Project Manager Job Description: Goals and Responsibilities

Great project managers support the people on their team to do their best work and enable people to build things they’re proud of.

As the project manager, it’s your job to encourage others to actively engage in working together as a team to foster creativity, encourage accountability and get stuff done.

Project managers usually follow a process that involves:

• Planning and organising
• Managing tasks
• Budgeting
• Controlling costs and other factors.

A project manager also needs to make sure that the project outcome is bringing value to the company. A project manager can add value in many different ways. Whether that’s creating a new service for customers or modifying an old service so it’s more tailored to the customer’s needs.

It’s the project manager’s job to make sure that the project is both valuable and successful.

A project manager’s responsibilities can vary, depending on the project, the industry, and the company they’re working in.

Project managers work in many industries. The skills project managers learn in one industry can be applied in others. Project managers tackle a variety of projects from start to finish.

The project manager is responsible for initiating, planning, executing, monitoring, and closing a project. Includes industry-specific titles like IT project manager, construction project manager, or engineering project manager, which utilise skills that are transferable among industries.

Project managers are responsible for the day-to-day management of projects. They shepherd projects from start to finish and serve as a guide for their team. Project managers must apply the right tools, techniques, and processes to complete the project successfully, on time, and within budget.

A project manager needs to display leadership in a number of ways, including effective planning, efficient task coordination, inspiring team members, and key decision-making.

Project managers usually follow a process that involves planning and organising, managing tasks, budgeting, and controlling costs so that the project can be completed within the approved timeframe.

Project managers add value to their teams and organisations in key ways that include:

• Prioritisation
• Delegation
• Effective communication

Project managers add value to their teams and organisations through effective prioritisation of tasks required to complete a project. They’re experts at helping team members identify and break down large tasks into smaller steps.

Project managers use delegation to add value to their teams and organisations by matching tasks to individuals who can best complete the work.

Project managers deliver value through effective communication, both with their team and with key stakeholders. This refers to being transparent, which means being upfront with plans and ideas and making information readily available.

Project managers keep in regular contact with their team about the progress of the work and help identify areas where a teammate may need support. In addition to keeping up with teammates, project managers keep in regular contact with people outside of the team, like company leaders who are invested in the project outcomes.

Project managers can add a lot of value to the project by building relationships with customers and taking the time to make sure the customer is heard and satisfied with the result.

A successful project manager knows that the team is a project’s biggest asset and takes the time to understand each person’s motivations, strengths, and weaknesses. Project managers add value to the project by identifying the right team for the project and enabling the team to be successful and make decisions.

As a project manager, you should bring on people with the right skills and ensure the team knows that each individual is valued, trusted, and appreciated.

The project managers who add the most value are the ones who take the time to build relationships, communicate, and treat others with consideration and respect.

Project managers can set the tone for a project and build relationships within their teams and with stakeholders.

A successful project manager sees the impacts of each process within the project and communicates those impacts to the team.

A project manager adds value to a project when they break down barriers, allow their team to innovate new ways to do things, and empower them to share ideas. As a project manager, you have to model ingenuity and collaboration and encourage your team to do the same.

As a project manager, you will use timelines and schedules to ensure your team completes the project on time.

Basically, as the project manager, you will be responsible for tracking the day-to-day details of the project, but you will also have an opportunity to step back and see the bigger picture of the overall project.

As a project manager, you can serve as a mentor to your team. When you take the time to fully explain the expectations, you eliminate rework, confusion, and frustration.

As a project manager, you need to remain flexible and adjust to the stakeholders’ needs. However, it is also important to protect your team from constant change and rework.

As a project manager, communication is everything. With effective communication, you can work together with your team to find solutions to challenges. The project manager sets the tone for the project. Maintaining an open-door policy and building trust within your team and among stakeholders — all while staying positive — will help the success of the project.

A project manager is not often the direct manager of the people working on a project team. We’re discussing the project manager as someone who manages the tasks of a project.

Project managers are responsible for guiding the team. To do that well, they need to ensure that the team has the support they need to complete the project.

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.

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.

As the project manager, you must help ensure that your team has the right people with the right skill sets needed for the project to succeed.

As a project manager, it is your job to make sure that each member of your cross-functional team recognizes the value of their efforts each step of the way.

Being able to communicate clearly with team members, clarify the goals of the project, get team members with the right skills, measure team progress, and recognize team members’ efforts is an important part of your role as the project manager, and is key to your project’s success.

Budgeting and controlling costs are how a project manager oversees the financial components of a project and mitigates project issues and risks as they come up. Project managers are in charge of overseeing the resources a team needs to complete a project and how much it will cost.

Managing tasks is how a project manager has their team complete activities within a set period of time. By managing tasks, project managers will ensure the activities to complete the project are getting done by team members.

Planning and organising are how a project manager makes use of productivity tools and creates processes. They also create and maintain plans, schedules, and other forms of documentation to track project completion. As a project manager, you will be in charge of how your team shares information and communicates progress.

As a project manager, you’ll use your communication skills in just about everything you do. This might look like documenting plans, sending emails about the status of the project, or holding a meeting to escalate risks or issues to stakeholders.

As a project manager, knowing how to be flexible when changes are needed is key. A good project manager knows that unpredictable moments are almost always guaranteed. All project managers need the ability to adapt and overcome changes and challenges.

Project managers often face ambiguity in goals, requirements, schedules, vision, or other areas related to the project. As a project manager, it is important to try to understand what your team is thinking and feeling, especially during times of ambiguity.

A successful project manager needs strong organisational skills. The role of a project manager requires using a lot of different processes to keep the project on track. Having strong organisational skills means having the ability to organise these processes and the core elements of a project to ensure nothing gets lost or overlooked, which trust me, can and does happen.

As a project manager, having the flexibility and ability to handle ambiguity in a rapidly-changing business setting gives you an advantage. Mastering these competencies, along with enabling decision-making, effective communication skills, and strong organisational skills will allow you to innovate and grow as a project manager and leader.

As a project manager, you bring on the right team members — with their differing areas of expertise — and trust them to be able to focus on the technical aspects of the project. Your job is to handle the communication, documentation, and organisation necessary to get the project successfully to the finish line.

Project managers hire the experts and help put all the pieces of the project together. Project managers don’t need to be experts in every field.

To be a successful project manager at any organisation — regardless of whether you have worked there previously — it is essential to master the skills, tools, and techniques of project management.

Details matter in project execution, but as a project manager, you must also focus on the big picture and strategy for the project.

Your role as a project manager is to communicate with your stakeholders, clarify objectives, and set expectations. Trust your team to handle the details of each project task and communicate with you when there’s an issue.

As a project manager, you should have the ability to guide teammates to complete their assigned work without acting as their direct manager.

As a project manager, your role is a little different. While you might be in charge of completing certain tasks in the project, your primary tasks as the project manager are to monitor progress and keep your team motivated. You also remove any obstacles that might come up so that the tasks are executed well and on time.

Your role as the project manager is not to complete the individual tasks but to help break down any barriers that would slow or stop the team from completing their tasks.

An experienced project manager knows that plans always change. This ability to adapt is all about thinking and planning ahead. Scheduling delays, budget changes, technology and software requirements, legal issues, quality control, and access to resources are just some of the more common types of risks and changes that a project manager needs to consider.

The project manager serves as an active leader by prioritising and assigning tasks to team members.

The project manager makes plans and clearly defines criteria to measure quality at the beginning of the project.

The project manager continually communicates progress toward milestones and other key indicators to stakeholders, ensuring that the project is on track to meet the customer’s expectations.

The project manager continually manages and monitors stakeholder engagement to ensure the project is on track.

Project managers must clearly define roles and responsibilities in order to work effectively.

As the project manager, it’s vital that you understand who you’re reporting to on each project, and just as importantly, who the members of your team report to.

As a project manager, when you understand the different types of values, and what to prioritise, you’ll have an idea of how you can better prepare for conversations within the organisation.

As a project manager, you become a change agent.

As a project manager, you will be responsible for project governance.

As a project manager, identifying meaningful metrics can help move the project toward its goal. Additionally, by defining each element of a project goal to make it SMART, you can determine what success means for that goal and how to achieve it.

It’s ultimately the project manager’s responsibility to monitor the project and make sure all the work and resources fall within its scope, team members and stakeholders can be encouraged to do their part by focusing on the tasks that are the most important to reach the project’s goal.

It’s your responsibility as the project manager to maintain the limits of the project. The best defence is to know the details of your project in and out so you’re always prepared with the most appropriate response to a new idea or request.

The overall goal for you as the project manager is to deliver the project according to the scope agreements. This includes delivering the project within the given deadline and the approved budget.

As a project manager, you are responsible for making sure a group of people can come together to achieve a common goal using shared tools and systems.

A project manager will make a list of roles that they’ll need on their team to complete each task. A project manager is accountable for the overall initiation, planning, execution, and completion of a project, the person in each role is accountable for specific tasks within the project life cycle. A project manager decides how many people they’ll need on their team.

A project manager needs to think carefully about skills. It’s on the project manager to ensure that everyone on the team has the right skills to do the job. A project manager also has to factor in each person’s availability and whether they’ll feel motivated to complete their assigned tasks.

As a project manager, it’s up to you to decide who you need on your team. You have to ask yourself questions on things like staff experience, availability, the workspace, team member workload on other projects, and more.

As a project manager, it is your job to help find the right balance based on what is needed.

As a project manager, you will not be able to solve every problem for your team. At some point, they will need to use their own judgement to problem-solve and get the work done.

Be sure to deliver on any promises you make. Your reputation as a project manager to get things done and removing roadblocks is critical to building and maintaining relationships.

As a project manager, it is your job to keep the meeting on track by redirecting discussions to the items on the agenda.

As the project manager, you will ensure that your teammates are clear on their assigned tasks.

As a project manager, you should aim to balance being aware of the planning fallacy with keeping an optimistic attitude about the project, even as things change. Be optimistically realistic, and push for the best outcomes while planning for the proper time it may take to accomplish each task.

Part of your job as the project manager is to bridge the gap between high-level goals of the project and the day-to-day perspective of your team.

Project managers must account for understanding stakeholder needs, budgeting for surplus expenses, maintaining adaptability, and reviewing and reforecasting throughout the entire project.

As the project manager, you will also need to budget for surprise expenses. As your project continues along, you’ll have to review your budget and sometimes reforecast, which means creating a separate revised budget based on how your project is tracking. Monitoring the budget is crucial for a project manager to enforce accountability in terms of spending.

Project managers have a big job when deciphering whether or not every aspect of their project is sourced ethically. It helps if the project manager thoroughly oversees the project to make sure the safety, economic, and environmental ethical risks are mitigated; in other words, doing a lot of research. Monitoring and evaluating throughout the project is a project manager’s job.

Project managers must take precautions to ensure that they and their suppliers are following ethical principles during the procurement process.

As the project manager, you’re responsible for creating a consistent flow of communication throughout the project, setting the tone for team communication and working to make sure everyone’s on the same page, every step of the way, giving your project the best chance to succeed.

A good project manager must be effective in communicating with all stakeholders and team members through various mediums. Your goal as project manager is to optimise and streamline communications.

As a project manager, it’s your job to ensure that project data can be accessed in the future by others. Documenting your plans and making them available is part of a project management best practice called knowledge management.

As a project manager, your goal is to have all of your project resources documented and linked in a way to where you or anyone on the project can access what they need quickly.

Some core skills that project managers possess include

• Enabling decision-making
• Communicating
• Flexibility
• Strong organisational skills
• Ability to manage tasks effectively
• Work well with others
• Follow through on tasks
• Hold teammates accountable

It’s a project manager’s responsibility to resolve problems and remove constraints that are a detriment to the project’s success.

As a project manager, it’s important to identify effective techniques for communicating changes to an individual teammate or to your whole team.

It’s in a project manager’s best interest to communicate tactfully, not only with the members of their own organisation but also with customers and vendors.

Using soft skills like negotiation, empathetic listening, and trust-building, will help foster a good relationship between you and your customers, and a good project manager knows how and when to apply these skills.

A project manager oversees individual projects and has short-term, concrete deliverables. The project manager is tasked with continuously improving their assigned project.

As a project manager, you can use data daily to make better decisions, solve problems, understand performance, improve processes, and understand your users.

A project manager might use a tool like Smartsheet to visualise where milestones fall within a project timeline. Work management software like Asana can help project managers create and assign tasks. They can also generate reports to track their team’s productivity over time.

A project manager might use a spreadsheet and its built-in charting tools to analyse current productivity data and make predictions about future productivity trends. Project management software can help project managers monitor the duration of a project alongside certain milestones.

A project manager might use a tool like a change log or a spreadsheet to measure the number of changes from stakeholders and look for areas to improve communication. A budgeting spreadsheet can help a project manager log costs over time and compare them against the actual budget.

Project management software like Jira and Workfront can generate reports that help project managers track both the number of issues and the team’s ability to resolve them quickly.

As a project manager, it’s up to you to look for signals and to prioritise data to deliver positive results.

As a project manager, it is your responsibility to protect the data you collect.

As a project manager, you have to think about bias and fairness from the moment you start collecting data to the time you present your conclusions.

At the same time, you as a project manager need to establish a two-way relationship with your team. You have to be able to clearly communicate expectations and ensure that the team feels comfortable negotiating with you when needed.

You, as the project manager, can help foster a sense of structure and clarity on the team. Part of your role as the project manager is to help individual teammates identify how they drive impact both within the team and beyond it.

As the project manager, it’s your job to ensure that everyone on your team is on the same page regarding the status of your project.

You as a project manager should clarify the project goals, roles, and context of the project. People are seeking guidance and it’s your job to provide that guidance.

As the project manager, it’s your job to focus on conflict resolution. Listen as the team addresses problems to solve and share insights on how the team might better function as a unit.

As the project manager, you should codify the team norms, ensuring that the team is aware of those norms and reinforce them when needed.

You as the project manager should focus on delegating, motivating and providing feedback to keep up the team’s momentum.

You as the project manager should set up a time to celebrate the final milestones and success of the project as a group. And be sure each member of your team knows what’s next for them.

It’s your job as a project manager to serve as a role model, set the tone for the team and take action when needed.

As a project manager, you’re in the perfect spot to identify work that might be a good fit for a person who really wants it, but who shies away from asking for it.

As a project manager, you’ll be managing team dynamics and building team relationships, which can help you build up a personal history with the people around you.

As a project manager, you are the one who coordinates incoming and outgoing information. You connect individuals to the necessary details and context and track who needs to receive what information and when.

As a project manager, it is part of your job to facilitate meetings that are inclusive of all participants and that create a sense of emotional safety and value for everyone’s active input.

As the project manager, your modelling will set the tone for the team dynamic, so always check in with your team and model professionalism, vulnerability, and empathy.

One of the project manager’s key responsibilities is to be aware of the status of the project at any given time and to ensure that others are up to speed or know where to find the latest information.

As a project manager, you want to build a culture within your team and company to aim for constant improvements. This means that you’ll need to solicit feedback that will help you to do better in your next project. This feedback might touch on any aspect of the project, from planning, scheduling, execution, communication, or team dynamics. You might receive feedback about processes you led, and that’s okay. Working through feedback is crucial to your growth as a project manager.

As a project manager, part of your job is to help the team stay focused on delivering value.

As a project manager, part of your role is helping your team get comfortable being honest with each other and working through conflicts together.

As a project manager, it is important to record the feedback you receive and document any misalignments and their resolutions. This allows you and your project team to reference those decisions later on.

As a project manager, it’s your role to ensure that the project goals are well-defined so that you and your team have a clear roadmap. This not only allows you to focus but also eliminates wasted time and miscommunication going forward.

One of your main jobs as a project manager is to identify all of the project tasks, estimate how much time each task will take, and track each task’s progress.

As a project manager, a key part of your role is identifying the right level of detail and then synthesising it into a clear, concise list of tasks in the project plan.

Project managers are expected to accurately estimate essential elements of the project, such as costs, scope, and time.

As a project manager, you’re responsible for the planning and execution of the project, as well as for the successful completion of the project.

As the project manager, you need to manage the tone of the conversation, make sure that every team member feels included, and identify details that will be recorded in the retrospective document for future reference. And remember, it’s your role as a project manager to facilitate a respectful and productive retrospective discussion that recognizes successes and areas for improvement.

Combining information from multiple sources like conversations, emails and documents is a skill that project managers use frequently. It’s helpful to reference when leading conversations and meetings, writing documentation and emailing team members regarding the project.

Every project has its problems, and communicating those problems is a part of your job as a project manager. It’s your responsibility as a project manager to synthesise relevant information from multiple sources into a coherent summary that clearly communicates the issue.

As a project manager, identifying and managing issues is part of the job, and if an issue is big enough to escalate to a senior stakeholder, then it’s probably an issue you’re hoping to resolve as soon as possible.