time is required.
People also say, Project Manager is the one whom senior management appoints to blame for the failures of the project. It might be true but the management techniques one learns by being in the challenging situation is best learning which no lesson can teach. Probably that’s the reason this is a prestigious role in the projects
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Conclusion
Even in PMBOK, integration management is a separate knowledge area which consolidates all other knowledge areas and activities under it. This shows, for a project manager, how important is to integrate and relate the different aspects and dimensions of the project. Though it looks easy, the toughest part of the Project Management is this only. Keeping an eye on almost everything and ensuring all the things are moving towards the project success and in case there are certain things going out of control, how to bring it back on track.
Definitely with this understanding we can move from the top view of project manager in the beginning of our article to this view where, project manager is the core or centre and all dimensions rotates around him.
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