Learn The Ropes:
PROJECT MANAGER
Aliya Putri
Project Management Institute (PMI) defines project management as “an application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements” (PMI, 2017). According to this definition, a project manager has a responsibility to drive a project to achieve its goals. A project manager basically has similar obligations to any other managers; doing a set of activities - including planning and decision making, organizing, leading, and controlling - directed at a set of organization’s resources, such as human, financial, physical, and informational wherewithal, with an aim of achieving organizational goals in an efficient and effective manner (Griffin, 2005). A project manager is required to manage something done in a relatively smaller scope within a shorter time, known as a project, and this becomes the most important aspect that distinguishes them from a general manager.
It is important now to understand what a ‘project’ actually means. The project is referred to by PMI as “a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result” (PMI, 2017). A project is characterized by: a) Being done in a relatively short time and within a clearly defined start and end date, b) Having a well-defined and static budget for the entire duration of the project, usually with predefined items, c) Consisting of people temporarily allocated to the project (Frisanco, and Anglberger, 2008). A project manager is needed in a corporation that manages multiple projects for a certain duration of time.
Project managers are required to do certain things, meet certain needs, and have certain responsibilities. As any other managers, they have three categories of important roles: interpersonal (a role to captivate and persuade stakeholders) , informational (a role to communicate), and decisional (a role to make a big decision about problem solving in projects.
To fulfil these roles, project managers need several specific skills. The most fundamental management skills for a project manager are technical, interpersonal, conceptual, diagnostic, communication, decision-making, time management skills. In addition, because projects must be done in a short period of time with a rigid budget, it would be essential for a project manager to have an additional ability to work on multiple tasks quickly and under pressure.
Figure 1. Project manager characteristics/responsibilities (Frisanco, and Anglberger, 2008)
Figure 2. Project manager roles (Frisanco, and Anglberger, 2008)
Even though it might sound interesting for some people, but, like any other profession, being a project manager has its own advantages and disadvantages. First, let’s see from the financial perspective, project managers might work with co-workers outside their company, and if the project is done successfully, there is a potential they get a benefit/extra salary. It will be an advantage if they accept many collaborating projects, hopefully the more projects they handle, the more benefit they can get. So it will be a disadvantage if they don’t try to reach opportunities out, they’ll stay the same. Next, from health and psychological perspectives, because projects must be done in a short time with a rigid budget, the nature of the profession could be highly demanding. This may bring about disadvantages for the worker’s physical and mental health, such as headache, fatigue, stress, etc.
With great job prospects ahead, especially considering the flourishing industrial activities, the number of vacancies for project managers will likely increase. At the end of the day, everyone from any background can be a project manager as long as the person fulfills the requirements. However, in case you want to early prepare yourself specifically for this career path, college majors like industrial engineering for science as well as management and communication for social science can be considered as options since as a part of their curriculums, those majors provide opportunities for their students to acquire technical skills essential for a project manager, making them helpful for anyone that wants to pursue the career.
References
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Griffin, R. W. Management 8th edition
Frisanco, T. and N. Anglberger. “Operations management vs. project management — the operations services universe and its new project manager.” 2008 4th IEEE International Conference on Management of Innovation and Technology (2008): 323-326.
Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2013). Organizational Behavior (15th Ed). Pearson
McShane, S., & Glinow, M. A. V. (2017). Organizational Behavior. Mc-Graw Hill Education