Importance Of A Project Manager In An Organisation

Updated 1 August 2023

A project manager ensures careful planning, direction and alignment of the company's strategic goals. These professionals guide their teams to work on the right things at the right time and motivate them to meet critical project deadlines and achieve project milestones. Understanding why project managers are essential can help you achieve business objectives, ensure projects stay within the budget and increase the team's productivity. In this article, we highlight the importance of a project manager and outline the key skills required to become a successful project manager.

Importance Of A Project Manager

Understanding the importance of a project manager is essential to organise resources to achieve specific goals. These professionals are responsible for planning, organising and leading projects to achieve organisational goals within the budget requirement. Here are a few reasons project managers are essential for a project or company:

Creates a focus

Typically, projects that last for months or years can be challenging for companies to manage. That is why they rely on project managers to define the scope of a project and ensure it follows a specific deadline for a task or goal. A clear scope and strict deadlines make it easier for companies and team members to focus on the objective and organisational goals. A clear focus ensures proper planning to execute the project efficiently. These managers can ensure focus by breaking the project into smaller chunks where every team member works on a clear focus.

Ensures quality

One of the most critical aspects of implementing project management is delivering quality projects on time and within budget. To ensure a project manager delivers a satisfactory project, these professionals monitor their team's progress and quality of work. They help in finding acceptable solutions to problems that a project might incur. A project manager's job duty may involve identifying obstacles that can affect the quality of the final output.

Reduces risk

A part of a project manager's job role involves evaluating whether the project's risks outweigh the benefits. When a company chooses to continue with a project, these managers assess potential risks and create plans to minimise these project-related risks. When a project has fewer risks, it ensures timely delivery of the project, and they get completed within a specified budget.

Provides leadership

A project manager is a professional who brings leadership to the entire project and process. Using their leadership skills, these professionals provide guidance, motivation, direction and inspiration to the entire project team. A project manager keeps the team together and each team member works towards achieving a common organisational goal. Without a project manager, a project is likely to go in any direction, under control and without a motive.

Minimises project costs

In the planning phase, a project manager creates and defines a budget for the project. By creating realistic and accurate budgets, these professionals help in reducing the overall project cost. This is because project managers know when and how to spend on each resource to ensure it does not overshoot the budget. A project manager controls the monetary costs and external and internal resources.

Ensures realistic project planning

A good project manager helps ensure achievable deadlines and enables everyone within the project to work with realistic expectations and deadlines. To ensure timely delivery of projects, these managers create a project plan, project delivery and budget estimates. This allows managers to create realistic goals and achievable deadlines. Planning is essential to ensure projects get delivered on time and within the specified budget. As most projects might take longer than anticipated, a good manager uses their planning skills to analyse and balance the resources and develop a realistic schedule.

Encourages teamwork

The project manager encourages team members to work together to achieve an organisational goal and fix project-related problems. Using their leadership and communication skills, these professionals ensure increased collaboration among the team members. They encourage every team member to share ideas and knowledge related to the project. This can help them deliver projects on time and within budget.

Maximises use of resources

Every project has a few resources, such as money, people and time. Optimally using resources encourages team members to maximise productivity and minimise resource wastage. A project manager ensures effective resource management, helps allocate tasks to project teams and designs a schedule of deadlines.

Encourages learning

In the closing phase of every project, a project manager reviews how the project progressed and the team handled the obstacles they faced. Reviewing the project's progress helps these managers identify areas of improvement, which they can implement in future projects. Learning from mistakes helps these managers improve the work process and reduce the risk factors associated with each project.

Facilitates continuous oversight

A critical role of a project manager is ensuring that a project's progress gets reported and appropriately tracked. A manager ensures that the project gets completed on time by providing continuous oversight. This helps the team understand when the project is going against the plan or deviating from the organisational goals. The earlier you detect a project's deviation, the easier it becomes to complete a project on time.

Motivates the project team

Apart from improving communication and efficiency, a project manager motivates the team members to excel in their job. Proper project management reduces stress among project contributors and can cause higher project turnover. When team members see a competent leader overcoming crises it can motivate and inspire team members to complete their projects on time.

Skills Of A Project Manager

Project managers require a high level of refined skills to think logically and technically while delivering consistent communication to different stakeholders. Here are some important skills for these professionals:

Leadership skills

To ensure the completion of each project phase, these professionals require leadership skills. This primarily involves administering realistic deadlines, making direct decisions and managing budget costs. Leadership skills help these professionals set realistic and achievable expectations for the team and resolve situations of conflict.

Adaptability

Another critical skill for a project manager is adaptability. Adaptability allows these professionals to adjust to changing technology, businesses, demographics and trends. By embracing learning and being open-minded, these professionals can ensure the successful completion of the project. This skill set allows a project manager to lead their team in the right direction.

Communication skills

Having excellent communication skills is essential for developing a strong relationship with team members and stakeholders. A project manager requires excellent communication skills to understand the project's scope and communicate the same to the team members. These professionals require proficiency in verbal and written communication skills. Also, a project manager shares the right information with the right people using the right channel at the right time.

Time management

Time management is a crucial skill required by a project manager. It primarily involves identifying and communicating how your project team spends their time. Often, these professionals complete a project for a short duration, requiring effective time management. Time management is about creating and maintaining timelines throughout the project's lifecycle.

Multitasking skills

As project managers might handle more than one project at a time, employers prefer professionals who can multitask. These managers create an effective work environment and save time because of their ability to concurrently complete tasks. The ability to multitask helps these professionals remain detailed-oriented and on schedule.

Risk management skills

During a project, risks are inevitable, though they might not seem clear at first. Having the ability to assess the associated risk is essential for creating a risk mitigation plan. This plan primarily involves identifying risks early in the project and preventing thefts for the project's success. To prevent threats and reduce the risks a project faces, these professionals require proficiency in using risk management tools.

Proficiency in project management methodologies

To efficiently complete their work, these managers require proficiency in various project management methodologies. The ability to choose between various project management methodologies, like linear approach or constant enhancement is desirable for this role. Often, it becomes challenging to pick the best method. Having a good understanding of the organisation and knowing about various project management frameworks can help you become a successful project manager.

Importance Of A Project Manager In An Organisation