Project Manager Job Description

You may or may not be landing on this site as your first query into becoming a project manager. And honestly, a project manager job description in simple, focused terms is not possible to describe to cover all types of project management.

The role of a project manager can be a person leading hundreds or thousands of project team members in accomplishing a corporate event. Or it can be an individual supervising a couple of people putting toilet paper in multiple bathrooms in an office building.

What defines a project are: (1) A specific job to be accomplished (2) A person to manage the job (3) A team of people, assigned to various roles who work under the directives and supervision of the manager (4) A defined time to finish the job

The summary above sounds pretty simple, and it can be within a small organization. Within a large, corporate setting it can involve hundreds of people, multiple corporate sponsors, hundreds of hours of planning, multiple teams development, and  hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. This requires large resources and professional management tools to keep up with.

Who usually finds the PMJD site?

You likely found this web site through a search engine using the phrase that is the title of the site. If that's the case you may be considering a PM career. But more likely, you've been assigned as a project manager from an existing position within a company. Now you would be trying to find out what that means.

That can be pretty disconcerting if it's something you never signed up for or anticipated becoming when you took your job. But, if you've been assigned, there are ways to get some help with training and education without going to a major university for years.

Interestingly, the resources and tools for a project are required for any size job. It is just the amount and sophistication required that increases as the job size and complexity increases. However, there are now available tools that can assist anyone of any experience level in becoming a top notch project manager.

Who can become a project manager?

There have always been people in this role in virtually every business and organization. It's just been over the last couple of decades that it has come into prominence with a whole industry built around it. 

Here's the reality. People all across the world, on a daily basis, carry out everything from small individual, to huge corporate projects without ever knowing the PMBOK even exists. Because a project manager job description is basically a person who manages something that is being done. And that project is expected to be accomplished with successful closure.

That doesn't describe any particular project management task. It just delivers the reality of what a project manager does no matter what the job.

My wife has worked for a very large nursing home corporation in the past. In her role as an executive assistant to the CFO of the company, she was many times thrust into a project management role to pull off very large events for the company.

She didn't memorize the PMBOK and I never heard her reference it. But she never failed to successfully complete a project she was assigned to manage with customers, corporate executives and heads of financial institutions.

Her job became organizing and carrying out all aspects of the event to an expected, pre-determined conclusion. Her office that normally required regular company business, became the project office at those times.

Interestingly, she ended up writing many of the illustrated project management forms and procedures for her company. Those forms collectively became the handbook for her company's IT project management.

So, while it's not a walk in the park, you can become a project manager with some determination, research and the right tools. And you can become a good one for whom project management becomes a career booster.

The inaccurate appearance of the project management process

The unfortunate factor in the presentation of today's confusing "professional" project management process, is the impression it leaves the casual researcher. It presents the idea that the job is out of reach for anyone without extensive training, corporate employment, and endless study. And it includes the presumption of necessary knowledge of things that may or may not ever enhance project management for a person in any one of a multitude of positions.

This deceptively appears to leave it in the path of only a few elite individuals who fight their way into large organizations in the position, specifically, of a project manager.

The reality, however, is that many times people in other company positions are better suited to managing specific projects rather than having the generic PM step in to pull together something. The professional project manager may be well trained, but not well suited as far as the area of business the project resides in.

The company employees also are many times better suited because they already have a relationship with the people working in that area of the business. The only real questions are: Can they organize? Can they delegate responsibility and authority? Can they work with the people successfully? Can they determine the steps of a project management plan?

Choosing project management careers

Is any of this to discourage a career in project management? Not at all. But it should be understood that when a large corporation hires a "project manager", the job description will require significant education, training, experience and many factors specifically related to that type of business.

Not many people grow up dreaming of being a project manager. It generally develops as they explore work and business opportunities and are exposed to the type business and environment that they work in. Often they are first assigned as project managers before deciding to pursue it as a career. The starting salary for project managers in many large companies is quite attractive, hence unattainable without the kind of training and experience mentioned above.

What's not at all unusual is for a person to enter a company in some specific niche, and work that niche successfully for a while. Then many times unexpectdedly, end up in the position of a project manager without ever being actually given the "official" title.

So, it's important to understand that if an individual is working in any company of any size, and are given an event to manage and carry to a conclusion, he or she doesn't get the wrong attitude about it.

That type of hands on experience in a company, managing significant projects successfully, can lead to a much more significant job there. Alternately it can lead to more attractive job opportunities at other companies.

Many times this type development allows the person to bypass all the years of preparation to be able to put some letters in front of their name. Once they have proven to be successful project managers, the advancement and many times more attractive employment simply follows.

So, a project manager job description involves an understanding of the area of business the project is being planned for. It involves organizing people, successfully working with those people throughout the project, keeping up with a large number of stats including financial, legal, administrative, government, and more.

Like most other jobs, it requires carrying the project to a successful conclusion. It also involves ending it while releasing the various project team members back into their regular schedules.

This is, of course, always the case for the professional project manager. But there is no difference in the expectation for the person dedicated to the business, who has no PM title. And in fact, that last type is a far more common example of a project manager.

Is this the site that will help you?

The visitor's attitude towards what they have read here already is indicative of what they're looking for. If you know and have proven that you have some significant organizational skills, can work well with people, and have a pretty even personality, you may be looking into this work that you have heard about. You will find some help in the pages here.

You may have wandered here by accident and found something that "clicks" with the title and are looking further into the possibilities.

Possibly, a visitor may have purposed project management as a corporate career and is contemptuous that someone would even suggest that without memorizing every updated issue of the PMBOK (Project Management Body Of Knowledge) that they could even think about succeeding in the industry. This site probably will be of no interest to them.

On this web site, the reader will not find many of the industry specifics, or technical language of professional project management. What they will find are articles that will help them understand the difference in types of pm jobs. And they will get a clear picture of the vast difference in professional vs assigned project management.

Hopefully this will help in navigating the sometimes treacherous waters of project manager responsibilities. Along with some links to other resources, you will find a great deal of what you need here.