Summary

As a Project Manager, you are responsible for turning business concepts/models/ideas into detailed system requirements, building the system and bringing it live in a production environment.

You need work with both internal and external teams for various tasks: requirement development, system planning, programming, UI/web/art design, technical/marketing writing, hardware purchase/lease, hosting environment setup, integration, QA, etc.

Job Descriptions

Technical and quality

• Without necessarily being an expert of System architect level, the Project Manager should possess profound knowledge and sufficient skills to identify and solve daily technical problems. S/he should be able to understand the technology being used in order to understand and question requests coming from specialists and technical staff and to evaluate what is reasonable or possible.
• The Project Manager must have an understanding of relevant methodologies, processes and standards and ensures that all project team members understand and follow these also.
• The Project Manager is responsible for the project’s commitment to quality – also referred to as fitness for purpose or specification level, and may need to call on specialists to assist in creating or assessing quality standards.

Planning and problem-solving

• The Project Manager is responsible for planning the project in order to accomplish its goals or produce the products required within constraints such as time, cost and agreed quality standards.
• Alternatively, a Project Manager might inherit a detailed project plan from sources such as a contract or a business plan
• The Project Manager is also responsible for maintaining the project budget. In the first instance a specialist may help to prepare the budget for the Project Manager to then review. The Project Manager has ownership of the budget.
• The Project Manager continuously monitors progress in terms of the status of the plan and the budget and reports back to the senior management via weekly or other progress reporting and by organising and managing status meetings.
• The Project Manager must anticipate and catch deviations from a plan or schedule early and keep all participants and stakeholders informed.
• The Project Manager should identify, log, analyse and manage potential and actual issues and risks, taking corrective action by tackling day-to-day issues head on and reviewing how more serious issues and risks might impact on scope, schedule, quality and cost.
• The Project Manager should identify where and when management of issues and risks or accommodating altered requirements will involve extra time or extra resources and where efficiencies can be made.

Communicating

• The Project Manager should be able to articulate and negotiate consensus on a final vision of the product and/or the core project goals from scoping the requirements of all stakeholders, not forgetting the end-user.
• The Project Manager should be capable of defining acceptance criteria or working with specialists to define acceptance criteria for project deliverables and will works towards achieving stakeholder acceptance of deliverables.
• The Project Manager must be courteous and polite in written and oral communication, and be able to get ideas across in a non-confrontational manner in one-to-one situations, small groups, and before large audiences.

Team management

• The Project Manager will identify the need for resource, and should subsequently take on team management responsibilities in relation to the resource available to the project.
• The Project Manager may work directly with the team members or with their team leaders to estimate effort, plan activities and negotiate consensus among individual team members on their appointed tasks.
• The Project Manager may work with the third party contractors for getting the work done in a global source environment.
• The Project Manager will need to exercise good judgement in whether tasks should be broken down into smaller detail or not, and whether the work should be outsourced to contractor or done in house.
• The Project Manager is likely to be responsible for bringing the project to a close, which may include creating an end of project report or evaluation document, holding ‘sunset’ meetings and activities, and capturing and using relevant lessons learned.

Organising

• The Project Manager needs to generate many types of document, including requirement specifications, contracts, schedules, personnel records, project reports, communication (email) records, design specifications, meeting agendas, minutes and status reports.
• The Project Manager needs to create a structure for project documentation and remain conscientious in using it and ensuring that the rest of the team understands and uses it.
• The Project Manager needs to create a structure for project assets, including digital assets and remain conscientious in using it and ensuring that the rest of the team understands and uses it.

Qualification

• Minimal two years experience as web application development project manager or technique lead.
• Profound knowledge on the major web platforms/middle ware/technologies, programming languages/tools/frameworks, project management methodology, and software quality assurance models.
• Fluent in English writing.