jump to navigation

Availability

I am currently fully booked until the end of October 2008.

Please contact me if you have a project which needs to be delivered after then.

Welcome to the Blog

The articles here will help you to manage your IT projects effectively. Please feel free to comment and come back regularly for more.

If you have an RSS reader, there is a feed available here

What do project managers do?

Posted by Cathryn in : Project Management , trackback

You’re a Project Manager. Its been years since you cut any code, your chances of configuring a router or installing a complex piece of software are pretty low and the last time you actually built something it was using an antediluvian version of Oracle and C. Not C#, just plain old C. What on earth use are you to the project?

Project managers bring structure and focus to a project. We don’t know the detail, but we do see the wider picture. We can’t necessarily do anyone else’s job, but we have a fairly good idea about how to approach most jobs in the team, and we certainly know what good looks like.

Project Managers:

  1. Understand what’s to be delivered, and why
  2. Plan ahead, recognising that the act of planning helps to make the project work even though plans rarely go as expected.
  3. Assess risks, work out how to deal with them and keep their effect to a minimum
  4. Take advice from experts who know more than they do
  5. Set up processes and procedures to run the small (or perhaps not so small) department that is the project
  6. Hire and manage team members
  7. Find ways of resolving issues
  8. Deal with suppliers and make sure the client gets good value from them
  9. Communicate with everyone affected by or concerned with the project
  10. Keep it all within budget
  11. Keep everyone focussed, particularly those who are not directly in the project team, but who are essential to its success
  12. Champion the project
  13. Report on progress to project boards, project offices, financial controllers and other interested groups in ways that give appropriate detail and information
  14. Make sure IT people understand what the business wants, and that the business understands what IT can deliver
  15. Plug the gaps

And a hundred other things to deliver projects successfully

Comments»

no comments yet - be the first?