Successful Project Manager

As stated by Lester “a project manager may be defined as the individual who has the responsibility, authority and accountability assigned to him or her to achieve safely the project objectives with agreed time, cost and performance/quality criteria” (2007). As demonstrated by Lester, project managers can be found in almost any industry. They may hold the title of project manager or may only wear the hat of project manager while holding another title. It is widely accepted that successful projects start with successful managers, but what contributes to successful PMs? Evidence has shown that the authority, autonomy, and time management skills held by the PM may be of utmost importance, but what is not stated is the fact that the level necessary …show more content…
Projectized organizations have been found to have a high level of effective communication, project focus and integration (PMI, 2013). A projectized organization would be the ideal organization for a project manager to work in. In these types of roles, the PM has full authority over every aspect of the project. In addition, the project team will be usually focused on the project at hand, where all priorities and goals of the project are shared by everyone. The project manager will need to manage the team and all responsibilities (Lester, 2007). In this type of organization, the PM would need to have a high-level of authority skills along with autonomy skills because of the shear amount of responsibility and management needed to guide a project on your own terms and be able to manage team members effectively. Conflict management skills would still be important, but because each team member is fully invested in the project at hand and these types of organizations have a high level of communication, conflict is not as prevalent and therefore the focus should not be on conflict …show more content…
In this type of organization, project managers are dedicated staff and have some authority over project work and also work separately from the workforce. Team members book some of their time to project as they are needed, but have day-to-day responsibilities. Care needs to be taken to balance the power between project and department managers (Lester, 2009). In this type of organization, a PM would need to rely mostly on conflict management skills and authority skills. With regards to authority, a PM would need to be able to accept that certain authority is above him, but also being able to effectively lead a team. Because a team may be made up of people who do have other priorities, some conflict may arise when asking department managers for their people and also team members from different departments may have conflicting views or ways of doing things. Autonomy skills are important also because a lot of the time the project manager may be working without support of department heads, but in the same breath they may be directing the actions to be taken by the