In every project, there will someone who is selected to lead the project. We call him/her project manager. In this post, I want to share you how to be a project manager, not ordinary one, but a great one!
For your information, I have never been a project manager before. So, this post will be about my opinion about how to be a project manager and other sources.
I remember being a project manager was one of my career milestone back in 2013. I think at that time, I realized that I do not want to be an engineer for the whole life, or to be a follower forever. I wanted to be a leader. I wanted to have a quality of project manager that I pictured at that time.
In my opinion, a project manager is said to be successful, if he/she can manage a project so that it is:
- On time
- On budget
- On quality/on scope
This is like project management triangle, which is very dilemmatic. We cannot have all three. A smart project manager will never sacrifice quality and asks for time and money to deliver the project. Believe me, this is so difficult. And no one can do achieve this, unless they have knowledge, skills, and experience.
What qualities every project manager should have?
A project manager should have both soft skills and hard skills.
At least there are three qualities that every project manager should have: leadership qualities, ability to make decision, and ability to apply core skills, like budgeting and planning [2].
Why leadership? Project manager is basically a leadership role. A project manager takes responsibility of for the project’s success (or failure). To have a successful project, you need to have a team that support you. To have a team that happy to work with you, you need to be with them and to motivate them.
How do I start to be become a project manager?
Being a project manager is not a one night process. It takes hours to put your skills, experiences, and abilities into good practice.
Essential skills can be acquired by learning, participating in seminars, training. Experience can be built by years of practicing, project by project.
I hope you enjoy this post and get benefit from it!
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