Posts Tagged ‘project management’
It’s Project Management, not project administration
Over my career as a someone who has been responsible for small to enterprise technical implementations for Fortune 500 clients, I have come across many different types of people: project managers, business analysts, technical architects, software engineers (front-end, middleware, backend), network engineers, and database administrators. I want to focus on the Project Manager function as it is often misunderstood its true role in terms of the project.
Owning the scope, budget, and timelines are the main responsibilities for the project manager — however most folks attempt to manage the project as “administrators” vs. “managers”. A key differentiator between administrators and managers is leadership within the actual project. Often I see people who have been placed in project management roles fail because they could not lead people within the project — they are often pushed into a situation where they are bullied or too accommodating to the internal team or client needs.
At times, project managers require the need to lead people towards the overall deliverable — while each team member has a responsibility in ensuring their parts are completed, the project manager has to ensure that the project moves in the appropriate direction — within scope, budget, and timelines. This is not an easy thing to do — and appropriate controls are required. However, it is not enough to have things documented or even having a PMP certification. Strong leadership is required to ensure the project is moving forward in the right direction.
