Seven Top Competencies of a Project Manager Essay

Seven Top Competencies of a Project Manager - Essay Example Role of the Project Manager The project manager has a significant role of ensuring execution of the project in different areas including planning, operation, monitoring, and control, as well as ending the project per se. Project managers coordinate activities of project team members to achieve the proposed objectives and the vision of the project. In their day-to-day functions, the projects managers have to focus on short and long-term activities. Conventionally, project managers focused on larger, more comprehensive projects. However, contemporary organizations give project managers the mandate to work with even smaller, less technical projects. The Project Management concept has received a lot of attention in the past few decades and has become a highly desired area in most of institutions and organizations. According to Muller and Turner (2010), one goal of a good project manager is to know how he/she is going to manage his/her project, know what to do if the implementation plan f ails, to accomplish the project objectives and ensure integration of the inputs of all of the project stakeholders. Further, the role of project managers is diverse. Turner and Muller (2005) highlight that they determine how the project should set off. By good Integrated Management they help in determining, developing and managing the direction of the project, as well as the scope of the project. A good and well defined project must include best scope management practices that include planning, defining and managing the scope of the project. Another issue is on-time and cost management. Managers should develop budget and a good time plan such as developing a schedule, allocating resources and managing funds for the project for effective results. A good process gives good output due to quality management. There must be a task force to take care of the quality of the process in question such that it meets or even exceeds various quality parameters set but the laid down standards (Camp us, 2002). Human Resource Management is vital and is the responsibility of the project manager. He/she needs to take care of his/her team, encourage and motivate members and make sure the team is on a pathway to success, which helps to ensure that the project implementation process moves in the right direction (Campus, 2002). Communication allows good information flow and hence communication management should be one of the critical aspects that project managers should strive to accomplish among senior and junior staff. The project manager needs to prepare a communication plan, communication technique and make sure that there is healthy communication, both internally and externally (Crawford, 2000). The manager is evaluated successfully against each of the factors affecting his/her communication skills. Risk and hazards are inevitable and, hence, there is need for project managers to establish strong risk management strategies. Various risks which exist in a project should be identif ied and a mitigation plan needs to be developed and implemented to ensure that the project is not affected at any point. A project manager determines success or failure of the project based on the work and procurement plans developed before ground breaking. The project manager has a role of ensuring that procurement plans are strategically positioned to enhance the accomplishment of the project objectives. Various materials needed during the project need to be procured and