Notes

Managers are always playing an important role in contemporary organizational environment. The characters of managers are usually similar to that of team coaches and facilitators(Managing Today! p.38), in which they integrate the work of others that help to coordinate manpower to retain the efficiency of an organization, as well as to lead their groups to accomplish goals and objectives by using the available resources effectively and efficiently. However, to be specific, the job natures of different kinds of manager are not alike as they perform different functionalities in an organization, there are some variations such as job duties and skills requirements between different types of manager. Project manager and department manager would be good examples to illustrate this idea.
Project managers are responsible for achieving the planned objectives within a given period of time. Generally speaking, a product, which can be either physical or non-physical, is created at the end of a project. They usually plays a leading role in a project management process, including planning, organizing, executing and resources controlling (citation). In addition, project managers are also responsible for manage the constraints of the project management triangle, which includes the three important components leading to the success of a project – scope, time and cost[i] (citation).
Department managers, or often regarded as functional managers, have the management authority over a department. They ensure the goals and objectives are aligned with the organization’s overall strategy and vision (Seet, Daniel. "Power: The Functional Manager’s Meat and Project Manager’s Poison?). As middle-level managers, department managers are responsible for implement the policies from top management to lower management, and to provide guidance to lower level managers. They are responsible for measuring the overall effectiveness of the staff, performing evaluations and professional development. Therefore, the effectiveness of the team is highly depended on the department manager.
As discussed, project manager and department manager have different functionalities in an organization. The similarities and differences are compared in terms of their attributes, responsibilities and authorities.
Management skills are the critical qualities that managers should have. One of the responsibilities of a department manager is to ensure the goals and objectives are aligned with the company’s strategy, while a project manager need to keep the progress of a project is following the designed project plan and schedule. Good management skills would be important in this case in order to make sure the department or the project is sticking to the designed path.
The importance of organization skills would be another similarity between a department manager and a project manager, as both of the managers have to manage a team of people in order to retain the efficiency. Department manager recruits people with specific abilities to meet the department needs, while project manager selects the appropriate people from various departments to form a productive team. Both of them have to assign duties to suitable team members for better efficiency, and come out with a desirable schedule to the team members in order to maximize manpower to retain the effectiveness as well as the morale of the team.
Apart from the above illustrated, other skills such as leadership skills, interpersonal skills, conceptual skills and diagnostic skills are also relevant to both project manager and department manager, as common jobs of the managerial staffs such as scheduling, workforce allocation and budget control usually involve the use of these abilities.
Despite the similarities in skills requirements and common duties, department manager and project manager generally perform different duties in an organization. The project manager deals with issues of a project, usually one-off, non-recurring problems which demand specific solutions (citation), while the department manager keeps the department’s normal functionality though managing the flow of staffs as well as development of staffs’ abilities. Therefore, project manager is usually expert within the project scope so that he has the ability to adjust the progress to stick on a desire direction, while the work of the department manager is relatively more approached to general management, comparing to that of project manager.
The ability to foresee the future trend would be another crucial differentiation between project manager and department manager. As project manager leads a project with a pinpoint goal, he needs to anticipate the changes and challenges in the timespan of the project. In the contrary, the department manager drives the department according to the policies from the top management, the need for foreseeing ability is less than the project manager.
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It is necessary to raise a point that the area of work between a project manager and a department manager