This chapter looks at the role of the project manager in an IT organisation. It’s a big chapter and it covers:

• why the role exists;
• what makes a top performing project manager;
• the competencies and soft skills required to succeed in the role (technical skills, processes, tools and methods are covered in Chapter 3).

The term ‘IT project manager’ and ‘project manager’ are used interchangeably.

By the end of this chapter you will have a good idea of the behaviours, interpersonal skills and personality traits that will help you do well as an IT project manager. But first, let’s start with an awkward truth.

THE TROUBLE WITH BEING A PROJECT MANAGER

There’s one small problem with being a project manager.

If the work goes well, the team says: ‘Why did we need you? We did a great job.’

If the work goes badly, the team says: ‘You weren’t a very good project manager.’

The skill in project management (aside from not taking things personally) is making the work look and feel effortless even when a lot of planning has gone into it to get to that point. Good project managers unblock tricky situations for their teams, smooth over the office politics and give people the tools and environment they need to do their best work.

Project managers are the planners, the organisers, the communicators behind the scenes, but they don’t get involved in doing the tasks. You can schedule the unit testing, but you won’t be unit testing yourself. You’ll record, monitor and track project risks but you won’t take steps to mitigate the risks yourself – that’s the responsibility of someone in the team.

However, another common challenge for people in a project management role is that they are expected to do the tasks in the project as well as manage the project. They often have the skills to do so, having moved into project management from a development or team leader role in another IT function. Project management is sometimes part of a role rather than your whole role and in that case you’ll have to switch between your ‘doing’ hat and your ‘project management’ hat. Even if project management is supposed to be your whole role, you’ll find yourself helping out with the tasks from time to time because it’s sometimes unavoidable – for example, if someone is sick or on leave. Look out for when these activities are taking so much effort that you don’t have time to do the project management aspects of your role.

You will find the role of a project manager hard to explain to others at parties. You will find that your family don’t really know what you do all day (but you could give them this book as a starting point). But project management is the most rewarding and fantastic career, even when you’re knee deep in a project crisis that no one saw coming.

THE OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT MANAGER’S ROLE (OR, WHY THE ROLE EXISTS)

The role of project manager exists because time after time studies show that a structured approach to getting work done is a better way to get successful outcomes than rushing around not knowing what you are supposed to be doing. A methodical approach to identifying what needs to be done, planning the work and carrying it out is far more likely to give you good results than a slapdash approach.

It’s not rocket science but it’s also not simply common sense, or the amount wasted due to poor project performance wouldn’t be as high as 9.9 per cent of every dollar. That equates to $99 million for every $1 billion invested in project work.²

Executives have for some time seen the value in employing people to manage temporary endeavours (projects) just like they employ people to manage permanent parts of their businesses (functional teams).

The objectives of a project manager’s role are straightforward.

A project manager balances time, cost and quality to deliver something of value to the organisation.

If you can do that, then you will be more likely to succeed in the role and have a positive impact on your organisation.

WHAT IS PROGRAMME MANAGEMENT?

Project management and programme management are often confused.

A programme is a collection of related projects, all with similar aims, objectives and resources that together deliver a common outcome or a significant change; for example, moving the company to being a paperless office would be a programme with a number of projects such as:

• choosing and implementing an electronic document management system for head office;
• designing a paperless sales process for use in the company’s shops and implementing it to all branches;
• launching an employee portal for electronic payslips and HR information;
• launching an electronic expense management system with approval workflow.

And so on.

Each of these is a project with a project manager, but together they deliver a transformative change for the business. The overall change is managed as a programme, under a programme manager who will consolidate programme-level risks, manage resource conflicts across all projects, control the budget and work with business owners to realise the benefits across all the initiatives.

Programme management requires a different skill set from that of project management, but it’s often considered as a future career move for experienced project managers. This book doesn’t comprehensively deal with programme management skills, although they are discussed briefly in Chapter 4. You’ll find some skills do overlap with project management skills.

WHAT MAKES A TOP PERFORMING PROJECT MANAGER?

In this section we’ll look at the skills you need to be a top performing project manager. It’s a long list. You’ll find that thought leaders, recruiters and professional bodies all have their own opinions of what ‘good’ looks like for the skills of a project manager. There is no single definitive list of all the competencies you need for success. This is a good thing, because it gives you the flexibility to develop all-round skills for business success, and to use the approaches and skills that work best for you in your environment.

The professional body view

There are a number of professional bodies that accredit and certify project managers. These organisations have defined what competencies are required to successfully carry out the project management role. However, having a certificate doesn’t automatically make you a top performing project manager. Certifications give you the foundation of skills and knowledge, and a platform from which to develop further.

Table 2.1 looks at the main professional bodies active in the UK and the main competencies they assess for project managers, based on my interpretation of the syllabuses and exam content outlines provided for their major relevant certifications. There is further information on professional bodies and the standards, methods and tools they support in Chapter 5, and contact details for each in Appendix 1 so you can dive deeply into their frameworks.

The depth of assessment of soft skills in different exams varies, and that’s not surprising. It’s hard to assess soft skills in an exam environment, and project management courses traditionally have focused on the technical and method-driven skills such as planning, scheduling and estimating, which are critical for successful projects. These best practices are discussed in Chapter 4.

PRINCE2^® is excluded from Table 2.1. Neither PRINCE2^® nor AXELOS (the company responsible for developing, enhancing and promoting it) are professional bodies. PRINCE2^® is a method and, as such, leadership and interpersonal skills are specifically excluded from the guidance.

Whether you join and abide by the framework of a professional project management association or not, there are some skills and behaviours that all successful project managers have in common. Let’s look at these now.

Seven essential competencies for project managers

Project managers are good all-round players, often with domain knowledge in the area where they are working (such as infrastructure, platform or digital). The job requires a degree of structure and organisation plus great people management and the ability to engage others in the work. Consequently, the list of skills, behaviours and competencies you need to succeed in the job is incredibly long. As you surf the internet and read into the role of the project manager you’ll see different skills make it to the top of each researcher’s list.

Drawing on my years of research, experience and interviews with project managers, here’s my take on the seven essential competencies for those who want to succeed in the role.

1. People-orientated

Great project managers are people-orientated. That doesn’t mean you have to be an extrovert. It does mean that emotional intelligence, being able to ‘read’ people, being good at building relationships, listening and showing empathy are important skills to develop. A natural interest in connecting with people helps too.

These characteristics are top of the list because your project is changing how other people do their jobs. Big projects such as IT outsourcing may even be putting them out of work. You need to be aware of the consequences of your actions and how this can affect other people.

Project management firm Systemation profiled hundreds of project managers over a decade and their study shows that people-orientation is the top aptitude required for project managers.³ Fewer than 14 per cent of the project managers chosen to go through the Systemation assessment programme scored low on people-orientation. Those that didn’t show aptitude in this area struggled to build successful working relationships and had difficulty getting the most out of their teams. In many cases these project managers were reassigned to other positions where they could contribute to the business in ways that more accurately played to their strengths.

2. Teamwork

Along with being alert to the challenges of working with others and aware of how people are acting around you, project managers are most successful when they enjoy working as a team. Your project team are the people you will spend most of your time with – not other people in project management jobs. This can sometimes feel isolating as you don’t have anyone around you day to day working in the same role as you – projects only need one project manager – but if you can draw energy and enthusiasm from your team then that’s going to help you succeed together.

Being a team leader can be a challenge, as projects don’t always go smoothly (more on that later). You’ll need to be able to work with the team even when it’s tough, which means taking the lead in dealing with conflicts, navigating office politics and handling the personal situations of your team members with discretion and grace.

3. Communication

Being able to communicate goes hand in hand with being a team leader. Your team will be more successful if you can create an environment whereby information is freely shared and communication channels are open both among themselves and with others.

Great project managers are aware that communication is about more than just pushing out your messages. You have to make sure that they are received, understood and acted upon. Plus it helps to have a feedback loop in place so that you are listening to what your team and project stakeholders are telling you as a result of your communication.

Project managers need to be able to effectively communicate:

• in person, on a one-to-one basis, in a small group such as a team meeting and to a larger audience such as giving a presentation to the department;
• in writing, such as in emails, project newsletters or other project documents;
• at a level that your audience can understand – for example, presenting technical detail to the IT security team but providing a higher level overview for departmental managers.

This is something you can practice. The more you build communication into your project plans, the easier you will find it. Encourage your team to communicate too, and lead by example by sharing all the information you have from your senior project stakeholders or project sponsor that is not confidential.

4. Self-confidence

Often in projects you are treading paths that no one has gone down before. It helps to have a degree of self-confidence in your abilities when doing something new.

However, no one wants to work with someone who is arrogant. Self-awareness will keep your confidence in check and ensure you don’t tip off the end of the assertiveness scale and fall into the mistake of being arrogant.

Having confidence in your abilities doesn’t mean you’ll never have to ask for help. Recognising your own strengths and weaknesses is definitely part of being self-aware. Be prepared to ask for help if you need it and surround yourself with people who are strong in areas where you are not so strong. Overall, this will help you balance the team and ensure that together you are able to deliver what’s needed for the business.

5. Strong desire to achieve

Project managers have a strong desire to achieve and are motivated by completing work. You may feel that this is a natural fit for your personality and that in your life in general you are goal-orientated and highly motivated by achievement.

You don’t have to be naturally this way inclined to succeed as a project manager, although it helps.

This competency is all about staying focused on the goal. As a leader, and as a team, you cannot waver from that. Losing focus can result in many problems including:

• missing deadlines;
• overspending;
• bloating the project scope through uncontrolled changes;
• failing to deliver any benefit.

And, ultimately, losing focus could result in the project being closed down and considered a failure.

Staying focused on the big picture and always linking current activities back to the big picture is something that successful project managers do regularly.

6. Ability to remain calm

Projects don’t always go to plan. In fact, it’s highly likely that you’ll hit problems on your project. Customers change their minds, someone goes off sick, the technology doesn’t perform as you expect or a supplier lets you down. There are loads of reasons why the path of your project is going to be challenged and it’s your job as the project manager to deal with these situations.

Being able to stay calm in a crisis is a great skill to have because your attitude and behaviour rubs off on your colleagues. If they see you dealing with a crisis in a calm way, they’ll act accordingly. If you are rushing around in a panic because a vendor has just made a multi-million-dollar mistake in the code, they’ll panic too.

You are, of course, entitled to panic in a crisis, just don’t let anyone on the project see you do it. Talk to a trusted colleague, your Project Management Office (PMO) or mentor if you need support in the first instance. The team look to you to guide them through difficult times.

7. Flexibility

When things don’t go to plan on your project you need to be able to pivot and flex as required, and bring your team along with you.

You may need to flex your approach because your project sponsor changes their mind about what they want to do or because some external constraint means you have no choice but to take a different direction.

Whatever the cause, when you’ve spent a long time working on a project schedule, and your team have prepared estimates that feel realistic and relate to the work at hand, having to change direction can feel uncomfortable. In a traditional project environment, changes can mean a lot of rework and building new relationships. They can mean going over your schedule line by line and working out what needs to be changed and how that is going to affect your ability to deliver the project’s objectives.

Changes are always welcome in Agile ways of working, even late in the process, but you’ll still need to be flexible in order to incorporate them.

Changes happen for lots of reasons and being able to roll with the punches will make the experience of managing a project far more pleasant for everyone. The project manager who sticks to the schedule despite knowing it will no longer deliver what is required will quickly find herself out of a job.

Additional desirable skills

On top of those critical skills, project managers need a rounded approach to managing the work and a wide variety of interpersonal skills. Here are some additional skills that good project managers demonstrate. They are secondary in that you can manage a project without them, but they certainly make life easier and are worth cultivating over time if you do not feel you are particularly strong in these areas.

Creativity

Project management might not look like the most creative of jobs on the surface. You’re often given the project on a plate and told to deliver ‘that’ using tried-and-tested processes and methodologies.

However, creativity is a fantastic skill to have for problem-solving and dealing with issues. Getting your team together and helping them to think outside the box is the fastest way out of difficult situations. When the team hits an issue, the project manager’s role isn’t to solve the issue alone, but to gather some potential courses of action, review the options and help the team come to a conclusion about what would be the best route forward.

Using your problem-solving skills and thinking creatively about issues can help you and the team come up with better solutions.

Organisation

A good project management methodology can offset some of your own natural disorganisation but you will perform better as a project manager if you are naturally organised (or if you can be organised if you try hard enough).

Being systematic in your approach to work will really help you stay on top of things.

Delegation

One of the unique things about the project management role is that you’re not responsible for the doing of the tasks. You might read that part of a project manager’s job is to allocate or assign tasks to others.

In reality, that’s done based on discussion and taking into account team members’ skills, experience and interest. In Agile methodologies, teams are self-organising and members get to choose the things they would like to work on from the backlog of tasks.

Scrum teams choose upfront so they each know what their responsibilities are during the sprint (the defined period of work, called a timebox, like a project phase – there’s more on Agile methods in Chapter 4). Kanban and Scrumban teams choose as they go.

Project managers do, however, have to be able to work with the team to make sure that the right work is done by people with the right skills, and to get people to take responsibility for the ownership of that task. While it’s great to give your team as much autonomy as possible, you can’t fail to deliver on your project goals simply because no one much fancies working on that task this month. Your skills at delegating morph more into making sure all the tasks are being picked up and that nothing is slipping through the cracks.

In some cases, your team will need you to specify exactly what it is that is expected from the task for the project. Being able to give clear instructions about a task, provide full information and give others what they need to be able to complete the work is an important skill.

Influencing and negotiating

Project teams come together for a defined period of time and it is most likely that the project team members will not work for you directly. They will have line managers back in their functional teams, and their project work will either be on a full-time secondment or part-time basis but they won’t officially leave their ‘home’ team. There’s more on the different structure of teams in the next chapter.

Managing people who don’t work directly for you is a challenge. They will have split priorities and split loyalties. They’ve effectively got two bosses – more if they are working on several projects. It can be hard for them to prioritise and to balance the competing needs of the different endeavours that they are involved with.

Being able to influence others and negotiate for the resources you need on your project are key skills for a project manager. You’ll use these both with your team members and also with their managers.

If you don’t feel particularly confident in your ability to influence and negotiate with others then don’t worry: these are definitely skills that you can develop and improve with practice and training.

Administration

You can’t escape the fact that when you start out in a project management role (and even when you get to be quite senior) you’ll be doing a lot of updating logs and project documents and other project admin yourself. If your company has a PMO or project coordinators, you may be able to use them to help with project admin, although you’ll still remain accountable for it.

There is a lot of paperwork in project management, and while you’ll use your professional judgement to tailor your methods and approaches to fit your project, you still need to be aware that there’s a big chunk of admin to do.

Good computer skills will definitely help, and you should be able to use word processing packages and be comfortable with spreadsheets for managing project budgets.

It’s also important to be able to find the files you have created. So much time is wasted looking for documentation, so being able to store your documentation in a way that suits the IT systems you are using will save you many headaches later on.

Finding ways to highlight decisions made (a simple log of decisions, who took them and why, will do) and important artefacts so that you can quickly get back to them will also be very useful.

Attention to detail

This might seem contrary to the points earlier in this section that project managers have to be focused on the big picture to get the team across the line and deliver what’s expected. While that’s certainly true, there is a big part of the project manager’s role that involves paying close attention to the details. Often when a detail is overlooked, something breaks along the chain which puts the bigger picture in jeopardy.

For this reason, you’ll often see project managers with detailed project schedules and ‘To Do’ lists, covering tasks that other people are responsible for doing. By tracking details, they can make sure that everything is covered and that things are moving in the right direction.

Leadership

Finally, being able to lead your team is important for project managers.

Note that leadership is different and distinct from management. Management is being able to organise work, plan, structure activities and follow through. It involves executing tasks, following processes and controlling the work. Leadership has more to do with getting others to understand the vision, sharing the goals and getting people to follow you there, motivating them to do their best work to help you achieve those objectives.

We’ve already seen that teamwork and being people-orientated are key skills. It’s also important to be able to act in a leadership capacity, guiding the team to the goal, even if you aren’t in a traditional leadership position.

WHERE DOES A PROJECT MANAGER’S AUTHORITY COME FROM?

So how does the project manager get the authority to do all of this? Authority refers to your ability to make decisions about project planning, task execution, resource allocation, spending the project’s budget, approving work and similar activities.

In many jobs, your authority is linked to who you work for. If you work directly for the CEO, mentioning their name opens doors and confers a degree of authority on you. That’s not how project management works.

Often, your line manager will be the functional manager in charge of all project resources, or perhaps a head of department. While they might be important in the organisation, your authority to run a project isn’t linked to them.

Your authority to manage the project comes from the governance structures around the project. The initial project documentation – the project charter or project initiation document – will include a list of people who will work on the project and your name should be on there in the role of project manager. This document is approved by the relevant senior business leaders and your project sponsor. The fact that they have approved the work to be done and your role in the work as the project manager, gives you the authority to proceed.

If you are not sure how much authority you have, you can always check with your project sponsor. However, as the saying goes, it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission. You know your organisational culture, but in many cases, as long as you are acting with the project’s best interests at heart, you can go ahead and take action.

ETHICS: AN UNDERPINNING SKILL

Being able to operate ethically is important for all roles, and project management is no exception. Given the amount of emphasis on leadership, stakeholder and relationship management and the impact that transparency, honesty and integrity can have on building a successful team, ethics is essential for today’s business.

PMI has a Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct for project managers.⁴ APM also has a Code of Professional Conduct⁵ and whether you are a member of those bodies or not, it’s worth familiarising yourself with the standards to which project managers should hold themselves accountable.

Codes of professional conduct set out the standards for how project managers should behave. They cover personal responsibilities and responsibilities to the profession. Dealing with grey areas in the ethics arena isn’t a common problem for most project managers but certain cultures and industries will expose you to more dilemmas than others. Generally speaking, in an office-based, UK-based IT role, you are unlikely to be asked to take a bribe in exchange for awarding a contract or anything similar, for example.

However, it’s important to be aware of what might be an ethical grey area so that you can take advice as appropriate and not put yourself or your business in a difficult position. Here are some pointers for ensuring you manage your project within the boundaries of professional ethics.

1. Disclose any interests you have

Conflict of interest is one of the more common ethical dilemmas, especially in smaller, well-connected industries, or where you have personal contacts in the same industry.

For example, if you have personal connections to the company putting forward a proposal during supplier selection you should definitely let your project sponsor know. It would be best for you to take a step back from the procurement work so that you can’t be accused of making a decision that is in the best interests of a family member or friend.

2. Don’t reuse assets from your last job

It’s common practice to reuse templates and project documentation to make the most of what you have and avoid duplication of effort on every project. But if your old company had a fantastic set of design principles for websites, you can’t get them out, rebrand them with your new company’s logo and start putting them in front of clients.

Don’t reuse assets from your last job. If nothing else, they are probably protected, with proprietary intellectual property (IP), and your old contract may have specifically outlined what you can and can’t do with company property.

You can’t unknow what you know, so you can use your interpretation and your knowledge to create a set of design principles allied to the values of your new organisation but informed through all of your professional expertise. It’s quite likely you were hired because of the experience you gained elsewhere but you have to be careful about how you make use of this in any new role.

3. Don’t leave information out deliberately

This is lying by omission. You can get round difficult questions by failing to include the one piece of information that wasn’t technically asked for but that might change everything.

For example, if you are asked if your project is on schedule, you could reply: ‘Right now we’re sticking to the plan’. That gives the client the impression that all is well. However, if you know that there is a huge risk coming round the corner that’s probably going to push you off course next month then you’ve deliberately left out information that would give them the complete picture.

This isn’t honest or transparent. It’s giving your clients a poor service and doing a disservice to your team as well.

4. Be brave

Stand up for what you believe in. Don’t be afraid to call people out on their behaviour. If you hear someone making offensive remarks, say something. Don’t be bullied and don’t let other people be bullied either. This is where your leadership skills can make a real difference.

Whatever your values are, stand by them – and even if you can’t quite articulate them you’ll know when you see or are asked to do something that just doesn’t feel right. Life is too short to compromise on what is important to you.

5. Challenge decisions

You should always feel that your sponsor is open to hearing your opinions about the project. You have been trusted with delivering this piece of work on their behalf and they owe you the time to listen to your opinion if you think something is going off track.

If you feel that a decision has been made that isn’t the right thing for the project, challenge the decision. Talk to your sponsor about why you feel like that. They may well overrule you and go with what they want to do anyway, but you’ll have had your chance to make your point and you may well be able to convince them that an alternative path is better.

Never let the fact that someone is in a more senior position than you stop you from speaking up when you have a legitimate dissenting view. However, you’ll need to be aware of the political and strategic context of your project so that you can discuss it carefully, and in an articulate and professional way.

6. Don’t ask your team to do unpaid work

Everyone on your team loves their job so much that they would come in and work on the weekends for free just because they hate being away from the office so much, right? Perhaps there are workplaces like that, but you’ll find that there is a limit to your colleagues’ generosity when it comes to putting in extra effort for your project.

Project work isn’t a Monday-to-Friday, 9 a.m.-to-5 p.m. job, and most people will understand that if you take the time to explain to them what’s required throughout the project life cycle. It’s common for the workload on projects to be a bit ‘up and down’ – when there is a release or the project launches is always a busy time, for example.

However, there are limits. Requiring people to do unpaid overtime isn’t acceptable.

If they volunteer for whatever reason, then that’s different. But don’t pressurise them or ‘encourage’ them to do more than they are prepared to do. They have responsibilities to their families and they have bills to pay. Be respectful of their time and their capacity to earn.

7. Don’t play favourites

Humans are social creatures. While we are drawn to making friends, you’ll find that not everyone falls into the ‘potential friend’ category. The good news is that you don’t have to like everyone at work. You just have to be able to work with them. A professional, respectful relationship is all that’s required.

The bad news is that if you do have close friends at work, your relationship with them could come across as favouritism, even if you are trying really hard to avoid that. Fairness is important in teams as it helps create trust and mutual respect. Don’t take a junior colleague out to lunch once a week because you’re turning into great friends and then ignore the others in the team. If you can’t treat all your staff fairly, don’t create situations where you are treating them differently. Perhaps do your lunches on rotation, so everyone gets time with you as their project manager and mentor.

Working within ethical boundaries is not difficult: it should be part of the fabric of who you are and how you work. Your professional values will be tested on complex projects. In summary, do all you can to make sure that you stay within professional boundaries and never put yourself in situations where you feel you could compromise the project, your reputation or your organisation.

A PROJECT MANAGER’S RESPONSIBILITIES

The sphere of control for a project manager is what you are responsible for. This might be clear from your job description, but it’s more likely to be something you grow into, your responsibilities changing as your project sponsor gains confidence in your abilities to do the job.

You will be able to take on more and more responsibility as time goes on and you develop skills and experience.

Regardless of your past experience, when starting a new project it’s always a good idea to confirm your sphere of control with your project sponsor or line manager. This ensures that you know your boundaries and the area in which you can operate.

Project managers are typically responsible for:

• initiating the project;
• planning the project;
• monitoring and controlling the project’s performance and taking corrective action as necessary as the work progresses;
• achieving the goal while staying within pre-defined parameters for time, cost and quality;
• closing the project at the appropriate time.

The extent to which you’ll be able to achieve all of these, and your freedom of operation within these areas, depends on what you have agreed as part of your role and your level in the organisation, which we will look at more below.

Setting your boundaries

Have a conversation with your sponsor about setting boundaries before you start a project. Make sure you know what environment you are operating in and how much influence you can have over this.

Set and understand your boundaries as early as you can in the project. There are two main elements to doing this.

Firstly, it’s important to know how much latitude you have on your project to make decisions and to shape how the work is done. For example, you don’t want to be in a position where you make a decision not to use a certain tool only to find that this has repercussions downstream for others in the business who rely on that tool for data. You may not have any ability to change the method used, or how you tailor it to suit your project. Conversely, there might be plenty of scope to adapt standard templates or make decisions about how to carry out the work. Discuss this with your project sponsor or line manager so you know what the constraints are in terms of project management approach.

Secondly, it’s important to be clear on tolerances specifically for this project. Tolerances are how much you can flex within your project without having to go back for approval, specifically around budget and schedule but you can also set them for other areas. There are some examples in Table 2.2.

Tolerances are useful because they mean you don’t have to continually go back to your project sponsor to ask for permission to complete the project a day late or a few pounds over budget. Defining your tolerances, and then managing to them, gives you and your sponsor the ability to set criteria around what you can and can’t do on the project.

These tolerances are specifically about how you will do project management on the project – they relate to the boundaries you have around how you are managing the work. You can also set tolerances for the outputs of a project. For example, if you are launching a new web-based service, you may have tolerances for quality defined in your quality criteria such as:

• website loads within 0 to 0.7 seconds;
• website page size is between two and three megabytes;
• auto password recovery email is sent within one to two seconds.

It is important to manage your work so that you know when you are approaching your tolerance limits, and what you should do when that happens. As soon as you know you are going to breach a tolerance, you should escalate this to your project sponsor and let them know.

You may also find that from time to time an event occurs that would keep you within your approved tolerance but that you think your sponsor should know about. Professional judgement always trumps arbitrary rules, so if you think you should inform your sponsor of something, then go ahead and do so.

Understanding a project manager’s responsibilities at different levels

What a project manager is responsible for differs between companies, industries and individuals as your experience and skills clearly influence what you can and can’t do in a project environment.

Luckily there is a benchmark for what a project manager should be responsible for at different levels within an organisation.

The SFIA^® (Skills Framework for the Information Age)⁶ framework is the most comprehensive definition of IT skills in global business. It’s regularly updated by the SFIA^® Foundation so it stays relevant, which is particularly important given how fast-moving the IT industry is. At the time of writing, SFIA^® version 7 has just been released.

How SFIA^® works

The framework is made up of skills and tasks at different levels. It defines a common language about skills, abilities and expertise across technical roles. It’s used by individuals and organisations across the IT industry and at varying points in their career development to plan development activities and inspire career progression.

There are seven levels of responsibility in the framework, from Level 1 (an entry level, working under direction role) to Level 7 (the most senior level in an organisation with responsibility for things like policy and formulating strategy).

Project management responsibilities kick in at Level 4, so you couldn’t carry out the role of a project manager at a level below that.

SFIA^® outlines six skills categories:

1. Strategy and architecture
2. Change and transformation
3. Development and implementation
4. Delivery and operation
5. Skills and quality
6. Relationships and engagement.

Project management is a skill in the change and transformation category, but there are many elements of a project manager’s role that could fall into the other areas.

Below we’ll look at some of the common responsibilities for people carrying out project management at different levels in an organisation, as set out in the SFIA^® framework. The framework does not give job titles at each level, but I have provided them to give you a reference for the kind of job that you might be doing at each level.

Responsibilities for a project manager (SFIA^® Level 4)

In this role you’ll work under the general direction of someone else and within a clear framework of accountability. You’ll know where your boundaries lie and what scope you have for taking decisions on the project and on behalf of the team.

You’ll be able to work largely autonomously with a substantive degree of personal responsibility for the work, the team and the deliverables of the project. You are responsible for planning your own work, filling your day with the relevant tasks and using the right processes to get the job done in a way that meets the objectives for the project.

You’ll be responsible for:

• Defining, documenting and carrying out small projects or sub-projects such as the IT workstream of a larger business project. This generally means working on initiatives that are up to a year long, with a limited budget that you may or may not be directly responsible for. Smaller projects have limited interdependencies with other projects, and often have a small or no significant strategic impact. You could be working on a project alone or with a small team and you’ll be responsible for project work across all phases of the project from initiation to completion.
• Identifying, assessing and managing risk.
• Agreeing the project approach with stakeholders. In other words, how you will get the project done and what tools you’ll use to do so.
• Preparing realistic plans for the work. Project plans cover more than just tasks and the dates when work will be done (we call this plan the project schedule). You’ll also prepare plans to cover the activities required for managing risk, quality and stakeholder engagement and communication.
• Tracking activities against the project schedule.
• Managing stakeholder involvement in the project as appropriate, involving those who need to be involved at the right time and to the right level.
• Monitoring the project budget, timescale and resources and taking action where these deviate from the tolerances you have agreed with your project sponsor.
• Formally closing down the project when the work is delivered and reviewing, recording and sharing the lessons learned.

Responsibilities for a senior project manager or programme manager (SFIA^® Level 5)

In this role you’ll work under your own initiative most of the time. You’ll receive broad direction from your leadership. You are responsible for planning and scheduling work and you’ll also assign tasks to other people.

You’ll be responsible for:

• Defining, facilitating and completing medium-scale projects, including setting the approach. These projects will have clear deadlines and direct business impact.
• Identifying, assessing and managing risks that might stop the project being successful.
• Ensuring that the project plans are realistic and up-to-date, and in line with the methods used. For example, if you are using Agile methods, that your planning reflects this and that the tools are being used to the best advantage. You’ll also take action if the project’s performance starts to depart from the path that you have agreed with your project sponsor and other key stakeholders.
• Ensuring that there is regular communication with the stakeholders, and that this accurately reflects what is going on.
• Ensuring that quality reviews take place effectively and at the right time.
• Managing the change control procedure for the project.⁷
• Ensuring that project deliverables are completed within the parameters agreed around budget, resource and schedule, and that deliverables are handed over to users and signed off.

Responsibilities for a portfolio manager or project office manager (SFIA^® Level 6)

In this role you are most likely responsible for a team of project and programme managers, or you head up a division with a significant amount of project management work, or perhaps you are the PMO manager or a project sponsor. Depending on the organisation and project, you could also find project managers leading significant, strategic, critical and complex projects at this level.

Positions at this level carry a significant amount of influence over strategic direction and policy.

You’ll be responsible for everything mentioned in the levels above, and more, including:

• Taking responsibility at the highest level for the successful completion of complex projects. These projects would have significant high-profile impact, political sensitivities or business criticality with high-risk dependencies.
• Choosing the methods and tools for projects or the division.
• Ensuring that all project management best practices are followed including effective change control and risk management.
• Monitoring and controlling all aspects of the project including operational and capital expenditure and any impact on revenue.
• Managing the expectations of everyone on the project from executive sponsors to end users, including suppliers and other relevant third parties.

Responsibilities for a projects director (SFIA^® Level 7)

Someone in this kind of role, operating at this level, will be one of the executive team. This is probably the person who has ultimate accountability for projects within the business, such as the projects director, strategy director or similar. Job titles can vary between organisations and some businesses may not have someone responsible for projects operating at this level.

In these kinds of positions, the individuals involved will be setting strategy and policy related to project management, programme management and portfolio management across the organisation.

You’ll be responsible for:

• Creating the organisational strategy relating to project management. This could include mandating appropriate tools, standards and methods.
• Authorising large projects and overseeing their management.
• Leading strategic projects that are considered high risk or have a significant impact. This could translate to operating in a project leadership or sponsorship role, and wouldn’t necessarily mean that you were doing the hands-on scheduling, monitoring and controlling of the project.
• Ensuring compliance to processes like change control and making sure that issues are being addressed in line with standards and processes.

There’s a lot to consider at every level. The role of the project manager has wide-ranging responsibilities but there are some threads around planning, monitoring and control that you’ll see throughout the levels.

SUMMARY

Project managers make a contribution to the way change is delivered, because a structured approach helps to get work done effectively and efficiently. Project managers need a wide range of skills and competencies to be successful in the role. The responsibilities of a project manager differ from business to business, and depend on the level at which you operate. Professional certification schemes assess knowledge and behaviour, and provide a foundation for further development.

Read this

Overcoming Imposter Syndrome by Elizabeth Harrin: A short ebook about building self-confidence at work – helpful if you are feeling daunted about all the skills you’re expected to have as a project manager (www.girlsguidetopm.com/overcoming-imposter-syndrome).

Project Management for Humans by Brett Harned: An easy-to-read and practical book that explores the relevant skills for project managers especially in a digital or Agile environment (but still a good read for everyone else too).

Do this

If you don’t yet have a project management certificate, ask your employer what support they can offer you to get one. If you aren’t currently working, look at what certification schemes are most appropriate for your level of experience and make a decision about which, if any, to go for.

Share this

This month I’m working on [insert skill]. What about you? #itpm

What project management certification do you have? Has it helped your career? #itpm

Take it further

Benefits management is an interesting, and advanced, topic. While it’s not strictly the remit of a project manager, it can help to have some understanding of how benefits are created, realised and tracked. There are a lot of materials available on the discipline of benefits management, so dive into some of the many books available if this is an area that interests you.