Why Are Project Managers So Valuable?

Everywhere you look it seems there are project managers nowadays and, with project management appearing as a highly demanded skill, they are working in the private and public sectors as well as in organisations of all sorts.

One of the most highly sought after project management training courses are the accredited Prince2 courses. Prince2 is owned by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) and sets out a particularly process-based and logical approach to project management.

So why is the project manager so valuable to a company?

With the usual managerial role, the manager needs to know their area of expertise. As an example, a Human Resources Manager must understand HR issues.

However, when it comes to project management, the project manager must actually be a great all-round general manager and be particularly focused in order to achieve the results needed from the project. The project should be clearly defined and an acceptable level of quality made clear. The project could involve a whole range of disciplines that the Project Manager will be able to work across.

A common trait in a good Project Manager is that they possess a sufficient level of knowledge about all the process stages, which is necessary if they are to successfully see the project through to a satisfactory conclusion.

It is the responsibility of the project manager to deliver everything on time and within budget. To do this well, they must be highly organised with great time management and people management skills. The Project Manager could be called upon by a project team member at any time of day or night thanks to modern technology and they should be contactable to ensure the project runs smoothly, particularly when tight deadlines are in play. There are project managers worldwide who often have their evenings interrupted by telephone calls from their project team.

In Prince2, the emphasis is on control and organisation. A Project Manager is under a lot of pressure, including balancing huge conflict areas such as balancing scope, cost and time against each other without overrunning on budget, compromising quality and still making sure that the defined scope of the project is covered and goals are met.

Each of these three requirements must be effectively balanced to keep all the stakeholders in the project happy. After all, there is little point in a project finishing quickly and below budget if the end result is low quality. With Prince2, there is a whole section on Quality and any experienced project manager will be only too aware of the Cost of Quality.

The more difficult and complex the scope of a project is, then the higher and more numerous the risks may be. As a result, Prince2 covers Risk in a separate section.

All of the above only begins to cover what a good project manager needs to be able to do and balance, so with this in mind it is of little surprise that project managers and quality training courses such as Prince2 are in such demand.