When a company organization is searched to find a project manager, the first results may be fruitless because no one with that job title can be found. The project manager’s identity is often hidden behind some other organizational roles. This is particularly true for specialized in-house projects where, for example, a person with the title ‘facilities manager’ might act as project manager during a major reorganization of accommodation. Another example is where a personal styled ‘senior engineer’ is made responsible for managing a costly new product design and development project.
Even where project management is accredited with the important of a full-time appointment, the situation can be made less clear by the variety of titles used to describe the job. Contract manager, scheduling and estimating manager, project coordinator, project coordination engineer, program engineer, project leader, and project manager are but a few of the titles which have been used. The trend in recent years has been encouraging, and project management is now widely recognized as a profession that deserves reasonable status and rewards with its own professional associations (The Association for Project Management in the UK) and with far less confusion over the job title.
The levels of responsibility and authority given to project managers vary considerably from one organization to another. In some cases they act simply as planners and coordinators. In other businesses the project manager will have complete authority over all those responsible for achieving the project objectives.
The career of a project manager may have started … Read More