The Project Manager and the Project Team

A Project Manager is the person who leads a project from its phases of initiation to closure in the project life cycle. This also includes the planning, managing people and resources, and performing of the project.

A project is temporary so that the project manager position is temporary and may end when the assigned project is completed. Every time a new project is initiated, its resources including the team must be changed. When the project is closed, all resources are not kept anymore.

You should avoid the temptation to improve your schedule by working backwards from the end date to the current date. This will give a wrong intention of what is achievable and hide the actual level of risk involved in the meeting at that time

The task of the project manager is to ensure that everyone in the project team has what they need to do their job well.

1. Powerful communication skills
2. Proficient technical skills
3. Managing resources
4. Good decision maker
5. Managing risk
6. Perfect visionary
7. Negotiating skills
8. Team building
9. Leadership

1. The responsibility to the main company includes the appropriate care of resources, convenient and correct project communications, adequate and apprehensive project management.
2. The responsibility to the project and the customer is fulfilled by ensuring that the integrity of the project is maintained despite the contradictory demands of many parties with legitimate interests.
3. The responsibility to the project team is determined by the finite nature of the project and the expertise structure of the team. Because the project is, by definition, a temporary entity and must come to an end, the PM must be concerned with the future of the people who serve on the team.

Pros:

• It can often be a stepping stone to promotion.
• It provides a strong sense of accomplishment.
• There’s considerable variety: no two days are alike.
• There’s signicant freedom of choice.
• It affords the opportunity to effect change across the organization.

Cons:

• It requires signicant tolerance for politics.
• It requires signicant tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty.
• There’s a lot of responsibility, but little or no authority.
• You may feel “disconnected” from your technical discipline.
• You may be perceived by some as not having “a real job.

A stakeholder is an individual, group, or organization that may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of a project

External Stakeholders:

• Customers
• End users
• Suppliers
• Shareholders
• Regulatory bodies
• Competitors

Internal Stakeholders:

• Sponsor
• Resource manager
• Project management office (PMO)
• Portfolio steering committee
• Program manager
• PMs of other projects
• Team members

The leadership is the action of leading a group of people or an organization to achieve the goals.

Leaders:

• do the right thing
• develop new processes
• innovate
• originate
• earn their position
• command respect
• focus on people
• inspire trust
• focused on potential
• have long-term goal

Managers:

• do things right
• maintain the status quo
• administer
• imitate
• state their position
• demand respect
• focus on systems
• strive for control
• focused on the bottom line
• short-term view

1. Exchange of purpose
2. A right to say no
3. Joint accountability
4. Absolute honesty

• Hearing and Querying
• Imression
• Strategy
• Team Builder
• Anticipating
• Imagining
• Authoritative

A project team consists of a group of people who have come together to carry out activities that contribute to achieving the goal of a common task. A project manager builds up a project team of skilled employees from the same or different function areas to work on a project.

Superordinate Goals, Rules and Procedures, Physical Proximity, and Accessibility are the critical factors affecting the cooperation, which has an influence on both task and psychosocial outcomes.

Task outcomes ensure that the project is done right while psychosocial outcomes are the emotional and psychological impacts for the strong performance of the project team.

• Providing effort to the whole project to meet the objectives
• Completing individual products of the project such as reports, models, designs, plans, etc. by the due date
• Delivering expertise
• Working with users to identify and meet business requirements
• Reporting status updates to PM
• Establishing records of project including the documents
• Attending and active participation in the meetings
• Ensuring the tasks to be completed on time
• Performing assigned activities

• Inspiring
• Supportive
• Thinking creative
• Devoted
• Communicators
• Dependable
• Having skills and experience
• Motivational
• Self-starters
• Team players

1. Contributor
2. Collaborator
3. Communicator
4. Challenger

• poorly developed or unclear goals
• poorly defined project team roles and interdependencies
• lack of project team motivation
• poor communication or leadership
• turnover among team members
• dysfunctional behavior