Project Manager Role

And while it might seem like a lot to keep track of, it's important to know that you,

as the project manager won't need to do everything on your own.

Let's discuss the role of the project manager and how that role relates to other roles within the project team. It's easier to hear the term manager and immediately think of your boss.

But a project manager is not often the direct manager of the people working on a project team.

Here, we're discussing the project manager as someone who manages

the tasks of a project.

But what does that really mean, right?

Well, although you might have a few teammates working with you on a project,

you're probably not their day-to-day boss.

With the help of your team, you can get a lot more done together.

Everyone on your team will have their own set of roles and responsibilities.

And you'll come together to ensure that everyone is able to do their part to

advance the project.

Each person will be an expert on their portion of the project, but no one will be

an expert on every aspect of the project, and honestly, neither will you.

For instance, the graphic designer will focus on graphic design, but

probably won't be an expert on copywriting. Similarly,

you'll be an expert on project management, but may not be an expert on marketing.

Here's another way to think about it. Imagine that you're organizing a camping

trip. You might be the person in charge of planning the trip, but

that doesn't mean you have to be a camping expert. Maybe you've never been camping

before, but your partner grew up spending every summer by the campfire.

In that case, you might assign them the task of picking out the right number and

style of tents for your group.

So, in this example, you are planning the trip by giving your partner the job of finding the right number of tents and the right size tents to make sure everyone is covered.

You aren't doing the research or the task yourself, but you're making sure that things are getting done.

It's similar in the workplace. As the project manager, you won't be an expert in every project role, and that's okay.

As we said, your job isn't to be the expert on everything.

Instead you're responsible for guiding your team and making sure that

they have the support that they need in order to complete the project.

So how does a project manager go about doing that? Let's discuss using a few more

examples of the required responsibilities you might find in a job listing.

First, you'll need to hold all team members accountable for

their assigned tasks. Managing tasks will help you hold your team members

accountable by giving them ownership over specific pieces of the project.

Second, you'll need to ensure that issues and risks are tracked and

visible, and be able to establish escalation paths.

Now by escalation paths, I mean that you should know how you will communicate risks

to the right people at the right time.

Third, you'll need to understand and

help teammates adopt the right workflows and project management styles.

As the project manager, you'll likely have the best idea of which style is best for

the work.

It's your job to ensure that the team adheres to that style and

the other systems in place.

And fourth, you'll need to collaborate with other teams at the organization to

meet the requirements based on project, scope, schedule, and budget.

In other words, a project may affect not only your team, but

other teams at an organization, as well as, say, the marketing or

the finance team. So you'll need to work with those teams to ensure that everyone

is happy with the project outcomes. You'll learn more about working with other

stakeholders in a later course. Catch all that? Let's recap.

You learned that a project manager isn't always the direct manager of each member

of the project team. Rather, they're responsible for guiding those people and

ensuring they have the support they need to complete the project.

Now that you have a good sense of the way that a project manager fits

into the project team, let's move a little bit ahead,

where we'll discuss the types of skills that a project manager needs to succeed.

Meet you there