Project Management Role Definitions | Career path

Project Coordinator

Also known as Project Support, Project Support Officer, Project Co-ordinator, Senior Project Administrator, Project Support Leader.

A Project Coordinator’s role can incorporate many tasks but their true role is likely to include:

• Supporting Project Managers
• Building and maintaining project plans
• Responsible for risk & issue and change control logs and supporting the processes around these logs
• Collecting project progress
• Document control
• Project costing monitoring
• Assisting generate monthly reporting documents, presentations and stakeholder communication
  

A good project coordinator will have:

• Strong MS Project skills
• Strong MS Excel skills and other MS Office applications
• Proven ability to multi task
• Proven experience of communicating with people from all levels
• Ideally a formal qualification in project management [ PRINCE2, APM ] at Foundation level
• Ability to work in a team and autonomously

Project Manager

Also known as an IT Project Manager, Technical Project Manager, Business Project Manager, Construction Project Manager, Capital Project Manager etc.

The basic skills to be a successful project manager are the same irrelevant of the industry sector. These generic requirements for a project manager include:

• Involved in the development of the project business case
• Manage the full project life cycle from initiation to closeout
• Drive the project team to develop a clear project plan and project deliverables
• Ensure responsibility for producing deliverables is clear
• Agree project completion, handover criteria with customer / users.
• Ensure all project documentation are updated and maintained to include project initiation documents, project plans, risk and issue logs, change control documents and any other information for the project.
• Identify dependencies with other projects
• Liaising with all project sponsors and stakeholders
• Managing project status reports and budgets
• Presenting to stakeholders
• Ensuring all projects are completed and handed over to relevant departments

A good project manager will have:

• Proven experience managing budgets
• Proven experience delivering projects on time and within budget.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to communicate at all levels
• Strong leadership and people management skills
• Proven ability to influence, negotiate and provide guidance and support to a team
• Formal qualification in Project Management [ PRINCE2, APM, PMI ]
• Excellent MS Project and MS Office skills
  

Programme Manager

The definition of a Programme Manager is someone responsible for managing multiple projects which are related and have a common goal.

The role of a Programme Manager is varied and tasks will include, but are certainly not limited to:

• Managing the programme budgets and monitoring costs
• Managing and communicating with all stakeholder and sponsors
• Managing any third parties associated with the programme
• Managing the dependencies between each of the projects within the programme
• Managing a team of Project Managers assigned to each of the projects within the programme
• Taking overall responsibility for all risks and resolving any issues ensuring the programme’s successful outcome
• Allocating resources to each of the projects within the programme
• Overall responsibility for the programme completing within time and budget.

Other duties in some organisations may include:

• Bid preparatio
• Business development
• Managing external clients

A good Programme Manager will have:

• Proven effective leadership skills and excellent communication skills
• Proven experience managing a project team to include project managers
• Experience of managing costs, plans, risk & issues and dependencies
• Experience of allocating resources
• Excellent stakeholder experience
• Formal qualifications in Project Management [ PRINCE2 Practitioner, APMP, MSP ]