What is the role of the project manager?

What is the role of the project manager? Why is leadership so important for project managers?

The role of the project manager is one of leadership and to oversee planning, scope, personnel, budget, safety, execution and implementation of the project in an effective and efficient manner to deliver the project on time and within budget and scope. Managing these constraints is the primary objective to project management.

For example when I was part of a 30 million dollar store construction project the project manager was there to provide leadership and vision and to inform the execution team what was to be expected during the project. He provided daily briefing to the progress of the project in relation to the expected completion time of the entire project. When an area of the project was encountering difficulties or delays, he would provide extra support to ensure that the area would not fall behind. The project was managed without the safety (Goldratt) built-in to projects and with and awareness of the student syndrome phenomenon.

The manager would also constantly be updating the whole team on our successes as well as the problem areas throughout the duration of the project. Based on our progress through the timeline, we would adjust our schedules to work longer days in order to stay on time. We had to aggressively monitor out teams progress and be aware of the next possible constraint and make contingent plans to work around the constraint. The leadership provided was not afraid to make difficult and unpopular decisions to keep the project on track.

Keeping all the employees focused was another critical success factor. Daily goals were presented and the team would meet at the end of the day to follow through on our progress. In the end we finished two days early and under budget. Without the leadership provided this project would have easily fell behind due to the many delays encountered.

In summery, the role of the project manager is keeping the team focused on the constraints of scope, time and budget and executing the plan with strong leadership and organization.