A project manager is a professional in the field of project management. Project managers can have the responsibility of the planning, execution, and closing of any project, typically relating to construction industry, architecture, computer networking, telecommunications or software development. Many other fields in the production, design and service industries also have project managers.

A project manager must posses the following seven skills:

• Communications Skills: Communications skills are part of general management skills and are used to exchange information. Communicating has many dimensions:
  • Written and oral, listening, and speaking.
  • Internal (within the project) and external (customer, the media, the public).
  • Formal (reports, briefings) and informal (memos, ad hoc conversations).
  • Vertical (up and down the organization) and horizontal (with peers).

  Communication is the most important skill that a project manager must posses. It is the single most important characteristics of a top-class project manager. Project managers must communicate well in order to integrate and maximize the performance of team members. Oral and written communications are the backbone of every successful project. During different phases of a project, a project manager requires to communicate through different manners (for example, documentation, meeting updates, etc.) and he must ensure that the information communicated is explicit, clear, and complete.

• Organizational Skills: Organizational skills are part of management skills to organize various aspect of a project to complete it successfully. A good project manager uses these skills to successfully organize his meetings, keeping documentations, quotes, contract, etc., and can fetch them out at any given moment. Organizational skills also include planning and time management skills.
• Budgeting Skills: Budgeting skills include the knowledge of finance and accounting principles. A project manager requires these skills in order to perform cost estimates for project budgeting. Reading and understanding quotes, preparing and overseeing purchase orders, and reconciling purchase invoices are part of budgeting skills. In order to make budget of a project, these skills are very helpful for a project manager.
• Problem Solving Skills: Problem solving skills include defining and analyzing problems, and then taking decision to solve them by implementing those decisions. Every project manager must posses the problem solving skills. Problem solving is a two-fold process:
  • Define problems.
  • Take decision and implement it.

  A project manager is responsible for determining the best course of action to take to resolve the problem.

• Negotiation and Influencing Skills: Negotiating skills includes demanding and convincing others for the rightful thing or act. A project manager needs this skill to negotiate on projects in almost every area such as scope definition, budgets, contracts, resource assignments, schedule, etc. Influencing skills include the convincing power of a person. It is an ability to change minds and the course of events. A good project manager requires these skills to utilize them in all areas of project management.
• Leading Skills: Leading skills of an individual include vision, gain consensus for strategic goals, establish direction, and inspire and motivate others. Leadership is one of the required characteristics of a project manager. A project manager must understand the leadership and management are two different qualities and he must know when to switch on between the roles.
• Team Building and Human Resources Skills: Team building skills include working with different individuals from different parts of the organization. The team building and human resources skills are must for a project manager. A project manager sets the tone for the project team and helps the team members through the various stages of a project.

Overall project managers should know a little bit about a lot of things. They must be excellent communicators. They must have the ability to motivate people, and they can make hard decisions when required.

Interested in PMI membership? Here is a link where you can get full information regarding PMI Membership-

http://www.pmi.org/Membership.aspx

PMI membership signifies that you’re serious about your project management career and your professional development. It highlights this dedication to employers, colleagues and stakeholders, giving you an edge in the job market. It also provides you with access to valuable knowledge, networks and resources that help you improve and advance.

The Project Management Information System (PMIS) is an information system consisting of the tools and techniques used to gather, integrate, and disseminate the outputs of project management processes. It is used to support all aspects of the project from initiating through closing, and can include both manual and automated systems. It is the parent of the change control process. It is a system that includes all of the change control processes for scope, time, cost, and procurement. Configuration management is part of the PMIS.

PMO

The Project Management Office (PMO) in a business or professional enterprise is the department or group that defines and maintains the standards of process, generally related to project management, within the organization. The PMO strives to standardize and introduce economies of repetition in the execution of projects. The PMO is the source of documentation, guidance, and metrics on the practice of project management and execution. PMO tasks include following up a project until its completion and reporting to the top management in a strategic purpose.

Pull communication is a method, where, the users access the communication content at their own discretion. In this case, the intranet site would be visited by all interested parties, and “pull” information they need. This technique is generally used for very large volumes of information or for very large audiences.

Stakeholder Analysis involved the identification of the stakeholders and classifying them based on their interest, influence and involvement in the project. This enables the project manager to focus on the relationships necessary to ensure the success of the project, by planning the communications properly.

The various group creativity techniques are as follows:

• Brainstorming: It is a technique used to generate and collect multiple ideas related to the project and product requirements.
• Nominal group technique: It is a technique used to enhance brainstorming with a voting process used to rank the most useful ideas for further brainstorming or prioritization.
• Delphi technique: It is a techniques used to identify potential risk. In this technique, the responses are gathered via a questionnaire from different experts and their inputs are organized according to their contents.
• Idea/mind mapping: It is a technique used to map the ideas generated by brainstorming to reflect the commonality and differences in understanding and generating new ideas.
• Affinity diagram: It is a technique used to allow a large number of ideas to be sorted into groups for review and analysis.

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Risk Register

Risk register is a document that contains the results of the qualitative risk analysis, quantitative risk analysis, and risk response planning. Description, category, cause, probability of occurring, impact on objectives, proposed responses, owner, and the current status of all identified risks are put in the risk register.

Gold Plating

Gold plating is a term that refers to adding features to the project scope in order to consume the entire project budget. It is considered a non-value added activity because the additions to the project scope are not what were required from the project customer.

Critical Path

A critical path is the sequence of project activities, which add up to the longest overall duration. This determines the shortest time possible to complete the project. Any delay of an activity on the critical path directly impacts the planned project completion date (i.e. there is no float on the critical path). A project can have several, parallel, near critical paths. An additional parallel path through the network with the total durations shorter than the critical path is called a sub-critical or non-critical path.
These results allow managers to prioritize activities for the effective management of project completion, and to shorten the planned critical path of a project by pruning critical path activities, by “fast tracking” (i.e., performing more activities in parallel), and/or by “crashing the critical path” (i.e., shortening the durations of critical path activities by adding resources).

Resource Histogram

Resource histogram is a bar chart showing the amount of time that a resource is scheduled to work over a series of time periods. It shows the resource requirements by time period.

Resource histograms are handy tools for the project management team, as they allow a quick and easy single page view of exactly what resources are available, what resources are being utilized at the present time, and how long those resources are expected to be tied up.

EAC

An estimate at completion (EAC) is a forecast of the most likely total value based on project performance and risk quantification. EAC is the projected or anticipated total final value for a schedule activity, WBS component, or project when the defined work of the project is completed. In a simple language, it is a formula that predicts how much the project is likely to cost. It is based on the cost performance index (CPI) and how much was the originally predicted cost to complete the project.

Lessons Learned Documentation

Lessons learned documentation is prepared to contribute to the lessons learned knowledge database of the organization. It includes the causes of issues, the reasoning behind the corrective action chosen, and other types of lessons learned about stakeholder management. Lessons learned are documented so that they become part of the historical database for the project/program and the performing organization. The lessons learned are compiled, formalized, and stored through out the project’s/program’s duration.

Contract

Contract is an agreement that mutually binds the seller (to provide the specified product or service or result) and the buyer (to pay for it). A contract is an exchange of promises between two or more parties to do an act, which is enforceable in a court of law. It is a binding legal agreement. It is an agreement creating and defining the obligations between two or more parties.