Project managers have the challenging task of always optimizing best practices in
terms of cost, schedules and quality as defined in the Project Management Body of
Knowledge (PMBOK) of the Project Management Institute (PMI). Throughout the
project’s term, he will have to contend with tracking, monitoring, organizing, and
communicating everything from the financial side, to the deliverables, to the human
resources. He will also have to report to the senior management regularly to update
them on costs and schedules versus the original plan. Keeping the senior management
informed and up-to-date is one of the major requirements of good project
management.
It would be ideal if the senior management is directly involved in the resourcing,
implementing and monitoring of all projects. However, a good project manager will
be able to keep senior management up to speed on the status of the project from its
inception to completion.
The initiation process will naturally include brainstorming and through project
charters. The project charter is a part of project management and senior managers
who are directly involved will be looking for this. A project manager’s ability to link
random thoughts of ideas into an understandable project charter will help senior
management in the evaluation of the plan of what specifically the team wants to
accomplish in its project management.
Project managers also have to constantly collect information on their deliverables and
submit it to senior management to control and monitoring. This is important because
a good project management implementation will require senior management to track
down and have a deeper look into key issues, concerns, risks, overdue tasks, and
many more that could hinder the project’s completion.
Once the project management has come to its completion however, there are still tasks
that need to be done like archiving and documentation of the many experiences
encountered during the project’s term. A project manager has to submit this to the
senior management with a detailed analysis.