Chosing A Career As A Project Manager Essay

The leader must be sure to take the group dynamics into consideration. It is important to make everyone involved feel that their needs are important. For the project to be a success, everyone participating must feel as if they are contributing and that they are being valued equally.

The leader gives projects, tasks and support and the team should be able to operate on its own.

Over the past few years, project managers and Project management has shown tremendous growth. Project management has evolved over the past several years from an activity in an organization to a discipline in its own right. Many professional bodies exist today to represent project management as a discipline, Some of which include, PMI, Prince2 Foundation, PM Bok.

The paper is divided into three sections, the first of which will establish a timeline of events. This project background will serve as a case study for the analysis in the following section that will be structured such that each of the previously mentioned facets will be independently analyzed and contrasted with project management principles. Finally the paper will conclude with a summary of the analysis and recommendations based on

The job of project manager, as performed by Ron Barnes of CanDo Construction Ltd., is fundamental in making things happen, as he is responsible for winning and completing projects. To do this successfully, he must gather an accurate assessment of the competition through direct contact, past experience, or second-hand reports. He must also organize available material and human resources, and determine the timeframe necessary to complete all processes of a project.

A project manager must be a skillful planner and can inspire his or her team to produce as needed. Per LaBrosse (2007), project management can be used throughout the organization to boost personal and collaborative productivity by building a standardized system that embeds best practices into the way projects are managed” (p.26).

In the current business environment, the demand for project managers is ever growing. In short, project management is a provisional project constrained by time, cost and scope (A guide to the project management body of knowledge, 2013). Between the immense organization, optimization, and communication assets skilled project management brings to a project, it is easy to see why project management is a booming field of study. Furthermore, project management can be both financially and personally rewarding when long term milestones and goals come to fruition.

Project management is the discipline of using policies and procedures to manage a project from creation to competition. The intent of this paper is to assess the role of a project manager and determine if I am well suited for a career in project management. To achieve this goal, I will be discussing the following areas: job description, general career path, education requirements, salary, career outlook, and the pros and cons. I will also be interviewing a colleague that currently working as a project manager to gain a better understanding of typical duties associated with the role.

Without leadership, a team lacks direction and cohesion. Leadership is there to solve challenges associated with teamwork and to insure the attainment of the main objective of the team effort. Leadership reduces the risks associated with a project. This happens because the person or team providing direction for the project do not get involved in detailed implementation freeing them to see the big picture from which they identify and reduce or eliminate risks. Leadership increasingly means the difference between a successful project and a failed one despite the availability of resources. This is because of the role leadership plays in the effective allocation of resources to achieve the projects objectives.

Leadership is one of the most elusive disparities in project management. All successful project managers are not always the most successful leaders. Many of us probably have experienced interacting with such project managers wondering how these managers were able to meet their project goals without having the ability to motivate people and develop a cohesive team. The answer is that these managers were lucky enough to have team members who were passionate about their jobs and delivered the results, which helped the project managers to be successful. The challenge is that project management skills can be obtained through courses, certifications, and degrees but there are not such tools available to become an effective leader.

Dainty, Cheng, & Moore (2005) explains that “finding the right project managers begins with the organization’s definition of the role, and its project management processes. Most often companies look for project experience when evaluating new project managers, followed by communication skills. The generally described project manager competencies, such as project-specific expertise, problem-solving competence, leadership and social competence have to be complemented with entrepreneurial and project management competence.” In addition, Gillard & Price (2005) consider specific attitudes, behaviors and competencies as characteristics of results-oriented, effective project managers.” Professional project management competencies can be achieved

Several adaptations to the traditional approaches like agile, interactive, phased, extreme, etc have been made but each will be expected to meet the requirements of the project objectives, timeline, resources, and deliveries of the stakeholders. Other industry standard certifications like ISO9000 and regulations like the Sarbanes-Oxley have also influenced methodologies and processes used by several organisations (Kerzner, 2003). Generally, managing projects should involved five major process which include the project initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and controlling, and then project closing. See Fig. 2 below.

(8) A project leader might contribute different roles in the success of a project. The new role of the project manager requires an ultimate knowledge of the strategy of the project. The PL is responsible for observing and analyzing project process and project structure. (14)A project leader must possess a certain set of combination skills and characteristics that can be used to manage projects successfully including:The diplomatic skills to solicit input and negotiate compromises, having the ability to ask penetrating questions, identifies unstated assumptions, flexible enough to roll with the changes, and resolve personnel conflicts along with more systematic management skills. (12)(13)(15)Also,Developing a grand visionBuilding, leading and mentoring the project management teamLeadership, Facilitation, communicative, Selling (promote and sell the project both within and outside the organization), Presentation skillsPeople-management skills such as constructive feedback, conflict resolution, managing individual styles and personalitiesSkills at interfacing across the organization and removing obstacles for the teamAbility to accept criticism, feedback, and input from othersSkills in using team-based tools such as brainstorming, organizing, decision-making, Project management, conflict resolution, and so on (14)(10)4. Does this role change under the conditions described in the scenario? If so, how and why? If not, why not?To overcome with this

Effective management of organizational projects is thorough dependent upon individuals possessing great leadership skills and competencies, since in the absence of an effective project leader a specific project is likely to fail in the long run. The successful accomplishment of projects is the sole former responsibility as well as objective of a project manager, who takes enormous responsibility upon his shoulder when it comes to make the right decisions (Geoghegan & Dulewicz, 2008). Whereas some individuals have natural leadership attributes, other such leadership skills and competencies need to be adapted by them for ensuring individual approaches of leadership is well-tailored to be suitable for individual style as well as personality. A project manager is entitled to incorporate much more than only managing projects. He needs to develop potential teams for achieving success in accomplishing projects. Commonly, teams are said to rely greatly upon their manager’s leadership for effective guidance as well as encouragement. They are likely to respond in a positive manner towards quality leadership and enable building of stronger relationships amidst members (Keegan & Den Hartog, 2004). They also fight against the project challenges in a cohesive manner. Hence it is time now to highlight upon some of the key attributes of organizational project leaders so as to have a better understanding of the

The project manager plays a vital role on the construction project, from the very beginning of its initiation and planning to execution, to completion and handing over the complete project to the client. The project manager identifies and select the discrete processes to meet the project objective and target, considering the constituting inputs and outputs for the process (Project Management Institute, 2013). The project manager should be perceptive, well informed and should show keenness to the project for its timely delivery, under the targeted cost, reliable and durable quality, as projects are financial investments and a successful project gains the trust of client (Heerkens, 2014). The project manager is required to perform better than the past, which would be achieved by learning by doing. The project manager will not be able to complete the project without a team. The project manager should make a team and take all the responsibility like a team leader for the successful delivery of the project (Heerkens, 2014). Before starting the project, the project manager should breakdown the project into measurable tasks, inter linking the tasks, allocating time to each task, assigning tools, techniques, human resources to each tasks for its successful completion (Tinnirello, 1999).