All about Roles, Responsibilities and Job Description of a Project Manager in 2024 [Updated]

If you are working in an industry for more than ten years and now looking forward to getting the promotion, then PMP certification will give you a surprising hike and promotion in terms of designation and work responsibilities. Read on this blog to understand the job perspective of a project manager. This beginner’s guide of PMP certification will be helpful for your future reference in the career of a project manager. This write-up is enriched with resources to let you learn what skills are required to become a project manager, how much time it will take to become a project manager, project manager roles and responsibilities,  project manager job description, and finally, about PMP certification.

In this blog, we’ll discuss-

Who is a Project Manager?

Skills required for becoming a project manager

Key terms associated with a project manager

What Does the job profile of a project manager look like?

Roles and Responsibilities of a project manager

Project management – PMP tools used by project managers

How essential is PMP for the Project Manager?

The career path of a project manager – How long will it take to become a project manager?

Exam pattern of PMP certification

Are you planning for PMP certification?

Enroll in our PMP Certification today and develop a strong foundation in the principles of project management.

Who is a Project Manager?

A project manager is a professional in any field who is managing projects. A project manager might be related to the customer experience team, software development team, sales team, designing team, R&D team, etc. Simply, the project manager is everywhere. The project manager is following the responsibilities cycle that is from planning, procurement, and execution of the project.

Skills required for becoming a project manager

If you are thinking that getting expertise in project management will make you a project manager only, then hold on to your horses as this information is not complete. A project manager is required to have a combination of the following skills.

• solid understanding of business cases and risk management processes
• expert knowledge to meet specific circumstances
• proven project management and self-management skills
• strong leadership skills
• ability to monitor and control budgets
• critical thinking
• good communication and negotiation skills
• capability to make decisions under pressure
• strong interpersonal skills necessary to lead a team
• ability to define situations, document data, and draw conclusions
• strong business acumen
• ability to interpret instructions regardless of their form
• strong organizational and multitasking skills
• creative mindset
• analytical skills
• accuracy and attention to detail
• excellent time management skill
• capacity to maintain schedules and meet deadlines
• problem-solving skills
• self-motivation
• accountability
• work ethic
• working knowledge of project management tools

Key terms associated with a project manager

• to specify the reason why a project is important
• to specify the quality of the deliverables
• resource estimate
• timescale
• Investment, corporate agreement, and funding
• Implementation of the management plan to the project
• team building and motivation
• risk assessments and change in the project
• maintain sustaining project
• monitoring
• stakeholder management
• provider management
• closing the project

What Does the job profile of a project manager look like?

Here is how the job profile/requirement posting of a project manager looks like. Reference is taken from Glassdoor.

Job Overview

Here at Sample Company, we are a leader in our field in the metro area. We’re proud of our 3.7 Glassdoor rating. We are seeking to hire a seasoned Project Manager to join our team. If you’re a passionate self-starter, Sample Company is a great company for you. Don’t hesitate to apply.

Responsibilities for Project Manager

• Determine and define project scope and objectives
• Predict resources needed to reach objectives and manage resources in an effective and efficient manner
• Prepare a budget based on the scope of work and resource requirements
• Track project costs in order to meet budget
• Develop and manage a detailed project schedule and work plan
• Provide project updates on a consistent basis to various stakeholders about strategy, adjustments, and progress
• Manage contracts with vendors and suppliers by assigning tasks and communicating expected deliverables
• Utilize industry best practices, techniques, and standards throughout entire project execution
• Monitor progress and make adjustments as needed
• Measure project performance to identify areas for improvement

Qualifications for Project Manager

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, business, or a related field
• 5-8 years of project management and related experience
• Project Management Professional (PMP) certification preferred
• Proven ability to solve problems creatively
• Strong familiarity with project management software tools, methodologies, and best practices
• Experience seeing projects through the full life cycle
• Excellent analytical skills
• Strong interpersonal skills and extremely resourceful
• Proven ability to complete projects according to outlined scope, budget, and timeline

Roles and Responsibilities of a project manager

It is the responsibility of a project manager to ensure that every team member knows and executes his role. A project manager supports his team members to feel them empowered and also helps the other team members to act upon the belief for the job roles that they have to perform.

The roles and responsibilities of a project manager vary from organization to organization depending upon the industry, organization size, the maturity level of the organization, and the organization culture. 

It means the architectural project manager’s job responsibilities will be different from the construction project manager and also peculiar from the IT project manager. As per the job postings on the professional network LinkedIn, the following are the job responsibilities of a project manager.

• Manage all phases of project management (project planning to project execution) 
• Set project goals and coordinate them with external and internal parties.
• Coordinating and recording multiple projects across the entire life span of the project
• To track project development, create a comprehensive project management strategy
• Mentor, inspire and supervise members of the project team
• Establish experienced business alliances
• Define the project’s overall scope
• Prioritize the project’s duties
• Build and constantly update the documents for the project
• Build reliable sales and capital demand estimates
• Partnering with all authorities to ensure the testing is carried out according to specifications
• Establish efficient connectivity in an appropriate way
• Ensure that team members have all the data available
• Track job hours and hold detailed daily timesheets
• Ensure the execution and analysis of project activities within the predefined framework
• Connect multiple teams to ensure the accuracy of the results
• Reporting and escalating management problems where required
• Hold meetings on project status, regular stand-ups, and retrospective meetings 
• Ongoing tracking of the project’s progress, risks, and opportunities 
• Concentration on consumer loyalty
• Manage projects via KPIs 
• Managing revenues and expenditures 
• For mission operations, serving as the key customer contact
• Make proposals for changes to the project
• Workshops and preparation sessions
• Acquire consumer feedback 
• Using appropriate structures, equipment, and techniques to assess project output 
• Productivity evaluation of the team

• Design the plans for the project 
• Managing partners of the enterprise 
• Managing communication 
• Administration of the project team 
• Risk handling of the project
• Managing the timeline of the project
• Managing the budget for the project
• Managing issues with the project
• Managing execution of the project
• Administration of contracts

Project management – PMP tools used by project managers

A complete framework for generating project documents is what the whole team would require. In this scenario, the best free choice is Google Suite. You will collaboratively use Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. In this way, and while operating remotely, you would be able to easily collaborate with your teammates. In addition, you can guarantee the privacy of your data by using Google Drive. Note- You must always connect your files to providers of cloud storage, so that you cannot miss any of your records. Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, and Apple iCloud Drive are other similar file-sharing software.

Efficient teamwork is vital to guarantee that each job is performed according to the customer’s expectations and that no errors are made in the process. You’ll need a place for this to ask questions, share news, plan meetings, clarify assignments, and receive feedback. There are several communication platforms in this context, such as Slack, that you can attach your whole team to. You may also use providers that can include video chat if you want face-to-face contact. Slack also functions as a video chatting device in this scenario, but you can go for other choices, such as Skype, Google Hangouts, or Viber.

You could not neglect the competitiveness component of the whole phase of project creation. You can arrange your posts, notes, and even documents using Evernote, Wallet, or Google Keep for that purpose. And there are still time management apps you can use for this if you want to keep track of the time you have spent on a mission or project. These will help you see just where you are slacking through time reports by solving some time-related problems and improving your job efficiency.

The above-mentioned tools are just toys if compared to complex project management apps. Even beginners have to use one or more advanced tools. If you are searching for a complete solution in one single location to do all of the above things, turn to project management tools that will put together all of the necessary functionality. This full choice for the platform would remove the need to switch between multiple applications. Paymo, Scoro, etc. provides some of the most robust project management platforms that you can use.

How essential is PMP for the Project Manager?

The main reason why a lucrative job opportunity appears to be project management is that it pays well. Project managers are among a company’s most well-paid professionals, receiving handsome compensation. Therefore, becoming a project manager not only means that you have a fancy title but also that you are well on the way to creating your own fancy life.

PMP stands for Project Management Professional, a qualification offered by the leading association for practitioners in project management, i.e., Institute for Project Management. It is one of the most common certifications for project management practitioners, primarily targeted at individuals who also have previous expertise in project management.

The understanding life cycle of a project is essential for every project manager in any industry. The lifecycle of a project includes five phases:

A project manager is expected to understand various methodologies, frameworks, and methods of project management. Getting PMP certified will make a project manager stay updated and have experience in your work. A project manager needs to understand Agile, Scrum, Kanban, Extreme Programming, Waterfall, PRISM, Six Sigma, etc. related work environments.

PMP certification helps you encounter the work duties like:

• Priorities for the schedule 
• Organize teams 
• Quickly and reliably allocate assignments 
• Managing clients 
• Take track of working hours 
• Supervise programs 
• Improve productivity in teams 
• Integrating with other methodologies 
• Accelerate idea formation 
• Elevate reliability 
• Maintain complete control of finances and resources 
• Monitor the development of projects 
• Track the operation of teams 
• Store all your files in one secure database. 
• Access all information from anywhere 
• Share Records 
• Management of schedules, expenditures, and invoices 
• Develop notes on timesheets and expenditures 
• Prevent and remove threats 
• Detect bottlenecks and correct glitches or mistakes

The career path of a project manager – How long will it take to become a project manager?

There is no definite secret of becoming a project manager. For different factors, project managers are excellent at their jobs. Assuming that you have this job’s secrets will make you think you’re ready for any situation. Nonetheless, there are many challenges that might surface at any moment, making it difficult for you to grasp how to fix them without too much effort. For this cause, rather than searching down the secrets of success, it’s easier to concentrate on becoming a great professional. 

Using what the best PMs do won’t mean you’re going to win like them. It’s more important to be passionate and open to improvement if something doesn’t work right. One of the most complex industry worlds is the project management community. You should be able to adapt and feel relaxed with it to its evolving existence.

In the meantime, some of the factors you should test are: ensuring that you recognize the requirements of the customer, selecting the correct team members, being prepared to create projects in depth, ensuring that you have the appropriate resources and solutions to execute the job, working on the actual concerns, setting realistic needs, constantly taking risk into account, and having backup plans.

You can be in charge of all tasks if you’re working for a smaller organization where you’re the only project manager. This ensures that to handle and monitor all of them, you would need to manage several different tasks and devote only enough regular time. This may be impossible if you’re barely at the beginning of your career when you do not yet have the requisite experience to handle your time accordingly.

A project manager’s responsibility is not easy to do for someone alone. If you’re not accustomed to having such power, the burden of completing a project on schedule can be too much. Similarly, if you’re not resistant to stress, stay away from difficult projects to manage or even from this vocation. From the outside, becoming a project manager may sound like you’re going to have complete oversight of what’s going on in the project development lifecycle.

So, summing up all the factors, mark at least ten years of experience to become a project manager. Rest it depends upon the industry size, team size, etc.

Exam pattern of PMP certification

The table below shows how the exam questions are distributed throughout each phase:

The above table is with reference to the latest PMP exam content outline, updated in June 2015, and the PMP handbook, which was updated on 1^st of April 2019.

Regarding the number of questions, you can estimate that:

• The initiating group will have 26 questions
• The planning group will have 48 questions
• The executing group will have 60 questions
• The monitoring & controlling group will have 50 questions
• The closing group will have 16 questions

Keep in mind that the questions are based on professional and social responsibility and are distributed among the above-mentioned groups.

Here are the few tips for attempting the exam:

• In 4 hours, you have to answer 200 questions, which means 1.2 minutes for each question. Administrate your time accordingly. 
• Don’t delve on difficult questions. Leave them for later review. 
• Since no negative marking is available, do not leave anything unanswered. 
• At the end of the time, aim to save 25 minutes to revisit the responses that you marked for later.

Are you planning for PMP certification?

If you are planning for PMP certification, then first tune-in the mandatory skills in yourself to compete with other professional PMP certified project managers.

Organization

You’ll have to manage time, schedules, goals, documentation, and even individuals as a project manager. And you’ll need to organize yourself. 

Tranquillity 

Stuff will go wrong with any project. It is a crucial part of project management to keep patient and get things back on track. 

Communication 

When a project gets complicated, you’ll need to develop negotiating and diplomatic skills to overcome any disputes. 

Empathy  

Professional project managers work in diverse sectors with staff from diverse backgrounds. It is fundamental to be able to empathize with them.

There is an old adage, “You cannot learn to ride a bicycle at a seminar.” The same goes for PMP certification perfectly. Everything is hands-on in project administration. Experimentation and getting hands-on experience will clear your path to success in project management. Take a deep breath and begin your journey to project management. All the best!

Recommended Reads:

• Top 9 Project Management Courses in Kolkata
• PMP certification exam cost
• TOP 20 PMP Exam Questions and Answers
• Is PMP Certification Worth It in India?
• 10 Best PMP CERTIFICATIONS IN SINGAPORE
• 17 Product Manager Interview Questions and How to Answer Them

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