WHAT DOES A BUSINESS PROJECT MANAGER DO?
The Business Project Manager acts as a dedicated liaison between internal business clients, business partners and the Common Security and Defence Policy team, performs financial analyses, and oversees cost forecasting for projects. This responsibility involves gathering and tracking action items, analyzing complex data to provide insights and develop improvement strategies, and supporting UAT and ORT for business readiness assessments. The manager also designs and implements project plans, manages deliverables and costs, prepares management presentations, and provides ongoing financial management support for programs and projects.
A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Business Project Manager
1. Business Project Manager Job Summary
- Project Management: Drive project deliverables, design, develop and establish key reporting standards.
- Scope Definition: Define project scope and identify and build strong relationships with key stakeholders.
- Task Ownership: Own, deliver and execute tasks on time, manage and meet deadlines.
- Prioritization: Effectively prioritize workload across the team and keep others informed of progress.
- Leadership: Show leadership in difficult or complex situations.
- Risk Management: Identify potential risks, issues and dependencies and the path to mitigation or resolution.
- Subject Matter Understanding: Understand the project subject matter and context, including the regulatory environment.
- Proactive Solutioning: Take initiative in proposing solutions and thinking outside of the box.
- Business Impact Consideration: Consider impact across business, collect information proactively and re-evaluate solutions.
- Meeting Contribution: Contribute in meaningful and appropriate ways to meetings or calls.
- Analysis Communication: Make results of own analysis understandable, enabling others to accept and buy into conclusions.
2. Business Project Manager Accountabilities
- Team Collaboration: Work with Product Management, R and D, Operation and other teams.
- Project Implementation: Ensure the successful launch and implementation of key initiatives of the unit.
- Resource Management: Manage the scope and schedule the resources toward key initiatives, and ensure status, risks and open issues are tracked.
- Issue Resolution: Conduct team meetings to update, identify and resolve issues.
- Network Building: Build network and understanding in and outside of the ITO team, across geographies.
- Performance Improvement: Seek to continuously improve standards of work, address opportunities for development.
- KPI Monitoring: Monitor KPIs and report the clinical trial results against targets through weekly management reports.
- Executive Reporting: Present to senior management and clinical partners on the project status and progress.
- Regulatory Compliance: Collaborate with study coordinators to ensure clinical trial documentation is maintained within the organization following regulatory standards.
- Feedback Management: Ensure timely and appropriate responses and follow-up for all feedback received.
- Stakeholder Communication: Work together with internal stakeholders to provide updates as well as troubleshoot project issues and roadblocks.
- Strategic Development: Determine ways to increase company profitability, developing long-term business goals and strategies to grow the company.
3. Business Project Manager Functions
- Business Process Analysis: Review, and where relevant, analyze or map existing business processes.
- Systems Integration Analysis: Analyze opportunities for improvement by linking systems and data.
- Insight Delivery: Deliver insights to the business, gather and inform requirements, and assist with decision-making.
- Stakeholder Collaboration: Work with internal stakeholders to identify, understand, and articulate opportunities for change.
- Documentation: Document current and end-state processes and procedures and business requirements.
- Technical Solution Proposal: Research, trial, and propose improvements by recommending appropriate technical solutions.
- Solution Coordination: Coordinate the sourcing and configuration of solutions.
- Project Management: Apply relevant project management methodologies to manage all aspects of the project life cycle.
- Project Delivery: Deliver quality project outcomes on time and budget, and to the satisfaction of stakeholders.
- Challenge Management: Manage unforeseen challenges and opportunities that arise through the course of a project, focusing on the outcome and value to the firm.
- Change Management: Manage change in a user-centric way so that internal clients accept and embrace new ways of working and derive the benefit from the efficiencies delivered.
4. Business Project Manager Job Description
- Marketing Strategy Development: Devise and implement marketing strategy and marketing plan for activities.
- Marketing Coordination: Plan, direct, and coordinate marketing efforts.
- CRM Maintenance: Ensure CRM performance and maintenance for activities.
- Sales Support Provision: Provide salespersons with tools, scripts, and other relevant content guides.
- Sales Performance Optimization: Optimize sales performance to help them reach their objectives.
- Sales Strategy Research: Research appropriate strategies for increasing sales and customer base.
- Sales Review Conduct: Conduct regular in-depth pipeline and account reviews with the Marketing and Sales teams.
- Sales Partnership Facilitation: Be the point of contact for the Sales team to help build partnerships.
- Sales Process Support: Work closely with Sales to ensure successful closure of the sales process (RFI, RFP, etc.).
- Product Feedback Closure: Close the feedback loop by providing the product team with inputs to influence the product roadmap.
5. Business Project Manager Overview
- Improvement Tools: Ensure improvement methodology and tools are utilized effectively to maximize benefits.
- Project Delivery: Deliver project goals on budget and schedule.
- Project Charter Development: Develop conceptual customer needs into an approved project charter.
- Performance Analysis: Analyze business, process and systems performance, and identify improvement opportunities.
- Business Case Management: Develop, evaluate and manage business cases and cost/benefit analyses.
- Decision Support: Provide decision support and recommendations to select the best options.
- Stakeholder Communication: Communicate proactively with stakeholders and senior management regarding progress, issues, and plans for resolution.
- Project Coordination: Develop and use project plans to coordinate participants and track and report progress.
- Industry Advocacy: Leverage industry research and analysis, and serve as an advocate and role model for integrating best practices into the organization.
- Professional Autonomy: Operate with a high degree of autonomy and professionalism.
- Workload Prioritization: Successfully prioritize workload following business goals.
6. Business Project Manager Details and Accountabilities
- Organizational Priorities: Help drive priorities with the leadership team as well as various levels throughout the organization.
- Project Transparency: Overall project transparency and visibility to leadership and project team.
- Cross-functional Project Management: Manage projects for cross-functional collaboration and integration.
- Project Planning: Develop detailed project plans and schedules and provide work direction and leadership to assigned projects.
- Risk Management: Monitor project milestones and critical dates to identify risks and issues.
- Mitigation Planning: Facilitate the creation and execution of corresponding mitigation plans.
- Scope Management: Ensure the project remains within the specified scope and is within time, cost, and quality objectives.
- Project Analysis: Conduct retrospective and return on investment analysis.
- Progress Monitoring: Monitoring progress, timelines, managing resources, and customer satisfaction.
- Deadline Management: Establish deadlines taking contingency time into account.
- Deadline Adjustment: Adjust deadlines and communicate before missing the target date.
7. Business Project Manager Tasks
- Strategic Project Oversight: Provides strategic project oversight of tasks, deliverables, and stakeholders.
- High-Level Reporting Assistance: Assists PMO in providing high-level project reporting.
- Complex Project Management: Accountable for strategic management of complex projects from kick-off through final deliverable, coordinating various project elements.
- Stakeholder Engagement: Owns development of deliverables working with key stakeholders.
- Project Progress Tracking: Effectively plans, coordinates, tracks, and reports to the client on project team progress.
- Advanced Customer Interaction: Possesses advanced customer-facing skills and ability to navigate highly complex, political organizations.
- Leadership: Authors content and leads project kick-off meetings while anticipating/addressing customer questions.
- Client Relationship Management: Responsible for recurring client touchpoint meetings throughout the project duration and knows when to adjust meeting frequency.
- Project Transition Accountability: Accountable for successful project transition upon completion.
- Project Status Monitoring: Monitors and tracks status for multiple, complex projects and reports regularly, clearly, and concisely.
- Issue Escalation: Effectively identifies and escalates potential issues before they materialize.
- Project Management: Provides ownership of resources and project management including planning, assessment, and assignment of projects.
8. Business Project Manager Roles
- Team Collaboration: Establishes and implements processes that foster team collaboration at the organizational level
- Stakeholder Communication: Interacts with management and executive stakeholders often requiring excellent communication skills
- Project Timeline Management: Creates project timelines and communicates overall project status to broader teams
- Project Objective Oversight: Responsible for ensuring each team understands the overall project objectives and timeline, and how their deliverables impact the overall program
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Works collaboratively with cross-functional peers and senior leaders/stakeholders to drive the resolution of project issues
- Business Process Analysis: Deeply understands current business processes to support requirements gathering for the Analytics/engineering teams
- Process Improvement Contribution: Actively participates in and contributes to the continuous improvement and evolution of processes, methodologies, and tools within the organization
- Leadership Influence: Interacts, negotiates, and influences decisions across multiple tracks and executive leadership
- Hands-On Project Advancement: Deep dives and takes a hands-on approach in specific areas of the project to move the project forward, overcoming any organizational, people, and process issues
9. Business Project Manager Additional Details
- Revenue Generation: Drive gaming revenue generation, development, and management.
- Performance Goals Setting: Set comprehensive goals for performance and growth for each title.
- Strategic Initiatives Development: Develop and drive strategic initiatives to grow game audiences and generate revenue across multiple platforms globally with the COO.
- Strategic Planning Participation: Participate in short- and long-term strategic and operational planning for the organization with the COO.
- Ecosystem Management: Establish the process for effectively managing ecosystem as well as conceptualizing, planning, and establishing new games.
- Market Monitoring: Monitor the company’s gaming market position, competitive movements, customer trends, and other areas that may affect the organization and the portfolio of businesses.
- Financial Oversight: Monitor budgets, P and L statement reviews, and overall financial results for the functional area of operations.
- Performance Optimization Communication: Communicate with the Development PM and teams to measure and optimize business performance.
- Knowledge Management Cultivation: Cultivate an environment and develop best practices for knowledge creation, documentation, and transfer within and business division to foster a culture of success.
- Project Management: Accountability to oversee, track, and manage the activities and new projects to ensure that project goals are completed on time.
10. Business Project Manager Role Purpose
- Client Coordination: Acting as dedicated contact between internal business clients, business partners, and the CDSP team.
- Financial Analysis: Performing financial analysis and handling the cost forecasting within the supported project.
- Action Item Management: Gathering, tracking, and following up on action items with business partners, using internal systems and tools.
- Data Analysis: Analyzing complex data, providing substantial insights, and developing improvement ideas.
- Assessment Support: Supporting UAT, ORT (operational readiness testing), and business readiness assessment.
- Task Management: Taking responsibility for a variety of tasks and ad-hoc queries with the opportunity to learn new things.
- Project Management: Designing project implementation and resource plans, executing and managing project deliverables and costs.
- Presentation Development: Preparing high-quality management presentations and client meeting materials that have a coherent structure, follow a clear storyline, and show strong analytical rigor and thought.
- Program Support: Providing ongoing support to programs and projects as financial management support, capturing data and producing regular governance materials, status reports, milestone planning, and financial metrics.