Basing off a week 2 lecture in the BME 684 course, I believe a good project manager should excel at quick thinking on their feet. Project managers should pick up the slack where other members of the team are lacking in terms of meeting their tasks. Project managers need to essentially be a servant for the team, and solve for all the issues. For example, if a hardware part is missing or cannot arrive on time, the project manager has to have a plan B solution. If a member of the team is having issues attending the meetings, the project manager should instantly have the solution of maybe having private, flexible virtual meetings with them or just completely fill in for them and come up with a different task that they can easily deliver on. Project managers should be comfortable with working in a fast-paced pressure induced work setting, and if they aren't, they might struggle managing a team. After all, we are all human and we all have obstacles that may hinder us from performing our tasks at 100% perfection without anything going wrong.
A project manager needs to have background knowledge. They need to understand what everyone below them needs to do, and also how to do it. You should not be a project manager if you do not understand the project itself, just because how can you tell people what to do without yourself not knowing how.
A project manager needs to have good time management skills. With this, in case something falls behind, they have to know a backup plan or if something is behind schedule, how to make that part of the project advance to be on time or ahead of schedule. This could be small things such as contributing more to that part of the project and allocate more focus on the specific part rather than another.
Other leadership skills they need is to not have an extreme ego or be mean/rude, yet know when to put pressure on the people they oversee to meet a deadline. They need to have a balance of knowing to be a “boss” but also know how to be a team member.
Finally, a project manager needs to handle stress well. They are in charge of people but also have people who are in charge of them. They need to be able to work under pressure, while help those who are under pressure. Finding a balance to ensure they can handle stress is very important in a project manager so they do not feel overworked, burnt out, tired, or potentially dislike their project which could make them not work to their fullest, and it could alter or hinder the project.
I believe that having good personal organization skills is essential in a project manager. As communication and negotiation skills are important, organization skills will help everything fall into place. As a project comes to fruition after projecting the project management lifecycle, a manager has to be able to have the project stay on track. That means planning accordingly and divvying up the work amongst their team according to their abilities and skills so the project would proceed with no issues. In the end, with the addition of the previous skills mentioned, I believe that personal organization skills would be ideal in helping a manager.
