We've provided a brief summary of each type of project management, and project management-adjacent role, to help ground you on terms you might encounter in introductions, email signatures, and jobs boards
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A Project Manager is responsible for planning, executing, and closing projects while ensuring they meet defined objectives within scope, budget, and timeline constraints. Particulars can vary by domain, but in general they coordinate the involvement of different teams, help allocate resources, manage risks, and communicate with stakeholders - all with the objective of keeping the project on-track. Communication and organization are key - with awareness of business goals being key to achieving project success.
Just what they sound like, a Senior Project Manager is a more-experienced project with greater responsibility. They are typically provided with greater latitude as a result of their greater experience. This role requires substantive leadership, problem solving, and ability for independent strategic thinking.
Program managers oversee multiple related projects, typically focused on the bigger-picture, rather than on project execution. Instead of delivery they focus on coordination, prioritization, and aspects of people management across projects (such as staff capacity). Alongside this, they ensure that dependencies, risks, and constraints are effectively managed. They may also take actions to optimize processes, manage a broader budget, and track achievement of benefits stemming from the projects.
Portfolio Managers oversee collections of projects and/or programs to ensure that they align with strategic objective and maximize value. Portfolio Management roles typically exist only in larger organizations, where the complexity of delivery and planning is enough to warrant their presence in the organization. They do not get involved in delivery, instead focusing on business goals, mitigating risks, and balancing priorities. They focus on the long term, and helping organizations adapt as situations change.
Some larger organizations augment Project Managers with roles such as Project Coordinators. This role typically handles administrative tasks within a project, such as scheduling meetings, maintaining documentation, or addressing logistics for resource allocation and budgeting. In these larger organizations, the Coordinators free up Project Managers from administrative tasks to allow them to focus on strategy and larger elements of project success.
Large organizations may also commodify certain project management activities around schedule management to Project Schedulers. Schedulers focus on creating and maintaining timelines, tracking progress, and identifying potential delays or schedule bottlenecks. When leveraged in an organization, this role provides data-driven insights on schedule performance at a high level of detail.
Larger organizations with significant project engagements may have Project Director roles. These individuals often provide strategic leadership and stakeholder management. They help to define clear expectations and use their network of relationships to organize performance to meet business goals.
Not formally project management, often ends up leveraging these skills
Irrespective of the great amount of ink spilt over the argument over whether projects or products are the better way to organize software delivery, Product Managers are supposed to focus on the product side of things, in a comprehensive way. However, Product Managers often cannot get away from project management - whether as a result of delivery a product increment, or due to management practice that larger aligns Product Managers to project management activities regardless.
Even if work isn't organized as "projects" per se, Product Managers often rely on project management as one of their core skillsets to get new product capabilities into customer's hands.
Another nominal project manager
The term "Scrum Master" comes not from project management, but from the Scrum Guide, the handbook for the Scrum framework for software delivery. In that context, the Scrum Master is a coach, who is intended to provide guidance and support about scrum process, not leadership.
However, many agile consultants have conflated Scrum Masters and Project Managers in their transition plans for agile software delivery transformations. As a result, the two roles have often been merged in Scrum contexts; there remain many job postings that continue to do the same. Unfortunately, the two roles couldn't be more different.
This list of project management roles work together in a structured way to ensure the planning, execution, and success of project - according to the unique needs of the organization in which they work. Each role has distinct responsibilities, but they will be assembled to to complement one another in an efficient delivery workflow for business value.
Leadership roles such as Portfolio Managers, Program Managers, and Project Directors align with strategy, organize stakeholders, and ensure business value is being delivered. They address the big-picture
Project leadership is achieved by Project Managers, Senior Project Managers, and (where necessary) Project Directors. These staff focus on project delivery and lead projects teams.
Other roles (such as Project Coordinator and Project Scheduler) focus on particular commodified activities such as administrative duties or schedule management.
Taking on these responsibilities, the different project management roles create an efficient workflow. In smaller organizations, the responsibilities will overlap.
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