Sometimes, people think that a development project is all about coding. Still, in reality, there is a part that attention can avoid — the glue that puts all things and processes together — project management. My name is Yulia. I am a project manager at JetBase, and in this article, I will try to share my vision of the project manager role based on my personal experience. I will explain what you should look at when hiring a project manager or a team with a project manager, as the quality of this game player's work directly influences your product's success. You'll also learn if it is possible to launch products without a dedicated project manager—by using modern tools and technologies and the existing human forces of your team. Have a nice reading time!
Is Having a Project Manager So Necessary While Coding?
I remember when I was just a Quality Assurance specialist and not yet a Project Manager I came to the office and saw a new member — a junior developer who didn't have much experience in teamwork. He was a nice guy, not as introverted as cliches about developers say so he shared with me his frustration. He said: I clearly don't understand why there is this project manager role in the team. I better directly address the technical lead or owner to solve the issues or respond to my questions. And I know what to do at work and how to communicate with the team— so, why is project manager so necessary?
That was a good question from a junior that even seniors do not ask themselves. I started to pay more attention to project management, analyze it, and compare it with and without PM project cases. I realized that the project manager role is essential, and that revelation pushed me — a QA specialist— to become a PM.
But the question is still here and reasonable — do we need a project manager? If we move away from web development and imagine a family business like shoe production kind in the era of the Middle Ages when communication was limited with one village and a couple of neighbor villages, we can imagine they did not need a dedicated manager — they are a family with shared values and background.
Now, consider your project. That might be a case that you feel your team is a family or very close to craft fellows and might not like the idea of having a pedestal and the surveying eye of the manager on it. Surely sometimes a manager can bring more frustration as someone “not from the community’ but this is the one that does not understand his own role and mission and practices micromanagement instead of a strategic approach.
As McKinsey & Company states: “a professional management, when well identified and given the right conditions to prosper, can produce better results than family-only structures.”
In web development, project management is even more critical:
| 92% success rates in meeting business objectives Source | 82% of professionals see the role of project manager as essential to project success Source |
These statistics show how much project management is appreciated. But beyond the numbers, I want to share insights from my own experience and explain how we at JetBase appreciate projects with and without a project manager.
What Do Project Managers Actually Do?
There are so many shades (more than 50 for sure) of project management — depending on niches, the size of the team, the product, the duration of the production, and many more. But here are some crucial zones of responsibilities a PM might cover:
- Create Unimpeded Communication & Seamless Alignment
If you even put all the team members in the same room that can be a herding cats story when everyone pulls in their direction. That is not clear sometimes that in the development team, the roles and zones are quite narrow and specific languages do not overlap at all — backends speak their mantras, frontends on their dialect, and even close to the last ones the UX/Ui guys are living on their levels of communication. A project manager should be aware of all those voices of truth and align them to the whole picture — they explain what's going on to the team members as well as to stakeholders, so communication skills and “seeing the bigger picture" power should be at maximum. It helps to avoid bottlenecks, confusion, and loss of time (=money).
- Scheduling & Budgeting
Time is money! Did you know that it took 14 years and $102 million to build the Sydney Opera House instead of the planned 4 years and $7 million? That is an example of extra poor organized scheduling. We can imagine how investors and project authors were frustrated by overloading timelines and budgets. That can happen in web development either, and the PM is responsible for it. They set realistic timings and track progress as well as adjust the project to changes if needed so that nobody has surprises and the project stays on track.
- Risk Management & Problem-Solving
Challenges happen and project managers should identify them as early as possible, they are the first who react to them so that they won't become a real disaster. And even if problems are here PMs do not stay aside — they are aware of techniques that can help to come out of the situation. Of course, they are not superheroes who come to the rescue but their real power is to have supervision and be proactive. Kinda super abilities, anyway, isn't it?
- Client & Stakeholder Management
Clients are always right for sure, and their biggest legal right is to wish for a product as they imagine it. But here the project manager's role is as crucial as anywhere else — as a person who is inside of the development side and the communicator with the outer world — the world of business, market, and customers. The PMs speak both development language and business language and they know how to put to the ground some extra expectations of one or another side. They are mediators.
- Track Progress & Improve Processes
The project manager's mission is not only monitoring deadlines but also analyzing the process and making sure it progresses and goes to the brighter end and not to the cave. Their eyes are wide open and they see behind them the values, the objectives and successful project launch, and if something goes wrong they know how to improve it.
How We Can Work Without a Project Manager
A PM's role is not as indispensable as it seems. Let's be honest: there are situations when the project doesn’t need a manager at all.
A manager at a startup with 3–5 people is too much for the moment — no need for one, just an adjusted project management application such as Asana and team chat at Slack can be sufficient. The small team follows Lean or Agile approaches and the flounder or technical lead manages the processes.
But when a project scales and the number of tasks and participants grows, it's better to avoid chaos and invite a project manager as soon as possible. This one will ensure smoothness of the processes, elimination of communication barriers, and timely meeting of deadlines.
The Must-Have Skills a PM Should Have for Best Results
Soft or hard, technical or interpersonal — there is a bouquet of skills a project manager has to compose in their personality. But here are my favorites that I try to develop in me to bring effective results to my projects, and to be trusted by teammates and stakeholders.
1. Non-Personal Communication Skills
Interpersonal communication is important but non less than capability to compel reports, meeting notes, or guidelines. And that's what the PM should knock out as nuts — the deliverables after the meetings, brainstorming sessions, and discussions. Those traces serve as the documentation that tracks agreements. Without proper documentation, the project will lack direction as a camel procession in the desert without seeing stars. If a project manager cannot document the process well, the project will fail for sure.
2. Specific Technical Stack Knowledge
There is a misunderstanding that a project manager can replace a task manager application (Asana or Trello for example) — not at all! Rather a PM will be like a fish at the seaside inside the application not for their survival only but for guiding others. The knowledge of Figma for prototyping or Miro for brainstorming is a big plus — those utensils of a professional life. And there are many more to add — meeting scheduling, AI assistants, etc.
3. In-Depth Understanding of Web Development Stages
To orchestrate teams and their timing, the awareness of how one or another type of project in web development comes to life is very helpful in success stories. Just imagine you started a web app project and in six months you decide to launch a mobile project. You'll join the forces and will use the same human resources. A project manager must know how to drop those forces from one to another, how to mix and match without head explosions and misunderstanding and to launch successfully one or another project in time in their head too.
The knowledge of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is a key part of this — it helps a PM understand the entire process, from planning and designing to development, testing, deployment, and after-deployment support. Acquaintance with SDLC allows a PM to efficiently manage resources across multiple projects and teams.
4. Adaptability
Does adaptability mean adjusting your agenda to different time zones? Kindly yes! But mostly it is about diving into the project's and business's context, clients’ culture, and customer specific. Like for example I'm currently managing a healthcare project and an oil and gas project. Switching between those two industries was challenging at the beginning but quite crucial so I trained this skill by deep understanding of the context before the project started. The openness to new knowledge and sometimes challenges is the key to a successful portrait of a Project Manager.
5. The Ability to Decompose Tasks
Understanding how to approach complex projects by breaking them into smaller, detailed steps is key to mastering project management. This skill comes from the QA pull of skills but could really help project managers to achieve success. At JetBase we have a school of tech leads where we teach the technique of decomposition and lessons there are often visited by PMs too. We already talked about it before — decomposition plates play a crucial role in budget planning and team management.
6. Attention to Detail
This skill is obvious but unfortunately not appreciated because of the high presence of technologies and AI. For example, some project managers trust robots more than themselves, and because of that, there is so much overlap and overwork. Re—verifying documentation and reports takes quite resources, and it is better to be attentive to details all the time, not just in case of mistakes.
Saving Money: How as PM I Helped our Client to Avoid Unnecessary Expenses
In fact, one of the PM's main missions is to save clients' time and money. This is not only done by tracking expenses—it's about identifying potential risks in their early stages and reacting proactively by suggesting effective solutions.
For example, once, our client was about to purchase expensive equipment. I noticed that the equipment they chose might be incompatible with other parts of the project — happily, we were still in the planning stage and it was not too late to invent. The problem was in the provenance of the technological stack and the technology equipment — they came from different suppliers and it posed a problem for integration and could lead to unnecessary costs for replacements in the future. So, I signaled at the moment of decision-making and suggested an alternative, cost-effective option. This proactive action saved the client money and our reputation.
Money is reputation—saving money for clients is a good way for the PM to represent the team as its face. Signaling how they care about their clients shows a good face, trust, returning clients and new ones, and many more benefits.
Common Myths About Project Managers and Their Disapproval
If we go back to this younger colleague I was talking about at the beginning of the article, he was one of a crowd of people who misunderstood the importance of the project manager. As I also said before there is truth in his or their thoughts — sometimes over-management or micromanagement is not the best companion to efficient goal-oriented work.
My goal here is to explain what a good project manager should be — not that the project manager should be in every corner of web development. And here is one more guidance for the readers — a common misconception about project management.
| Myth №1: We need a Project Manager only after the project launch | Reality: The PM is crucial from the very beginning. |
| There is a belief that the PM's role is essential only once the project is on the fly, but this is far from the truth. From the planning stage, the project manager's involvement helps set the project up for success. The PM defines the scope early, sets expectations with stakeholders, and guarantees consistency with the project goals. | |
| Myth №2: Even my grandma can do planning; no special need for a project manager | Reality: A PM's strategic planning and risk management are essential. |
| The planning phase is where a PM's experience truly shines. The PM creates a detailed project plan, anticipates risks, and practices preventive actions. Behind them are years of experience in planning or at least specific learning of the subject matter, so they are trusted game players rather than random owners of managerial roles and tasks. They have a responsibility, and they take it seriously. | |
| Myth №3: Once the project is running, the PM's job is done | Reality: The PM is essential for monitoring progress and adapting the plan all over the road |
| It's easy to assume that the PM's job is finished once the project is moving along well. But this is when the PM is needed even more because they track progress and monitor timelines. They ensure that quality standards are achieved and that any issues are solved. Without a PM tracking the project, things can quickly go out of control. | |
| Myth №4: A PM is only necessary for large, complex projects | Reality: Even small projects benefit from a PM's |
| Many assume that PMs are only needed for projects with extra infrastructure and dozens of developers on the team. But small projects also benefit from good project management, especially a well-prepared project manager who won't create overmanagement and will help team members focus on their jobs rather than communication. | |
| Myth №5: A PM's Role Is Over After the Project Is Delivered | Reality: The PM's involvement extends щт post-delivery stage too |
| A common underestimation of the PM's role is that their responsibility ends when the market (or the client) gets the product. This is a total misunderstanding, as the PM stays involved in the post-delivery stage, too. Because they have to ensure client satisfaction, manage any final adjustments, and that the project meets its goals. | |
To Sum Up
Not regarding the fact that the project manager's role is often shared by other experts like tech leads, team leads or QA specialists (or founders and owners) as my experience tells me better to not mix too much. Having a dedicated project manager with certain skills will only bring benefits while having one without special skills or experience can bring damage, overload, and frustration.
I would never become a project manager by myself if I didn't believe in the force of this role and hadn't seen how my adjustments, surveyance, and proactivity were appreciated by team members as well as brought miserable results.
We hope this article has helped you understand the invaluable benefits of a PM in your development project. At JetBase a PM is not a behind-the-scenes position; it's an essential, high-level role closely aligned with our CEO and CFO. Together, with support from one another, they guarantee that the team does its best, that goals are achieved, and that the agency is improving in meeting satisfied clients. If our approach resonates with you don't hesitate to reach out—we're excited to collaborate with you!
