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What are the roles and responsibilities of a project manager?

Blog: Monday Project Management Blog

Just like a maestro conducts a group of musicians, a project manager conducts a team. It’s their role to make sure all team members are in sync, and that the final result of every project is akin to a beautiful symphony.

Project management is becoming more important to organizations of every kind, and as a result, there are more project manager roles ripe for the picking.

87.7 million employees will be required to work in the project management field by 2027, and they’ll earn 82% higher salaries than those in a non-project management related field.

Sounds like an opportunity to pay attention to — but what exactly does it entail? We’ll break down what a project manager job description looks like, as well as what to expect of the day-to-day grind.

What does a project manager do?

Project manager responsibilities revolve around making sure that a project successfully makes it from ideation to completion.

They take on project goals as their own and use their skills and expertise to inspire a team to get the job done.

Project managers are very comfortable working in complex, dynamic environments, and are excited by the challenge of keeping track of a lot of multiple moving parts.

Here’s a brief list of their responsibilities:

In terms of a career trajectory, project managers can potentially grow to become program managers, where they’re responsible for multiple projects, or portfolio managers where they select, prioritize and align projects and programs within an organization.

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What are the roles and responsibilities of a project manager?

A project manager oversees projects from beginning to end. Their exact roles and responsibilities may vary depending on the project, company, client, industry, and more. But, in general, PMs need to embrace the following 7 roles and responsibilities:

Planning

Project managers are responsible for the project plan. It’s the blueprint for team members, the project manager, and senior management to reference while a project is underway. It should:

The planning stage happens at the highest level, and focuses on establishing a project’s deliverables and requirements as well as how you intend to track and manage them.

monday.com’s high level project plan allows project managers to manage dependencies, the project goal, and available resources together within a set budget and timeline.

project manager plan monday.com high level project plan template

Leading

A huge part of a project manager’s role is assembling and leading the team that will do the execution. This means the job requires a tight grasp on soft skills like:

To communicate with a project team and to assign and track tasks by team members, monday.com has a project tracker template so you don’t have to start from square one.

The template includes line items or tasks that each have an owner, as well as subtasks and due dates so you can track and communicate progress down to the smallest level.

project manager leadership project tracker template

Execution

This responsibility is really just the day-to-day execution of the planning and leadership responsibilities.

Project managers are there to supervise the team as tasks play out. This means frequent check-ins, updating trackers, and communication with stakeholders about the project’s progress.

The aforementioned monday.com project tracker is a great general resource for this. Another great template to use if you’re building a technical product or software is the product roadmap template.

It’s great for longer-term projects as you can break out your project roadmap for each quarter.

By default, it includes a product manager or lead for each stage, as well as different development deliverables along the way.

project manager execution product roadmap template

Time management

One of the hardest parts about being a project manager is staying on schedule. It’s also a key responsibility because effectively keeping track of the timeline is critical for managing expectations about a completion date.

The time management responsibility consists of:

If your project’s completion revolves around people needing to physically be available at certain times, scheduling work hours and days off will be another important responsibility.

You could be a construction project manager who needs to manage a team on site, or a project manager in a manufacturing plant who will need to schedule shifts around the clock.

monday.com has a weekly shift schedule template that’s easily adjustable on the go if team members call out sick or take vacation.

project manager time management weekly shift template

Budget

It’s the project manager’s role to calculate how much a project is going to cost, or figure out how to complete a project within a defined budget.

It’s also the project manager’s job to make sure their team sticks to the budget as they go.

When certain aspects of the project cost more or less than planned, project managers may need to reallocate the fund to fit the budget, or request additional funding.

Track your project against your budget using monday.com’s budget tracker template. It automatically breaks down expenses by department head and line item.

project budget management budget tracker template

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Documentation

The job’s not done until the paperwork is finished, and a big part of a project management role is overseeing project documentation. This includes:

monday.com’s project documentation template sets project managers up for success by providing an easily customizable framework that includes documents, owners and their status.

project manager documentation monday.com template

Maintenance

After a project has been completed, it may be the project manager’s role to manage any maintenance moving forward.

This can mean a lot of things, depending on the type of project, but generally includes:

As a project progresses, you can track both expected and unexpected bumps in the road using monday.com’s risk register template.

This allows you to document the number of risks that occurred as well as exactly how your timelines and budgets were affected as a result.

project manager maintenance monday.com risk register template

How monday.com lessens the project management burden

The most successful project managers use a reliable and effective tool to track their day-to-day operations and facilitate team communication and updates.

Not to brag, but we’re confident that monday.com is the best solution for project managers. The platform’s easy to use with a beautiful UI that team members will be excited to login to everyday:

monday.com easy to use beautiful ui

Automations are easy with monday.com. Each time a task is completed, the next team member can be automatically notified.

Tag each other in communications as you go, and optimize your instance so that you never get a notification that isn’t directly relevant to you.

monday.com automations automate notifications

Visualizing a project effectively looks different for everyone. Some project managers prefer tables, others prefer Gantt charts or Kanban boards. Whatever floats your boat, you should be able to toggle to that view easily.

monday.com multiple views gantt kanban timeline table

You’re probably already using other tools for your operations to run smoothly. monday.com integrates with a lot of different tools and apps so that you can start working with the platform without interrupting your tech stack.

monday.com integrations tools tech stack

Finally, you’ll never have to start from scratch. Outside of the templates we’ve already mentioned, monday.com has over 200+ templates to choose from.

monday.com project management templates

Conclusion

Project managers don’t have it easy, but the right tool can make operations run even more smoothly.

To keep a tight grip on all of the wide reaching responsibilities of being a project manager, look for a tool that includes the following:

If you’re looking for a tool that goes way beyond project management, check out monday.com.

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The post What are the roles and responsibilities of a project manager? appeared first on monday.com Blog.

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