Project Management
The software engineer and the project manager provide complementary skills and work collaboratively on shared activities. The three main activities of the project manager are organizational liaison, personnel management, and project monitoring and control. The "Liaison" section discusses the project manager's role as a go-between for the technical team and agents who are not members of the technical team (such as project sponsors, users, IS management, vendors, and so on). In the "Personnel Management" section, you will learn that this job entails working with personnel and human resources to hire, fire, and provide employees with professional development. The "Monitor and Control" section explains that project monitoring involves tracking project progress relative to budget. Project control means implementing changes when progress is unsatisfactory (such as training or revising project plans).
Personnel Management
Hiring
Hiring is usually coordinated through a personnel office that oversees all IS hiring, not just one project. Newspaper advertisements can be more cost-effective, general, and get a better response when coordinated for all projects. The personnel office receives the responses and filters obviously unqualified applications out from the pool of applicants. Then, working with the project manager, the personnel department screens the applicants and arranges project interviews.
As in most things, timing is important. Ads take from one to two weeks to get approved and placed. Receipt of resumes usually takes the same amount of time. Interviewing is time consuming and can take another one to two weeks for each hire. Then, offers are made and salary negotiations completed. The elapsed time to hire someone might be seven weeks or longer.
In addition, scheduling interviews may mean early-morning, evening, or lunch-time work. People searching for a job who already have one may not want to take vacation time for an interview. If the person appears qualified, the project manager is expected to shift his or her schedule to fit the needs of the applicant.