Project managers play a central role in delivering success throughout organizations and industries. They are the ones leading a project from start to finish, overseeing its planning, organization, management, execution, and delivery.
From developing high-collaborative teams to bridging the gap between your team and the customer, they have all the cards on the table to ensure the free-flowing completion of the project. But that’s not the only job of a project manager.
In this article, we will comprehensively discuss the roles and responsibilities of a project manager as well as the day-to-day activities they perform. Also, you will get to explore the importance of the project manager, what it takes to become one, and common challenges they face.
But let’s first understand who a project manager is.
Who is a project manager?
A project manager is a professional responsible for the successful execution of projects. From overseeing planning and ensuring effective task delegation to coordinating among team members and stakeholders, their responsibilities apply throughout the project phases.
They ensure projects move forward smoothly and get delivered on time while meeting quality standards and budget constraints. They provide team direction over the finish line, ensuring their efforts stay aligned to broader strategic objectives. Lastly, whatever the project outcome is, a project manager is held accountable for both its success and downfall.
A Free guide to help you with proven ways to lead a project from start to finish, without confusion or jargon.
What are the project manager’s roles and responsibilities across project phases?
A project manager is the driving force of a project. Their role is not limited to planning or task assignment. Instead, it requires them to be strategic, proactive, and adaptable to the project’s needs, constraints, and uncertainties.
Their roles and responsibilities span across different project phases, including initiation, planning, execution, monitoring & controlling, and closure. Together, these activities and tasks contribute to successfully delivering the project within defined scope, cost, and quality constraints.
Let’s discuss them in detail:
Initiation phase
In this phase, project managers establish a foundation for the project. The decisions made here influence every subsequent phase of the project lifecycle
1. Establishing a shared vision
At this stage, project managers develop a comprehensive understanding of the project by identifying its requirements, objectives, and success criteria. This vision must align with the broader business goals to ensure the project delivers meaningful value at the end.
Project managers involve key stakeholders to validate objectives, negotiate requirements, and clarify assumptions, thereby reducing ambiguity, misinterpretation, and high-level risks throughout the project lifecycle.
The shared vision acts as a reference point for informed decision-making and provides clear direction for planning and execution in later phases.
2. Identifying key stakeholders and their expectations
Another critical responsibility of a project manager is to identify all internal and external stakeholders who have a stake in the project. This involves evaluating their interests, influence, expectations, and potential impact on the project to gain a comprehensive understanding of decision-makers, end users, partners, and regulatory bodies.
Project managers also assess stakeholders’ communication, reporting, and involvement needs to determine how and when information should be shared. This helps project managers set realistic expectations from the beginning.
Clear stakeholder mapping helps project managers enable smoother collaboration throughout the project lifecycle. This reduces the likelihood of resistance, misalignment, and conflicts that can disrupt project execution later.
3. Developing a project charter and getting approval
The next step is to create a project charter, a formal authorization document that authorizes the project’s existence and allows project managers to move the project forward.
In this document, project managers typically outline:
- Project purpose and objectives
- High-level scope and requirements
- Deliverables and success criteria
- Identified key stakeholders
- Major assumptions, constraints, and risks
- Budget, resources, and timeline
After the drafting, the project charter is reviewed and shared with relevant stakeholders for final approval.
Planning phase
In this phase, project managers define how the project will be executed, monitored, and delivered within the defined scope and budget.
4. Defining the roadmap from strategy to delivery
In this stage, project managers convert the approved project into a clear, actionable roadmap that supports seamless project execution.
During this phase, project managers systematically assess the project scope, objectives, and constraints to define deliverables, outline activities, identify dependencies, and select a delivery approach (e.g., Agile, Waterfall) to provide a structured pathway for completing the project successfully and efficiently.
Key activities performed by project managers at this stage include:
- Defining and validating the project scope
- Developing a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
- Defining deliverables and acceptance criteria
- Describing project milestones and dependencies
- Defining roles and responsibilities
- Planning resources across tasks (people, tools, materials)
- Estimating costs and developing the project budget
- Establishing key performance indicators (KPIs)
- Selecting the project delivery methodology
5. Creating detailed schedules and timelines
Once the project roadmap is defined, project managers develop detailed schedules and timelines by carefully estimating the time required to complete individual tasks and responsibilities. Using their experience, expert judgment, or previous data, they define realistic timelines for teams to plan and execute their work effectively.
While building the schedule, they also incorporate buffers and contingencies to accommodate any possible risks, uncertainties, or unforeseen challenges that may or may not arise. Creating a realistic and well-structured schedule helps prevent project delays, excessive rework, and last-minute escalations.
The project schedule also serves as a baseline for tracking progress and maintaining control throughout the project lifecycle, ensuring the project gets completed within the agreed timeline.
6. Risk management and contingency planning
Regardless of how thoughtful a project plan is, project managers recognize that uncertainty is inherent in all projects. Preparing for risk and unforeseen events is essential to ensure the project progresses steadily.
As part of planning, project managers identify high-priority and recurring risks, assess their likelihood and impact, and define appropriate response strategies about whether they should be avoided, mitigated, transferred, or accepted. Based on this analysis, they document contingency plans for critical risks, assign ownership, outline escalation paths, and define communication protocols to ensure quick, coordinated action if risks actually occur.
A well-prepared risk management and contingency plan:
- Increases chances of project success
- Improves project resilience and adaptability
- Enables faster decision-making and issue resolution
- Ensures clear communication under pressure
- Supports proactive risk response and controlled project performance
Execution phase
In this phase, project managers focus on executing the plan and delivering project outcomes while keeping people, work, and expectations aligned.
7. Delegating work and coordinating activities
The first step in executing work is to assign tasks and responsibilities based on an individual’s strengths, capabilities, and availability to ensure efficient, timely delivery.
This involves establishing clear ownership, clarifying responsibilities and priorities, and communicating expectations so everyone knows what they are responsible for, by when, and how their work contributes to the overall project goals.
Project managers also coordinate activities by managing tasks, sequencing work, and synchronizing efforts across teams. When team members understand how their work impacts others’ progress, collaboration improves, and execution becomes smoother.
8. Leading and supporting the team
Project managers’ responsibilities go beyond overseeing project work to uplifting and supporting their team. They take on an active leadership role to guide teams toward shared objectives while maintaining their morale and potential.
They create an environment where team members feel empowered to raise concerns, confident in acknowledging their mistakes, and accountable for their responsibilities, while collaborating effectively with other team members.
Project managers maintain collaboration and keep a check on the team dynamics and engagement to ensure teams remain motivated, focused, and on the right track.
9. Managing stakeholder communication and expectations
During execution, keeping stakeholders informed and aligned is a core responsibility of the project manager. They provide regular status updates, communicate progress against agreed deliverables, highlight risks or issues, and gather feedback to incorporate necessary adjustments.
They ensure stakeholders remain engaged and confident in the project’s direction, while clearly and promptly communicating any changes, feedback, or decisions to the delivery team to ensure the final outcome meets expectations.
Seamless and transparent communication strengthens relationships with stakeholders. When stakeholders feel involved at every stage of the project, misalignment is greatly reduced.
10. Ensuring deliverables meet quality standards
The next step is to ensure that the project deliverables align with the acceptance criteria, stakeholder expectations, and quality standards established in the early stages of planning.
To maintain quality, project managers:
- Request outputs at key checkpoints
- Facilitate reviews and confirm validations with relevant stakeholders
- Address quality gaps early to prevent rework and delays
By including these quality check-ins in day-to-day work, project managers ensure deliverables are evaluated and refined at the right stages and delivered within the defined timeline.
11. Resolving conflicts and removing blockers
While executing a project, it is common to encounter challenges such as interpersonal conflicts, competing priorities, resource constraints, or technical issues that slow progress.
Project managers proactively identify and address these obstacles before they become major risks or affect timelines, costs, or team morale. This may involve mediating conflicts, re-prioritizing work, securing additional support, or escalating issues when required.
By removing blockers and maintaining momentum, project managers keep teams focused on delivering project outcomes effectively.
Monitoring & controlling phase
In this phase, project managers ensure that the project remains aligned with the approved plan, agreed scope, and established quality standards.
12. Tracking progress against scope, schedule, and budget
Project managers regularly track project progress against an established baseline to determine whether the work aligns with what was approved.
This evaluation helps project managers identify early deviations before they become real failures, giving project managers the opportunity to investigate root causes, course-correct, and prevent further impact on timelines or costs.
By closely monitoring performance trends, a project manager can anticipate issues early in the process, avoiding surprises later in the project.
13. Gathering team input to identify execution bottlenecks
Project managers actively gather feedback from the team to understand the challenges and setbacks encountered during execution.
These formal check-ins provide on-ground visibility and surface issues such as dependency delays, skill gaps, and process inefficiencies that may not be visible on standard dashboards or reports.
This qualitative input allows project managers to identify root causes early, make informed adjustments, and ensure smoother project flow.
14. Manage change requests and scope creep
As the project progresses, project managers are oftenintroduced to new requests or evolving stakeholder requirements. They are responsible for managing these changes in a structured and controlled manner.
Project managers structurally evaluate these changes to assess their impact on project scope, time, cost, and resources, negotiate trade-offs where necessary, and seek formal approvals before implementation.
This disciplined approach helps prevent uncontrolled scope creep that can derail project outcomes.
15. Maintaining performance reports
Project managers maintain accurate records of project performance, timeline, costs, risks, and budget throughout the monitoring phase to ensure transparency and accountability.
These documents and reports are useful for identifying improvements in future initiatives and for providing traceability of decisions, changes, and approvals.
Also, these are shared with stakeholders to give them the right level of visibility, enabling informed reviews, audits, and meaningful discussions
Closure
In this phase, project managers formally conclude the project by validating deliverables and securing final approvals.
16. Project closure & sign-off
After ensuring that the project meets the agreed acceptance criteria and contractual requirements, project managers hand over the final deliverables to obtain the formal sign-offs from stakeholders.
At this stage, they also resolve any remaining open issues, release project resources, and close administrative and financial tasks to structurally close it.
This confirmation marks the successful completion of the project.
17. Lessons learned & retrospectives
After project completion, project managers reflect on lessons learned to evaluate what worked well, what didn’t, and what could be improved in future projects.
These discussions encourage honest reflection on processes, decisions, risks, and challenges encountered across each phase of the project.
The entire knowledge is clearly documented and shared with relevant teams to preserve organizational knowledge, avoid repeating past mistakes, and support continuous improvement in future initiatives.
What are the best practices for a project manager?
Project managers must be well-versed in project management to ensure projects don’t go off track and proceed in the right direction. Here are some of the best practices a project manager should follow:
- Clarify project purpose: A project is more likely to hit goals and become successful when team members have a clear understanding of project objectives and expected outcomes. This shared understanding allows them to work in alignment and stay focused on achieving shared goals.
- Define project brief: A well-defined project brief is a clear and concise documentation of the project’s purpose, goals, objectives, deliverables, and responsibilities. Creating one helps you bring everyone on the same page, ensuring everyone aligns with the vision. However, the document is not static, as you may need to revisit and revise it throughout the project’s lifecycle.
- Create a smart project plan: Developing a project’s work plan helps you outline the project’s tasks, dependencies, task duration, team roles and responsibilities, and resources. A well-laid-out plan keeps everyone focused and organized, acting as a central source of truth for everyone.
- Gather the right group of people: You laid out the best plan and structure, but the execution is incomplete without having the right set of people in your team. It is only by ensuring the necessary skills, expertise, and strengths in your arsenal that you can lead a project’s successful execution.
- Maintain open communication: Establishing clear and transparent communication is necessary to streamline project processes, be it among team members, stakeholders, or clients. This practice keeps everyone updated and informed, eliminating the scope for project failures due to misalignment, mismatched expectations, miscommunication, and uncertainties.
- Outline quality standards: Measuring project quality against established standards and measures helps you assess its effectiveness at every phase. Communicating these to team members gives them a clear direction to work in, specifying benchmarks they must achieve to maintain high standards.
- Schedule regular check-ins: Being a project manager, you must ensure you are always updated and in sync with your team. This will help you discover their concerns, challenges, and blockers holding them back from achieving their full potential. You can ask for feedback, host meetings, or do 1:1 sessions to resolve them in time.
- Prepare for setbacks: No matter how well-structured your project plan is, unexpected changes, obstacles, and challenges can arise anytime. This uncertainty highlights the need to prepare for risks beforehand. You can review past projects, analyze outcomes, and identify patterns to prevent similar issues from happening in the future.
- Run a project retrospective: Lastly, even if your project reaches its final stage successfully, do not forget to reflect on the project lifecycle to understand the lessons learned. These will help you avoid repeated mistakes, optimize practices, and improve for future projects.
What is the importance of the project manager role?
89% of organizations have a project management office. This shows the growing necessity of PMO in almost every business.
Let’s briefly discuss the importance of a project manager –
1. Realistic planning
A successful project depends hugely on planning and creating a strategy. Random forecasting and approximate delivery dates lead to missed deadlines and budget overruns.
This is where a project manager brings real value. They convert business goals into actionable plans by defining scope, estimating efforts, and setting achievable timelines.
2. Set clear focus and objectives
The project manager is responsible for setting clear objectives and guidelines that keep the project moving steadily.
Right from start to end, they ensure that their team members remain aligned on priorities, understand what success looks like, and stay on track to ensure timely completion of the project.
3. Simplifying complex issues
One of the most critical contributions of a project manager is to simplify complexity, making it easier for their teams to progress smoothly. By breaking down large, ambiguous tasks into manageable chunks, project managers help teams set priorities, define milestones, and focus on what matters.
When complexity is handled in smaller, well-defined pieces, teams make better decisions, respond faster to changes, and deliver projects on time.
4. Quality control
A team can complete projects on time, but the essential component is ensuring quality. Completed projects may become useless if they do not fulfill quality requirements.
A project manager ensures the quality of the project by defining standards. This lets the team members know what they are aiming for.
5. Cost factor
As per a study, 9.9% of every dollar is squandered due to poor project performance. A project manager helps in saving a lot of money for the organization.
A skilled project manager improves efficiency, mitigates project risks, and optimizes the cost of the project. All these factors help in combating the waste of resources and help in the growth of the organization.
What are the important skills and competencies of the project manager?
The key skills a project manager should have include leadership, communication, risk management, problem-solving, resource management, negotiation, and the ability to utilize project management tools. These skills enable project managers to successfully deliver projects, align teams with project objectives, and ability to tackle challenges effectively. Let’s explore them briefly:
- Leadership: Project managers should inspire and lead their teams to achieve project goals while creating a positive and productive work environment.
- Communication: Project managers need to have good communication skills, which ensures that all stakeholders involved in the project stay updated and informed throughout the project cycle.
- Risk management: Project managers should be able to identify potential risks and develop mitigation strategies so that future issues can be minimized or avoided.
- Problem-solving: Project managers should be able to analyze, identify problems, evaluate the available options, and put in effective solutions while the project is still underway.
- Budgeting and resource management: Project managers need to plan, manage, and control the budget and resources so that the project proceeds as intended and is delivered on schedule.
- Proficiency with technology: A project manager should be proficient in using project management tools like ProofHub, Wrike, and Asana to streamline project planning, tracking, and reporting, boosting overall project efficiency.
Try ProofHub for free. Start your 14-day trial!
What common challenges are faced by project managers?
Some of the common challenges project managers face are scope creep, unrealistic deadlines, budget overruns, resource constraints, poor communication, stakeholder misalignment, and managing risks effectively. These challenges can seriously impact project success if not proactively addressed. Let’s further discuss the challenges:
1. Scope creep: Projects often tend to expand beyond their initial scope when additional features, requirements, or unplanned changes are added without proper evaluation. It becomes difficult for managers to manage timelines, resources, and project costs if the project scope is not clearly defined.
2. Unrealistic deadlines: When deadlines are set without realistic projections of time and effort, teams are forced to work in haste. Managers may find it difficult to maintain the quality of work, employee satisfaction, and deliver projects on time.
3. Budget overruns: Unforeseen expenses, lack of proper financial monitoring, or inefficient resources can lead to projects going beyond their budget constraints, directly affecting project ROI and stakeholder discontent.
4. Resource constraints: With limited manpower, expertise, and resources, it is challenging to deliver projects. It can create bottlenecks in key project stages and slow project momentum. Managers must constantly analyze resource availability with workload to keep the project moving efficiently.
5. Poor communication: Ineffective communication among teams, vendors, and stakeholders is a typical problem for managers. It can cause confusion, duplicate work, and rework. It is important to establish clear communication channels, take frequent updates, and standardize reporting.
6. Stakeholder misalignment: Various stakeholders might have opposing priorities or expectations. Without early alignment, it can lead to effort wastage, decision-making difficulty, and miscommunication.
What qualifications do you need to be a project manager?
Getting a (PMP)® certification is one of the key requirements for becoming a project manager. Having the project management certificate can make you stand out among your competition. They showcase leadership and expertise in their work.
Project Management Professional (PMP)®
This certification is valid across the globe. Along with real-world project management experience, the basic requirement to qualify for this certification includes:
👉A four-year degree
👉36 months of professional experience leading projects in the past eight years
👉35 hours of project management education/training or CAPM® certification
Or in case you have a High school diploma, then you will require
👉60 months of experience leading projects in the past eight years
👉35 hours of project management education/training or CAPM® certification
The Project Management Institute (PMI) is the apex body that has the ultimate control over issuing the (PMP)® certification.
What are the qualities of a successful project manager?
A successful project manager demonstrates several qualities that enable them to lead projects effectively and deliver consistent outcomes.
- Clarity of thinking: They stay calm and focused during tough situations and approach challenges with a clear mindset.
- Strong communication: They eliminate ambiguity by clearly communicating expectations, progress, and risks to teams and stakeholders.
- Ownership mindset: They take responsibility not just for their own actions, but for overall project outcomes, while holding the team accountable in a constructive way.
- Decision-making ability: They make timely, informed decisions by taking constraints such as time, cost, scope, and quality into account.
- Planning and organizational skills: They structure tasks, timelines, and resources realistically to keep projects on track and moving forward.
- Adaptability: They quickly adapt to respond to changes, emerging risks, or shifting stakeholder expectations without losing momentum.
- Leadership and team support: They strike the right balance between setting clear direction and providing teams with the supportand guidance needed to perform at their best.
What are the day-to-day tasks of a project manager?
While the core responsibilities of a project manager remain consistent, the day-to-day tasks vary depending on several factors such as industry, project phase, complexity, team size, and more.
Here are some routine activities that make it a part of a project manager’s workday:
- Conducting daily stand-ups: One of the project manager’s tasks is to lead daily team meetings to set the tone of the day. The goal is to check on progress, address roadblocks, conduct team check-ins, discuss priorities, facilitate coordination, and maintain team cohesiveness.
- Checking the inbox and messages: Project managers need to check emails to monitor important updates, respond to clients’ feedback and requests, and reply to urgent messages, as it can greatly impact the project’s course.
- Assigning tasks: Delegating tasks after a thorough evaluation of task type and nature and team members’ skills, strengths, and workload, is one of the project manager’s duties. It helps maintain accountability, ensuring everyone fully understands their responsibilities and expectations.
- Adjusting schedules: Managing projects is not a straightforward process. With changes in project scope, shifting deadlines and priorities, stakeholders’ feedback, and unforeseen challenges, project managers need to adapt quickly to keep the project on track.
- Communicating with stakeholders and team: Project managers need to keep clients in the loop and bring them on the same page. Also, they can send quick updates and check-in messages to team members to ensure smooth project progression.
- Taking follow-up: One of the project manager’s tasks is to check in with clients or stakeholders to gauge their satisfaction, approvals, feedback, inputs, and queries. These insights help keep the project aligned with the desired standards.
- Addressing team concerns and issues: Resolving team conflicts and concerns is among the soft skills project managers should possess. Project execution is a team effort that only succeeds when the team works in alignment and harmony, eventually increasing their productivity as a unit.
- Updating risk register: Risk management is a crucial practice that project managers perform. They should document any issues discovered or identified to develop mitigation strategies and maintain project integrity.
- Maintaining project logs: Maintaining a day-to-day record of activities, progress, and decisions made on projects is a practice that ensures no important information falls through the cracks. This ensures there is proper documentation of all project management aspects for future reference.
- Performing quality assurance: Staying in sync with routine project operations and running quick check-ins helps project managers spot bottlenecks and calculate their efficiency. This helps the project stay on track and error-free, ensuring a streamlined project workflow.
What are the things a project manager is accountable for?
A project manager is responsible for the end-to-end execution and success of a project. Various things that they are accountable for are:
- Delivering the agreed outcomes within the defined scope, budget, and timeline.
- Defining project goals and scope to ensure clarity on what needs to be delivered.
- Assigning ownership, creating realistic timelines, and keeping milestones on track.
- Coordinating team efforts towards a single direction for …
- Identifying and managing risks and issues before they impact outcomes.
- Managing stakeholder expectations by aligning on priorities and trade-offs
- Providing stakeholders with the right level of visibility and updates throughout the project lifecycle
- Making informed calls when constraints clash (time, cost, scope, quality)
- Resolving conflicts and removing blockers to ensure smooth project progression.
- Ensuring the final output meets the quality standards that were agreed upon by stakeholders.
- Maintaining project plans, reports, and approvals for traceability and future references.
- Handing over deliverables and securing final approvals.
Conclusion
Being a project manager requires you to always stay on your toes. From creating a well-defined project plan to keeping the team closely packed, project managers juggle several responsibilities to deliver successful outcomes.
They are the driving force behind every project’s success, demonstrating their ability to innovate, strategize, and lead. Be it coordinating with stakeholders or offering continuous support to team members, they put in their best efforts to maintain seamless project flow.
