The importance of Project Management and what it brings to your project
Interesting questions which are asked throughout a lot of industries whereby projects are undertaken seems to be, ‘Is Project Management Important?’ or ‘Can we complete this project without a project manager?’ or ‘Why don’t we brief and manage the team ourselves as its cheaper?’. These are the type of questions that sees individuals or companies decide to embark on projects without a project manager guiding a project to success. When looking at the costs and fees of a project, it’s easy to think that a project manager is an unnecessary cost which is just increasing the bills and costs of a project.
If you’re finding yourself questioning the importance of a project manager, then we can help you understand their role a little better.
Why project management is important?
If you don’t decide to have a project manager across your project:
Who’s holding the team together?
Who’s answering their queries?
Who’s coordinating the deliverables?
Who’s managing the costs?
Who’s reporting to the client?
A project manager supports you in navigating a complex project, being your assistant to deliver your overall vision and concept. They’ll help you navigate through the toughest of situations, clashes and nightmares that can arise on projects.
Find out more below on why Project Managers are important:
Delivery of Strategic Vision – A project manager being across your project will ensure the most important part of a project is set in stone and that there is an overall strategy to achieve your vision. They’ll ensure your vision is exactly what is being delivered and nothing different to that. Clients all have strategic goals and part of these are the smaller goals and projects that help achieve that, project management ensures, the smaller goals connect well and fit into the overall strategy.
Team Leader – As projects get larger they become super complex, so it’s important that leadership and direction are delivered. An effective leader will oversee the entire project, steering it in the right direction. They’ll enable every member of the team to have direction as to what they need to deliver and ensure it is delivered on time. Across your project they’ll navigate all the hurdles that come your projects way, they’ll coach individuals and inspire the team. As they’re steering the project, they are also fully responsible and accountable for your project, without that role being implemented, accountability is difficult to assign.
Project Planning – Realistic expectations are very important across projects. Setting accurate expectations ensures you know exactly what to expect when it comes to cost and deliverables. There’s zero benefit in hiring a project manager who is cheap and promises unrealistic expectations as that will come back around and affect the project deliverables and ultimately your project costs. A proper project manager will ensure budgets and delivery times are realistic and not too over ambitious. They’ll accurately go through a process that gives you milestones they believe are achievable.
What is the role of a project manager?
A project manager will have many responsibilities across a project to ensure it is delivered accurately and successfully, these include:
Coordinating Consultants
Assigning a project manager to your projects ensures you have a leader who is ready to coordinate all aspects of your vision by ensuring all individual team brought onto your project know exactly what they’re doing. Projects tend to require specialists depending on what is trying to be achieved and your selected project manager can be the person to source, select and coordinate each of these teams, so they have the direction needed to deliver a successful project. For example, if you were to be embarking on a construction project, there are chronological steps which would need to be followed and done in the correct order and a project manager could deliver that expertise for you.
Monitoring Progress
Successful projects have plans and exceptional organisation in place and unsuccessful projects obviously have neither. The success of your project requires constant monitoring of progression. Projects can be chaotic and it’s important through all the chaos that progress is still being monitored and that progression is being made. In addition, the project manager will be able to work with you to get a full delivery breakdown of what is going on across your project and how things are progressing.
Project Costs and Cost Management
Every project has a budget as they all cost money and require money to be spent, so it’s extremely important that you have a trusted individual who can support in controlling the project costs. Project Management ensures you have someone who can:
Plan your costs of consultants, teams, equipment supplies and anything else
Certify payments when required
Ensure programmes are being maintained and the right consultants are brought in at the correct time
Team Communication
Projects involving multiple individuals requires clear and effective communication between several stakeholders and the project manager can be the glue for this. They can be the client’s eyes and ears communicating their vision to the design team and construction team. This ensures the client doesn’t have to get completely involved in the project however they know their vision is being delivered accurately. In addition, communication is required with every single consultant on the project and that will be the responsibility of the project manager to deliver effective communication of all consultants so they know exactly what they need to do and by when.
Conclusion
The importance of project planning shouldn’t be underestimated. Implementing a project manager across your project will ensure you’ve kicked off your project in the right way, enabling it to thrive and be successful. You’ll have the point person required to effectively deliver your vision. If you would like to enquire more about the importance of a project manager then contact us here and we’ll be happy to provide support.