As an entrepreneur, you are already very busy. Your day-to-day tasks may include software issues, programming, setting priories, and taking care of budgeting concerns. You are most likely faced with new challenges daily. Keeping up with all your projects can get very overwhelming.
This is where a project manager comes in. While your job is to keep an eye on the big picture, to steer the whole ship, as it were, a project manager only has one project to keep track of. That close focus translates into better awareness of detail, a closer, more responsive relationship with the client, and a deeper familiarity with the history of the project—and it translates into you having the time and energy to do your job better.
While you might think you can handle all your projects yourself, you will handle everything much better if you get some help. On the website, Toptal (who we partner with from time to time on content), they elaborate on these points in the article, You Need a Hero: The Project Manager. Below is a version of a portion of their article:
While every project has its unique challenges, there are some constants:
- The project is time-sensitive.
- The budget is smaller than I would like.
- My work costs more than the client would like.
- The client and I do not communicate as well as we would like.
Clearly, we need someone to step in and establish ground rules, keep everyone honest, and make sure that we’re not forgetting anything important. Someone has to facilitate communication among all parties.
This someone, this hero, is the project manager.
As all good entrepreneurs know, delegation is critical. Delegating the right tasks to the right people will certainly save the sanity of everyone in upper management, and may well save your whole company. Taking on a project manager is simply a form of delegation.
You won’t delegate everything relating to the project to the project manager, but you do give them the responsibility of making sure the project goes smoothly and according to plan. You will feel a huge weight lifted off your shoulders. And because you’re not exhausted and overwhelmed anymore, you will be more productive. The company, as a whole, will get more work done.
You are not perfect. None of us are. But if you have the help you need, you will be able to harness much more of your potential and much more of your company’s potential.
That is why we like to call the project manager a hero.