Describe about the Project Management for Interpretation, Comparison and Contrast.
This report introduces the interpretation, comparison and contrast of the roles of a project manager. The roles are of a leader, manager, facilitator and mentor respectively. The report also gives the exploration of the research that includes the facets of project vs functional management. The aim of the paper is to provide a detailed view of the various perspectives of the project manager.
Interpretation of the roles of a project manager
The project manager while managing a team has to act in several roles for effective handling of his team. Such an efficient management actually makes the team to work as per their set objectives and perform as per compliance.
Leader
One of such important role of a project manager is the leader. The efficiency of the manager handling a project majorly depends on how he leads his subordinates. Therefore to be a successful and effective project manager, a person should possess good level of leadership skills (Hodgson & Paton, 2016). Such skills will make him to provide guidance to his fellow companions for what to do.
The team actually requires directions regarding the project life and the project manager has the responsibility to lead the team for achieving the vision regarding the creation of the project. The project manager makes the coordination, facilitation and motivation of the team for achieving the goals (Bredillet, Tywoniak & Dwivedula, 2015). Actually the ability of him for influencing, inspiring, directing and communication will make a determination of his effectiveness as the manager of project. Here the central role is leading that involves work for achieving the project objectives.
Manager
As a project manager, a person has to manage everything starting from top to bottom of a project. He has to make an efficient utilization of the available resources. He has to make plans regarding cost, time, manpower and money keeping in mind to reach a successful completion of the project. The project manager should have a rigorous knowledge regarding the skills for execution of the activities (Kerzner, 2013). Until and unless these core competences are not present in a project manager, he will not be able to understand the work to be done or the level of skills required to make the project successful. Therefore, the manager should have a proper understanding about the technical aspects of the project.
The project manager should have a good grasp on the functional activities of the various departments such as accounting, HR, systems, marketing, operations, administration so that he can proceed with the project through a proper integration.
Facilitator
In case of a facilitator the project manager has the activity to enable the project team to work in an effective manner. The project manager actually provides the support for the collaboration and achievement of synergy (Walker, 2015). He has not the responsibility for doing all the tasks of the project. It is the responsibility of the team of the project. The role of the project manager has to make creation of the right conditions, which enables the team of the project for carrying the duties. The project manager also makes the contributions through provision of the framework for facilitating the interactions. Such interactions take place through the different groups. Such facilitation is done for making an effective functioning. The objective of the facilitator is giving support for the team along with their beneficiaries to achieve the performance in an exceptional level (Eweje, Turner & Muller, 2012). The role of the facilitator is normally utilized to deal the beneficiaries where the manager of the project does not have the authority over the team. The manager should provide the environment for trust where the beneficiaries have the feeling for the contribution of ideas.
Mentor
Mentor is basically an adviser who is trusted and experienced. The mentor normally provides advice or trains someone who is normally a younger colleague. The mentor is normally the person who provides guidance to the less experienced person through building the trust and modeling the behaviors that are positive. The effective mentor has the understanding about his role for being dependable and authenticated (Schwalbe, 2015). The project managers act as a mentor of a team to develop the team member skills with the help of his knowledge. He provides the necessary support to those members so that they can rectify their weaknesses and proceed with a full fledge (Raelin, 2012). From the starting to the end of a project, the project managers actually try to flourish the potentials of the team members so that the execution done by them meets the targets of the project at the fullest extent.
There are several roles of a project manager, which makes the encompassment of the various activities. Such roles are been elaborated below:
Making plans and definitions of the scope.
Planning the activity and making the sequence.
Planning the resources (Fung, 2014).
Development of the schedules.
Estimation of the time.
Estimation of the cost.
Development of the budget (Verzuh, 2015).
Creation of the charts along with project schedules.
Making a proper documentation.
Analyzing and managing the risks and issues.
Monitoring and reporting the progress (Mir & Pinnington, 2014).
Leadership of the team.
Making a proper influence through strategy.
Making partner of the business.
Making deals with the vendors.
Analyzing the interoperability, portability and scalability.
Making a control of the quality.
Realizing the benefits (Verzuh, 2015).
All these roles and responsibilities are there for a project manager to serve where he have to act as the leader, manager, facilitator and mentor in the various dimensions as per need. As a leader, the project manager leads his team so that his team members can follow his footsteps in a proper sequence. They should carry out his orders for the various transactions that are needed for the creation of proper financial strength (Fung, 2014). On the other hand, as a manager, he has to plan all the activities along with the allocation of the available resources including defining the scopes along with time and cost estimation. All the necessary analysis along with risk management are been done through the help of managerial skills (Raelin, 2012). Therefore it has been seen that, leadership requires assertion to motivate the team members whereas managerial skills lead to proper planning, reduction of cost and maximization of the profit.
As a facilitator, the project manager gives all the support considered to be essential for a project (Schwalbe, 2015). Here the project manager’s role is secondary as his activity is from the indirect way whereas in contrast the role of a manager or a leader is very much direct in case of the operations done by their subordinates.
On the other hand, the project manager when acts as a mentor for his subordinates, he has an aim to develop the skill set of the members so that they can make effective collaboration with the vendor team in terms of communication and a good interaction with the client side. It is done to know the exact requirement of the client (Walker, 2015). Here the project manager acts as a teacher for doing the necessary rectification of the mistakes.
It can be stated here that the project management and the functional management are two different aspects. The project managers actually make focus on the entire project whereas the functional managers make a specialization in a specific unit of a project (Kerzner, 2013). In project management, it is to check all the functionalities of the project along with business operations in daily basis through communication to all departments wherein functional management, a few functionalities are been scrutinized for the necessary refinement. The functional managers are normally common in big houses with the dynamic parts where the various functions are been led by them such as finance, marketing (Bredillet, Tywoniak & Dwivedula, 2015). The project management has a greater versatility and the managers are common in smaller business houses where they can get involved in the business’ every facet.
Conclusion
Overall, it has been discussed throughout the topic that to make a project successful, a project manager has to play versatile roles. Therefore, a project manager should have the capability so that he can play all the roles in the most efficient way to guide the project towards a successful end. To make such a successful end, the project managers as well as the functional managers have to excel in their responsibilities with utmost superiority. Such a combination will definitely form a team, which will lead the organization to see a glorious future.
References
Hodgson, D. E., & Paton, S. (2016). Understanding the professional project manager: cosmopolitans, locals and identity work. International Journal of Project Management, 34(2), 352-364.
Bredillet, C., Tywoniak, S., & Dwivedula, R. (2015). What is a good project manager? An Aristotelian perspective. International Journal of Project Management, 33(2), 254-266.
Kerzner, H. R. (2013). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Walker, A. (2015). Project management in construction. John Wiley & Sons.
Eweje, J., Turner, R., & Müller, R. (2012). Maximizing strategic value from megaprojects: The influence of information-feed on decision-making by the project manager. International Journal of Project Management, 30(6), 639-651.
Schwalbe, K. (2015). Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.
Raelin, J. A. (2012). The manager as facilitator of dialogue. Organization, 1350508412455085.
Fung, H. P. (2014). Relationships between leadership roles and project team effectiveness as perceived by project managers in Malaysia. Journal of Empirical Studies, 1(1), 1-22.
Verzuh, E. (2015). The fast forward MBA in project management. John Wiley & Sons.
Mir, F. A., & Pinnington, A. H. (2014). Exploring the value of project management: linking project management performance and project success.International Journal of Project Management, 32(2), 202-217.
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