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Project Manager Role

By Pavel Bragin 6,596 June 1, 2016

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Our team is constantly expanding, so we’ve got an urgent need in a new specialist, who would take a position of a project manager.

So, who is he?
In short, the key task of a project manager is to connect developers with a client. In general, it is quite simple. However, you can find a number of obstacles and challenges behind this simplicity. Let us talk about them.

The market is full of orders on web app development and enhancement. But not all of them are suitable for us.

The first thing that a project manager needs to face is to find a decent client. What criteria should our future partner meet?
– A package or technologies a new project will require should meet our abilities.
– It is preferable that someone from a client’s side would have similar experience or be aware of a future project’s technical aspects.
– A great advantage will be prepared technical documentation. And it will be perfect, if it looks similar to this.
– It will also be a great deal to have templates of future web pages or ready-to-use design.
– $5,000+ budget. You can also consider lower budgets, too, but very often similar orders are not profitable for us.
– The key aspect is when the budget corresponds to the project’s requirements. Your budget needs to include all possible risks and testing expenditures, as well as updates.
The second manager’s task is to select a team member or a team with expertise and experience satisfying a new project’s requirements. If there are no such team members, it is not a good idea to take this task in progress. All new staff members need to be carefully tested in corporate projects before moving to external tasks. Our reputation is everything for us!
The third aspect is to find out all challenges that go with the order itself and our team of developers, too. To do so, you need to answer the following questions:

– Did we work with this client before? New clients are more challenging and risky for us.
– Does a client live in a developed (the US, Australia, Canada, Western Europe) or developing (India, China, Russia, etc.) country? Clients of the second category are risky, too.
– How long has an employee applying for a team role in our new project worked with us? Has he had any experience with the technologies to be used in this new project?
– How fluent is his foreign language?
– Does the developer plan to go on vacation soon?
The fourth task of a manager is to conduct the project’s detailed evaluation, create a list of questions and wishes. You can learn more details on this question here.

After clearing an order a manager coordinates the work process together with a project leader:

Working out of a contract.
Work execution timeliness. Does every planned task get completed on time?
Work quality. Does an end product get tested before demonstrating work results to a client? Is initial code review executed?
Does a client get on-time information on all project updates?
Learn a client’s wishes and feedback on the work process every now and then.
Notify a client on the need to pay bills, if it is necessary.

A project manager is also responsible for a number of secondary duties. Some of them will be spread over other positions, and later even automated:

Put new team members in the way of things.
Holding weekly team meetings discussing work results and plans on the upcoming week.
Control on-time handing-over of survey lists by developers.
Control on-time execution of code reviews.
Control completion of the work table with work reports during the day.
Control the work flow in corporate projects.
Control on-time update of the vacation schedule.
Control UpWork profiles maintenance.

We are looking forward to meeting you on our website soshace.com