Project Manager

In a small project or a small organization, a project manager often wears other hats. However, for large projects, a project manager only has one responsibility: to manage a project. This includes the coordination of time, budget and other resources allocated to the project, as well as to track the progress and alarm various parties if the project is not proceeding as planned.

The overall project plan is the result of colaboration of the lead people of various departments. Neither a project manager nor a systems analyst should dictate ``how much time it will take to do XYZ''. Once a project plan is agreed on, a project manager coordinates with other participants to ensure the plan is followed as closely as possible.

We will discuss project management later in the semester. The specific diagrams, techniques and tools will be discussed then. For now, we are only interested in an overview of what a project manager does and how that relates to a systems analyst.

Because only systems analysts communicate directly with the client, systems analysts communicate with project managers in an early stage to set the basic parameters of a project. These parameters include target dates of deliverables (intermediate and final), overall schedule (as far as the client is concerned) and allocated budget. The detail of a project plan is worked out when the specifications of the proposed system is made available. Without the specifications, other participants (programmers, QA and etc.) cannot accurately estimate resource requirements.

After a project is initiated, system analysts do not typically track the daily progress of subtasks. With the help of software tools like MS Project, a project manager keeps track of progress of the tasks in the project. When a task consumes more than its allocated resources (or when that appears inevitable), a project manager alarms others to find a solution.