Exam 10: The Project Manager

The project manager has primary responsibility for in planning, organising, and controlling the work effort to achieve the project objective.

Project managers must be good communicators.

The project manager clearly defines the project objective and reaches agreement with the on this objective.

During individual meetings with the project team members, assess opportunities for growth by having the members identify what they learnt by working on the project.

If possible, the project manager should have project team members not participate up front in the decision to change.

A project manager needs to be a good problem solver.

Good project managers manage their time well.

is the act of allowing individuals to successfully carry out assigned tasks.

Good interpersonal skills are essential for a project manager.

The project manager needs to be sure that won't casually agree to changes that may require additional person-hours.

Effective and frequent communication is crucial for keeping the project moving, identifying potential problems, soliciting suggestions to improve project performance, keeping abreast of customer satisfaction, and avoiding surprises.

Used appropriately, humour can help a project manager handle the stress and break the tension.

Interview project managers who have skills that you want to develop in yourself to develop the skills necessary to be an effective project manager.

During the project life cycle, project managers encounter many occasions to employ their negotiating skills in interactions with the sponsor or customer, the project organisation's management, subcontractors, vendors, and end users of the project's end product.The subject of negotiations can be contract terms and conditions, obtaining specific resources to staff the project, subcontractor prices, vendor delivery schedules, payment for damages, the cost or schedule impact of changes, customer approval of designs, the need for rework if quality standards were not met, the best approach to resolve a technical performance issue, interpretation of acceptance criteria or test results, approaches to get the project back on track if it is behind schedule and/or over budget, and so on.

The spearheads development of a plan to achieve the project objective.

The project manager can try to provide 'stretch' assignments that require individual team members to extend their knowledge and achieve more than they may think they can.

A common barrier to effective delegation is that the project manager is afraid that he will lose control of the work and not know what is going on.

A common barrier to effective delegation is that the project manager has confidence in the capability of others to do the work.

Communication by project managers needs to be timely, honest, and ambiguous.

Stress is likely to be high when a project is in jeopardy of not meeting its objective.