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Project Management


Project Manager Role and Responsibilities

A Project Manager aims to ensure the success of the project(s) he/she is managing. Success usually means

  • customer is satisfied
  • delivered results are acceptable vs budget, time and quality constraints
  • staff are not stressed/burned out

    • The above usually requires ensuring that everyone knows what is happening, who is doing what, when things are required etc. Because people have faulty memories, the PM should ensure everything is written down. NB that does not mean PMs need to do all of the writing. Normally it is best for engineers to do the writing, and PM to review. The PM has both responsibility and authority for decisions taken on the project. On a day-to-day basis, this means asking questions of the architects/engineers/customers, and taking decisions based on the available information. Decisions should be clearly communicated, in writing. IRC or a short email to the list will usually be enough for internal decisions. Decisions directly impacting the customer should be documented via email, or within progress reports. Hard decisions or problems can and should be escalated to any of the Directors Paul, Stephen, Rob.

    Project startup involves the following major steps:

  • Internal mailing list
  • Customer facing mailing list
  • Internal kanban, or a new kanban instance if the customer will use it
  • Requirement Gathering instance
  • Internal irc channel ctxxx
  • Customer-facing irc channel on freenode if required