The Role of Project Manager Essay

Words: 1144
Pages: 5

Introduction
Nowadays, with the development of project management, project success has been defined clearly. A definition of project success from Lock is that if the project finish on time, within budget and in good quality, the project is considered as a successful project (Lock, 2007). However, our understanding about the role of project manager is unclear. Different people hold various viewpoints about it. According to Lewis, people have a vague understanding of what is the role of project manager, because a majority of project managers are promoted from other jobs such as engineers or technologists and so on (Lewis, 2007). Some individuals think that the role of the project manager is to command and control. Is it enough for a project
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According to Jha, 90 percent of project managers’ working hours are occupied by communication time, so it is obvious that it is crucial for project managers to have a good communication skill (Jha, 2010). More importantly, a project manager’s communication skill strongly impact on the outcome of the project. Verma emphasized that during a project life cycle, communication problems should be paid close attention, because such communication problems may create conflicts, disagreement, and misunderstandings. Many projects’ failure is due to those communication problems. Therefore, it is a total disaster for a project which has a project manager with a poor communication skill. Effective communication can create good relationship, trust and motivation which can help project managers to obtain supports from different individuals in the project. From this standpoint, because of the importance of communication in the project environment, a project manager’ role should be identified as a communication coordinator which requires a good communication skill (Verma, 1996).

Other role of project manager
The job of project manager is not an easy one. It is not just simply to command and control. Just as Kerzner said in his book, Planning is a primary part of project managers’ job, a good project plan enables the whole project to operate perfectly. In order to do this, a project manager should have a good management skill which