When To Hire The First Project Manager

Having a good project manager can make or break your organization, especially if you are running a small business or a startup.

So, hiring a project manager should be a no-brainer then, right? Right?

Well, it turns out that it’s more of a question of when, not if. Hire too late, and you have chaos on your hands you can’t control. Hire too early, and you have a resource drain that prevents you from scaling your business.

Also, only 46% of organizations place prioritize a culture that values project management. With that in mind, we have decided to explain what a project manager does, and more importantly, if and when you need one.

Understanding What a Project Manager Does

A project manager’s job is to plan, organize, and run a project to meet its objectives on time, within the given budget, and meeting the quality standards. However, their role includes more than simply overseeing projects.

Project managers are responsible for managing your stakeholders, allocating resources, and mitigating risks, while never losing sight of both the big picture and the small details of the project.

They also help executives and team members focus on their core activities and not have to figure out what to do next or handle random one-off tasks. Project manager’s responsibilities also include:

• Project planning: definition of project scope, deadlines, budget, schedule, and deliverables.
• Project resourcing: assigning resources to the project and getting the budget approved.
• Project communication and accountability: keeping communication channels open within your team, as well as your organization.
• Project managing: maintaining and adjusting the schedule, reassigning the workload, dealing with bottlenecks, and keeping your garden-variety disasters at bay.
• Project delivery and reporting: handing off the project to the client or the next business unit, as well as providing detailed reports.

All of this sounds pretty awesome, doesn’t it? We think it does, which begs the question:

Why doesn’t every organization have a project manager?

The answer is fairly simple. If you are running a really small agency or an agile team with a streamlined workflow, hiring a project manager would be like buying an Aston Martin with a V8 engine to take your kids to school that is right around the corner.

The Aston would definitely do one hell of a job, and we’re sure the kids would love it, but it’s hard to justify its cost. However, if your organization is large, keeping an eye on project goals, details, and tasks, can become overwhelming, and having a project manager becomes a necessity.

When to Hire a Project Manager

As your organization, be it a marketing agency or an eCommerce business, starts to grow in terms of personnel, revenue, or complexity, it will be a lot harder to keep an eye on everything. If you are at this stage, then congrats.

Not only is your business successful, but it’s also the moment that you need to consider hiring your first project manager.

However, before you decide to ring up your HR department and start with the interviews, it would be good to go through a checklist that lets you know if getting a project manager is the solution to your problems.

Luckily, we have one for you. You need a project manager if:

You Have Processes and Systems in Place

Before you decide to hire a project manager, take note of the processes, frameworks, and systems you have at your organization. Are they robust enough to enable clear communication among members of your team?

Things like streamlined workflows, open communication channels, and project management tools all need to be in place so that your future project manager can hit the ground running.

Plenty of businesses make the mistake of thinking that a project manager will step in and magically bring order into an otherwise chaotic organization, or deal with tasks that nobody else wants. They won’t because it’s not their job.

Set the stage for them, so they can do the work they will be hired for.

Tasks Aren’t Getting Done

If missed deadlines and tasks that seem to linger on forever are a common occurrence in your organization, then you need a project manager. The common reasons why teams and businesses are struggling include:

Fixing these issues is what project managers excel at. More specifically, your future project manager will be able to create a detailed project plan that describes each task, assign roles and responsibilities, and determine the time needed for completion.

On top of that, they will also create a project schedule to monitor how tasks are being done and identify potential bottlenecks, redundant processes, or insufficient resources.

Projects Experience Scope Creep

Scope creep happens, but it’s becoming a rule rather than an exception to the rule, that is yet another sign that you need a project manager as soon as possible.

Having a capable project manager in your agency or organization can implement changes and prevent your project from getting off track.

Controlling the flow of a project and project drift helps your team members remain focused on the original scope. Project manager handles the continuous changes but never lets the project veer off course.

Clear Expectations

Clarity is paramount in pretty much every organization, and yours is not the exception. A project manager is an important part of your team, because they are the first point of contact for your clients, but it’s up to you to communicate your expectations to them.

Let your project manager know what you need from them, so that you can integrate them more effectively into your agency. If you can do that, then their work will have a direct and positive impact not just on project success, but customer satisfaction as well.

Lack of Clear Contact Point

As we have established in the previous point, having a project manager as the primary contact point between your agency and your clients is a must, but what about your organization? Who do your teams or your stakeholders go to with questions, issues, or updates?

A project manager should also act as a central point of contact for them as well, so that all their concerns are addressed, which in turn prevents project delays and keep execution uninterrupted.

Finally, your project manager not only streamlines operations and communication, but also introduces a much-needed degree of transparency and maintains project efficiency.

You Have a Disorganized Team

Running a tight ship is easy when you are managing a small agency or one or two teams, but when you have a larger organization, it doesn’t take much for your team to get disorganized and for your project to slip into disarray.

How do you know if your team is disorganized? Look for the telltale signs:

Once these start to impact your project’s outcomes, then it’s high time to look into hiring a project manager.

Business Is High Volume or Highly Complex

If you are in a situation where you always have plenty of work rolling in and your revenue is growing steadily, it’s pretty much a dream come true. However, without a project manager, it can easily become a case of “be careful what you wish for”.

Why? Because complex and/or large-scale projects require someone who has the ability and experience to coordinate them, and the attention to detail to make sure that every task is on schedule. That someone is a project manager.

Without a project manager to break your huge project into more manageable chunks, prioritize and delegate tasks, and track the progress of your project, your big operation can become an even bigger mess, or grind to a halt completely.

You Have a Sufficient Client Base

Another factor that plays into your decision to hire a project manager is your client base. In other words, if your agency has enough clients to provide you with a steady stream of work and projects, you will need someone to oversee it.

A project manager can only contribute in an effective and meaningful way to your agency if the workload is significant enough. If you aren’t experiencing an influx of new projects regularly, then it’s best that you hold off on hiring a project manager.

Otherwise, you will just have this huge resource at your disposal that is not being used properly.

Your Team Isn’t Getting More Efficient Over Time

Regardless of how small or large your operation is, things will always be slow and clunky in the beginning, and that’s normal. With time, some tasks become routine, and your team starts to work more efficiently. At least that’s how it’s supposed to be in theory.

In reality, if your team is spinning its wheels, you should hire a project manager to identify a reason for stagnation, implement best practices, and get things moving again.

A project manager will optimize your workflows, adjust your strategy, analyze data, and introduce new technologies and project management tools, such as ActiveCollab, to boost productivity.

You Want to Realize Bigger Goals

Sometimes, it’s not about fixing project issues or trying to improve your processes. Sometimes, everything is about taking your business to the next level.

Project managers, at least those who are good, are not just about making sure that all the tasks get done on time without breaking the constraints of your project budget.

They are also there for you after project completion, providing their advice and expertise, so you can reach loftier business goals and grow your business.

When Not to Hire a Project Manager

Here are a few cases when hiring a project manager isn’t the solution:

• You expect your PM to handle custom, random, and one-off tasks - When just about every task in your agency is unique, you have to provide training for your project and providing feedback from scratch every time. Instead of giving them custom tasks, a better approach would be to make your tasks more predictable and uniform.
• You make your decision based on a headcount - You’ve read somewhere that you need a project manager once your team has X employees, and now you are looking for one. Make sure that a project manager is really what you need by analyzing your infrastructure and processes first, and then deciding if hiring a project manager makes sense.
• It’s a vanity hire/ego boost for the owner - Some agency owners like to go on about how successful their businesses are. Nothing inherently wrong about that (and nothing right either), but hiring a project manager for the sake of making your agency appear more serious is definitely a misstep.

Why Hire a Project Manager

Now that we have covered what a project manager does and when you should hire one, let’s get into why you should hire one. A project manager should bring a wealth of experience and expertise that your agency lacks.

A good project manager should be able to bring the following:

Conclusion - Make Your Project Manager’s Job Easier with ActiveCollab

Hiring a capable project manager is a move that can help you eliminate problems, create new opportunities, and turn your agency into a well-oiled machine. If done at the right time, and for the right reason, it’s an investment that will pay off in no time.

But, in order to maximize the effectiveness of your hire and to provide your future project manager with ActiveCollab, a powerful project management tool. With features covering everything from time tracking and team communication to invoicing and project management itself, it’s an ideal toolbox for every project manager.

Looking to get the most out of hiring your first project manager? ActiveCollab has it covered!

Sign up for our 14-day free trial, or book a demo, and our experts will have your projects and your project manager set up for success with ActiveCollab!