Lisa C. Townes

An organization can have both a business analyst and a project manager separately. But depending on the size of the organization, the same person can also play both roles. If you are among those who are evaluating career paths these days, then you may be confused between a business analyst and a project manager. It’s a point at which most people get confused and are also not aware of the responsibilities of both.

A Business Analyst

is one who works in all the possible ways of improving the services of the business through data analysis. Not just the services, but it also works to maintain the processes, products, and software. The business analysts improve efficiency by making a bridge to link the information technology department and the business.

Responsibilities of a Business Analyst

The business analysts work by creating new models to support the business by interacting with the information technology teams. A business analyst must have wide experience in forecasting and budgeting. Plus, he should know regulatory and reporting requirements.

His job description includes,

• Budgeting
• Forecasting
• Creating business analysis
• Planning
• Monitoring
• Reporting
• Pricing
• Defining the business requirements

Skills A Business Analyst Must Have

A business analyst must have both soft and hard skills. If one doesn’t have an IT background, no worries. He must know about the working of systems and tools. Here are some of the main skills that a business analyst must have,

• Interpersonal Skills
• Consultative Skills
• Oral And Written Communication
• Organizational Skills
• Facilitation Skills
• Information About Business Structure
• Process Modelling
• Stakeholder Analysis
• Costs Benefit Analysis
• Knowledge About Databases And Networks
• Analytical Thinking

A Project Manager

A project manager is one who plans, monitors, executes, and controls the whole project. They play the main role in monitoring the project scope, resources, and team. And most importantly, the success or failure of the project. Moreover, a project manager makes the goals of the project and uses skills to inspire the team by sharing the purpose and goal of the project. You can follow this guide to be a project manager.

Responsibilities Of A Project Manager

Creating the initiation document of the project is the main point about the responsibilities of a project manager. In the initiation document, the project manager has to cover the risks, business objectives, scope, and assumptions related to that project. Moreover, the project manager creates and updates all the project activities. Reporting the project health and status regularly to the committee members is also included in the responsibilities of the project manager.

If there comes any kind of challenge or risk related to a project, then solving that issue is also the responsibility of the manager handling the project. The project manager has to keep an eye on the team to check that they are working together or not. Plus, he also supports the team members in stakeholder engagement activities related to specific expertise.

Here are some other responsibilities,

• Coordinating Staff
• Leading Project Planning Sessions
• Ensuring the Project meet deadlines
• Designing the Risk Mitigation Plan
• Managing the Large Teams
• Optimizing the Overall Approach
• Managing Relationships With Clients
• Overseeing all the Incoming as well as Outgoing Project Documentation

Skills A Project Manager Must Have

Apart from the responsibilities, here we have mentioned some of the skills which a project manager must have to work professionally. Have a look at these skills.

• Leadership style
• Policy Knowledge
• Budget Management
• Technical Writing
• Team Management
• Risk Management
• Conflict Management
• Project Management Methodologies
• Interpersonal Skills
• Research Skills

Why Does It Matters Much If Roles Of These Two Are Defined In A Project Or Not?

In most of the projects, the roles and the boundaries are not specified thus a confusion remains between these two. But why must there be clarification between these two? Why is clarifying the roles of these two necessary?

After having a detailed note on the responsibilities and roles of a business analyst along with a project manager, you must know why does it matter if the roles of these two are fully defined or not.

Project Productivity

One of the main reasons to define project roles is project productivity. At a small level, a small business may work fully well without clearly defining the responsibilities of a project manager and a business analyst. But when you have moved your business to a large scale then you won’t get a successful outcome without clearly defining the roles and responsibilities. So clarifying the roles and responsibilities matter much in getting better productivity.

Professionalism Of Your Work

Another important reason to clearly define the role of the business analyst and business manager is professionalism. When the roles are defined, the business analyst and project managers will pay keen interest in their tasks thus, they will attain professionalism in their respective work. So better define their roles to make them fully professional.

What Makes Project Managers and Business Analysts Appear So Related To Each Other?

By reading all the above points about project managers and business analysts, one may feel some similarities between the two. But still, there are many main differential points between them. Both play a role in the growth of their organization. The project managers are those who play the main role in the context of already assigned projects from their organization. And business analysts play a role as individual contributors.

Here are a few factors which favor that at some places the role of both needed to get mixed,

• The project is small but the budget is limited
• The project assigned is small with an experienced team to work but individuals are capable of performing different roles
• The risks which are associated with the assigned project are low

Apart from the main differential responsibilities, there are many other roles due to which the main difference between both the project manager and business analyst gets blurred. So once you have an understanding of the differences between the two, you can never mix up the responsibilities of these two.

The world has been discovering better management techniques because of limited time and increased workload on individuals. Much work has been done to identify how management can be improved in an individual’s life and an organization.

In researching better management techniques, the project life cycle has been studied to ensure that each project can be structured, monitored, managed, and finished successfully for saving time, cost, and limited resources.

What is Project Lifecycle?

The project life cycle is the breakdown of a project into different stages for better management and results. Project lifecycle has gained maximum popularity over the last few decades because of the successful results it has been generating in terms of results, quality, and cost control.

The project lifecycle starts from the initial stage of brainstorming a project and ends once the project gets completed and is handed over to the authority who has assigned the project.

The project life cycle differs from project to project. It has the most important for a successful task as it rightly breaks down a project and subtasks associated with it, which helps properly manage the project and improve results.

Phases of the Project Life Cycle

A project life cycle is divided into five phases, from brainstorming to completion. The work done in five stages are:

1.      Brainstorming

Brainstorming is the stage before starting a project in which a project, its nature, the vision, scope, and stakeholders are identified. The project’s importance and relevancy are checked in this stage to ensure that no time is lost by starting a wrong project.

2.      Planning

Once brainstorming has been done, and the project and its objectives are identified, the next step in the project lifecycle is planning. In this phase, all the planning related to a project, the subtasks associated with it, the project’s schedule, the budget, risk, the completion date, and milestones are all predetermined for smooth working on a project.

Planning is a crucial phase in which the overall project and its approach are discussed. Alternative plans are also finalized in this phase to avoid any failure of the project.

3.      Execution

Dependent upon the previous phase, the next stage of a project lifecycle is execution. In this step, all the resources are utilized to work on the planned project based upon the schedule and guidelines.

The step is performed following the planning phase, and each step is linked to the planned schedule to ensure that risks and costs are minimized and the project is done as planned and expected.

4.      Monitoring

The next phase of a project life cycle is monitoring. The phase continues throughout the project so that the project is outclassed in terms of quality, reduced cost, and minimal risk.

The phase compares planning and execution stages to analyze what needs to be improved, which step requires more employees’ efforts, and how time can be balanced between tasks for expected results.

5.      Completion

The last phase of the project life cycle is complete. In this phase, the project is announced completed, and a report has been issued to identify how the overall project went and how successful the project life cycle was.

The stage highlights the difference between budgeted cost and actual cost and the difference between the dates for completion and the completion date.

Importance of the Project Life Cycle

The project life cycle has significant importance in assuring the delivery of a quality project on time with budgeted cost and minimal risk.

The project life cycle helps better manage a project, which is crucial in assuring successful results for a given task. The importance of project life cycle includes:

·         Structure a Project

Better structuring of a project helps in better monitoring and better results. With a project life cycle, one can divide the project into several stages, making the structure easier to understand and monitor.

The employees know which task to perform, and the management knows when to expect completion of a sub-task of the project, which enhances the project’s overall efficiency.

·         Better Communication

With the better structuring and planning of a project, the project life cycle helps in better communication between employees and management. The employees know in advance which tasks to perform on which date and when to complete them.

Similarly, the management knows when and what to expect from each employee and when to motivate them to uplift their work, which helps in better communication and better results between employees and management.

·         Helps in Tracking Progress

Project lifecycle has the most importance in progress tracking. With the task’s divisions and prior finalization of schedule and cost, the project life cycle helps evaluate how competitive project work has been going with planning and where the pace is required, or cost-cutting is essential.

Tracking helps complete a project as planned, which helps finish the project with the required resources and cost. Before the project life cycle, projects exceeded their budgeted cost, and risks related to a project were not identified. After the project life cycle, the projects are not only completed in a predetermined time but they are completed in allocated cost and resources, which helped in savings for the authority of the project.

·         Helps in Better Project Management

The project life cycle has great importance in terms of managing a project. It helps in managing the project time, cost, resources, and efforts of employees. With the use of the project life cycle, each aspect of a project is identified and planned initially, which helps strategize each sub-task at a low cost.

Project management has improved as employees predetermined their tasks, and when they complete the task on a pre-decided deadline, the cost and resources are indirectly appropriately managed.

·         Helps in Cost Controlling

With the completion of tasks as planned and allocated resources, the project life cycle helps in cost controlling a project. When projects get delayed, their cost and resource usage increase. The project life cycle holds great importance as it makes sure that the project is completed as strategized by the management that helps in cost controlling as the project is completed within the decided resources.

Final Thoughts

The project life cycle is of great importance for project management and better project results. The life cycle has been used widely for project planning and completing a project because of its colossal significance. To improve the project life cycle, many software has been designed to help track the project’s performance and maximize the project life cycle application.

The human mind needs a specific time to learn a new skill. It may be a duration of a few days or a few months to get a grip on a skill. If you are willing to start a career as a project manager, you must have some basic skill set and style to meet the challenging career.

If you take too much time getting this skill, you may have to say goodbye to the new project or even your whole team. This is so because you will be working so slow for your team and the project timings.

Moreover, you won’t get any two projects similar to apply the same tricks in both. You cannot use the same leadership style in all the projects and with all the teams. A good manager is always one who knows where to use which skill. Here’s a guide to let you know how managers can become leaders.

To have a high grip on the skill of project management leadership, we are going to provide you a few amazing leadership styles in project management. Stay with us and absorb maximum information from this content.

Few Plausible and Tenable Styles to Use in Project Management

Here are various leadership styles that will help you a lot in handling different situations differently. So you may not use the same technique for all the projects.

• Coercive Leadership Style
• Pacesetting Leadership Style
• Authoritative Leadership Style
• Affiliative Leadership Style
• Coaching Leadership Style
• Autocratic Leadership Style
• Visionary Leadership Style
• Transformational Leadership Style
• Free-rein Leadership Style

Coercive Leadership Style

The coercive leadership style is used mostly by the project leaders and applied in crises. Particularly it’s used when there is a risk of missing the deadline for a project. If we simply summarize this style of management, it would not be wrong to say that “Do what I have ordered you.”

So if you have only one direction of communication, go for this leadership style of project management. In this style, the leader gives a direct order to the team and the whole team has to move according to order.

Pacesetting Leadership Style

The pacesetting leadership style is the one in which the leader models excellence with his already skilled team. But if the team is not already skilled or hardworking, this style won’t work for the best and quick results. Here the team members can easily achieve the goals even with less supervision.

It won’t be wrong if we sum up this style in one sentence saying, “Do it now, just like I am doing it.” Moreover, there are high standards in this style on which the team and the leader have to do work.

Authoritative Leadership Style

When the team is in search of a new idea and new vision, then an authoritative leadership style is best to use in such circumstances. The leader has the authority to run all the team members according to his plan. So it would not be wrong to summarize this style in one sentence saying, “Come with me in each step.”

Affiliative leadership style

The affiliative leadership style is one of the most common and effective styles used in project management. Choosing this style can make a complete impact on the team. In this style, the leader works in such a way that it creates an emotional bonding with the organization. Mainly this style of leadership is needed in stressed conditions at the workplace when all the team members require rebuilding the trust.

Initially, the leader comes to know about the input of all the members and then utilizes all the input to make the decisions about the project. Such leaders conduct various effective workshops to rebuild the team and to share the common goals for doing the project amazingly.

Coaching Leadership Style

The leader with the coaching leadership style plays a main role in long-term professional development for the team members. The team members come to know about their weakness as well as their strengths. By knowing about the weaknesses, the members are made aware of the goals of the projects.

But if you as a project manager lack any expertise in the projects, never go with this style. Not just this, but this style is also not suitable when the team members need much development. You won’t gain anything spending all your time on your team members to make them trained to apply this style of project management.

Autocratic Leadership Style

In this leadership style, the leader has complete authority. He has to just give instructions on which tasks have to be done. And how to complete all the tasks. The members cannot perform the tasks with their chosen methodologies but all these things should be completed according to the instructions of the leader.

Visionary Leadership Style

The leaders using this style provide long-term direction to all the team members. A new clear vision is provided to the team and all the members work according to that vision. It moves all the eyes and all the minds towards that specific vision. Visionary leaders are those who tell others to work according to a vision but they are those who present their creative vision. With this style, the members are encouraged to take initiative when they are facing any issues in the projects.

Transformational Leadership Style

The transformational leadership style works when the team is going through various changes. Like if the organization is changing its members then the leadership style the leader should opt for is the transformational leadership style. In these situations, this style will motivate the team and will give new ideas.

Free-rein Leadership Style

As the name suggests, the leader using this style has to just assign the task. The leaders do not guide the team about the methodology and the policy to be used in the project. The leader just makes the members aware of the period within which the project should be complete. The team members are free to use any methodology to complete the project within the deadline.

Wrapping Up

All the above-mentioned leadership styles have different benefits and they all have to be used at different places and in different conditions. To understand the situation and apply the appropriate leadership style.