Project activities, especially in the last decade, have acquired great importance in the work of most organizations, including in the system of public administration: the development of activities is built taking into account modern approaches, standards of organizations and management. For the successful implementation of any project, it is necessary to select the appropriate professionals and create a team of like-minded people. In the course of building a project management system, an extremely important task is the formation of a role structure, the distribution of powers and the consolidation of responsibility among the project team members. Within the framework of project management, there are various functions that are distributed according to the roles that implement them, for example, the project manager (RP), the project administrator (PA) and others. Let's try to reveal these two key design roles and understand the functionality of each of them.
Project Manager
Project Manager (RP, Project Manager, Project Manager, PM) is a person who is personally responsible for the operational management of the project team and the project in the context of areas of knowledge (risk management, communications, budget, deadlines, etc.) to achieve the goals, indicators and results of the project. To make the project successful, the project manager ensures:
- vision of the project as an object of management, understanding of its features;
- analysis, consideration of interests and management of relations with stakeholders of the project;
- reducing the uncertainty of a unique task through a planning procedure;
- resource base of project activities;
- protection of design solutions and reporting to the curator and customer;
- involvement of project teams and individual contractors in the performance of work;
- control over the progress of work;
- analysis of design events for timeliness, quality, deviations;
- making forecasts and correcting plans;
- complete the project and archive the documentation.
The actions of the project manager are connected, first of all, with the curator, who involves the future project manager in the process of initiating the project. The curator is always interested in getting the best result with the least effort. Therefore, he needs a reasonable and effective project manager.
A project manager is not so much a position as a role that an employee or an external person takes on, designed to implement a unique task. It should be borne in mind that a functional worker often acts as a project manager and not even one.
If this happens, then the need for professional project managers also increases. Accordingly, there are dedicated staff units with all the ensuing consequences: professional profile, job description, remuneration system, etc. For a specific project, the powers of responsibility are described in local documents.
Job Duties of the Project Manager
Preparation of the project:
- definition and coordination with stakeholders of the key parameters of the project: goals, indicators, results, etc.
- identification of risks and opportunities of the project
- estimation of labor and cost costs for the implementation of the project
- development and approval of the project passport
- assessment of the timing of achieving the goals development and preparation of a project plan, the definition of checkpoints
Working with project resources:
development and management of the implementation of the communication plan of the project participants development and monitoring of achievement of performance indicators of the project team
implementation of the system of stimulation and motivation of the project team
Project implementation management:
- operational project management, control of timely and high-quality performance of work
- project change management: adjustment of the work plan and coordination of changes made by project stakeholders
- ensuring timely provision of information to all project participants
- organization of development and coordination of project documents at all phases of the life cycle Ensuring timely transfer of project results to the customer
For the role of the project manager, such personal qualities as: focus on the result, communicativeness, flexibility, client-centricity, emotional intelligence and pragmatism are very important.
To fully perform the duties, the project manager must be able to:
- Quickly switch between project events, prioritizing the different aspects of the project: financial, economic, technological and functional.
- It is easy to move from local, very specific issues of the task context to the tactical and strategic level of management functions, sometimes showing remarkable erudition and intellectual flexibility.
- Show flexibility when interacting with different project participants, building a harmonious interaction between the interests of individual performers and the whole team, between stakeholders of different levels and value orientations.
- Show emotional intelligence, rallying the team and do not follow the lead of various kinds of manipulations.
- Be ready to make high demands on results and get at the most important moment a result that is very different from the ideal.
- Keep the overall value and goals in the focus of the team's attention so that it regularly mobilizes for a barely discernible initial success.
- Quickly recover from stress and achieve success.
The job duties of the project manager include a large block of work on documentation and meetings. A high level of process management in the organization provides for a large number of documentation and regulations. The project manager finds himself in a difficult situation: it is very difficult to combine routine work on document management and engage in the development of the project. It is very important to realize your level of immersion in document management and routine tasks in time and take the necessary actions to solve the emerging problem. At such a point, the manager should think about introducing the Project Administrator role.
Project Administrator
From the moment the administrator appears in the team, a certain load will fall from the project manager. This is especially valuable for project managers who are functional employees of management services or line production units.
Practice shows that the project administrator plays the role of assistant project manager, coordinator of a large number of issues, including team coordination. In fact, the project administrator is the person responsible for the organization and support of communications (collection, processing, transfer of information) between the participants of project activities, record keeping, formation and storage of the project archive.
Based on the scale of the activity, the needs of the project are fixed job duties and their corresponding functions.
Key roles of the project administrator:
- provides organizational and technical support for the activities of the project manager and working bodies of the project;
- provides monitoring of project implementation and reporting on the project;
- ensures consideration of methodological recommendations on the organization of project activities and requirements for the use of an automated information system for project activities;
- performs other functions made by the decision of the project manager.
A qualified project administrator is able to lead more than one project and act as an assistant to several project managers.
Typical job duties of an administrator include:
- assistance in the organization of meetings, preparation and coordination of final minutes, monitoring of notifications and implementation of meeting decisions;
- notification and collection of contractors' reports;
- consolidation of reporting information from contractors;
- assistance to the project manager in the preparation of references, presentations and reports;
- selection of information for reports on the project committee;
- compilation of registers and registers of accounting, forms of monitoring and analysis (risks, indicators) in accordance with the requirements of the regulations;
- registration of an updated project schedule;
- organization of business trips and reception of project participants;
- coordination of meetings of working groups;
- execution of direct instructions of the PP within the framework of the subordinate project activities;
- correction of schedules, resource base and deadlines;
- implementation of communication procedures, distribution of project documentation to interested parties;
- other forms of documentation support for project management processes.
The functions and duties of a project administrator require a certain personal and professional profile of the position. As a rule, this is a young specialist with a higher education. He must know the basics of office work, project management, be an experienced user of office applications.
How a well-distributed AP functionality can affect the efficiency of the RP
Unfortunately, it is a fairly common opinion that the position of project administrator is "the lowest position in the team". Accordingly, it is assigned the lowest qualified functions, according to the principle of applying the least intellectual effort. The standard situation is the use of the project administrator on the principle of "hands free" - he is involved in the preparation of presentations, the implementation of local unexpectedly "arrived" tasks, the preparation of numerous huge tables in Microsoft Excel, in which the same numbers are structured differently, etc. Because of this, in practice, more than once I had to deal with the fact that the only function of the project administrator is the preparation of such reports. There are also situations when the project administrator does not have direct and constant contact with the project manager. Meetings take place only at general meetings, personal communication is minimized, and the manager shifts part of the functions of the project administrator to his secretary. All of these features of the organization of the work of the project administrator are signs of the immaturity of project management systems and the creation of conditions when the manager is overloaded with turnover and projects are built on the principle of "extinguishing fires".
A competent project manager will be able to shift the maximum of current tasks to others, freeing up time to solve key issues. The project administrator will be able to take over the routine and administration of some processes.
Functions that you need to delegate to the project administrator in order to collaborate on building an effective work:
Generate and update the contact registry.
Prompt formation of a register of contacts of project participants (indicating their roles and positions, managers, a short description) is the main task of the Project Administrator. It is extremely important that all project participants can find the necessary information about the contacts of team members at any time. And additional maintenance of information It will not be superfluous to indicate the birthdays of employees - it will help plan motivational activities.
Coding.
The project administrator should develop a system for encoding documents that are in Work Folders and familiarize the team with the encoding rules. It is very important that each team member at any time can find the necessary relevant document.
Create and maintain an archive.
The project administrator keeps the project workspace up to date. The structure of the archive should be as simple as possible. Documents within the archive should be distributed in intuitive folders, in accordance with the specified encoding rules in the names. The project administrator should be the only contributor who enters the documentation into the archive.
Organization and minutes of meetings.
A plan for regular meetings should be prepared at least one month in advance. Before the meeting, all participants are notified about it in advance, an agenda is formed, which is sent to the participants at least a day before the meeting. During the meeting, a protocol is drawn up, the wording of which is agreed immediately. Of course, if necessary, time is reserved for the formulation of a dissenting opinion or clarification of details, but fundamental issues should be resolved on the spot, and decisions should be immediately recorded in the protocol. Instructions from the protocols are immediately recorded in the Journal, one of the main management tools.
Maintenance of this journal can be entrusted to the project administrator: it will remind the executors that the deadline for the execution of the order is approaching, track the implementation, receipt of documents, and so on. The project manager is involved only when the assignments are not fulfilled.
Collection and processing of timesheets.
However, experience shows that the competent use of this tool helps the project manager to understand the situation with the workload of the team, the effectiveness of individual employees, and also allows you to justify the additional need for human resources with numbers in hand. Based on the timesheet, the project administrator can analyze the situation with overtime and loss of working time and share his observations with the project manager. .
Development of reporting formats. The project administrator can offer several options for reporting formats already on the basis of his experience and observations to assess the situation on the project, while reflecting the most important information in it. Manual reporting will help you understand the data sources and how to update them. In the future, it will be possible to offer a more complex design. After some time, it will be possible to understand how much of the work could be automated and tasked to programmers.
Control of regular reporting to the project team, integration of reports This task correlates with the task of maintaining the Journal: in this case, the report is the result of an instruction to prepare it. The project administrator sends an automatically repeatable notification of the preparation and submission of the report, enters the appropriate item in the Journal, and then controls the provision of information necessary for the formation of summary reports on the project. If the report does not arrive on time (or came, but in an incorrect format), the question is escalated to the project manager. In the case of timely submission of the report, the work of the project manager to assess the status of the work performed by the performers begins.
Development and updating of the calendar-network schedule of the project. At the first stage of working on a project, the task scheduler role can be assumed by the project administrator. This requires basic knowledge and skills in the relevant software products.
Inference
If the project administrator effectively performs at least the tasks described above, the project manager frees up time for forecasting, managing changes, risks, motivating the team and solving key problematic issues. At the same time, the project manager reduces the load on "turnover" and short-term or repetitive tasks. Thus, the probability of successful implementation of the project increases – after all, the more it is possible to "organize the future" (plan, predict, identify and manage risks, etc.), the less often in this future you will have to face unforeseen problems.
It is useful for the project manager to know which responsibilities he can assign to the administrator, and which ones to keep at home. Increased concentration on the results of accountable tasks is undoubtedly more comfortable, as it corresponds to the position of the project leader.
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