Seriously, what’s the point? Note that I’m not asking what the point of project management is – any project needs project management of some sort. But what is the point of having a dedicated project manager?

Think about it. What if you just gave, for example, your lead programmer enough time to do some project management as well as coding? Wouldn’t that work just as well? After all, he’d be closer to the work, he’d have a good idea of how well it was progressing, and he’d know exactly what technical difficulties are cropping up – and how tough they are to solve.

Or what about an infrastructure upgrade. Why not trust the ICT manager to handle the negotiations with suppliers, and chase them up to ensure delivery? Couldn’t she better allocate work to her team than a project manager?

There’s actually a lot of sense in this view. Detailed knowledge of the subject of the project can be a great advantage, and naturally the people doing the work have a lot of this knowledge! If they can be given the time and training in project management, why not do this?

Now, naturally as a project manager I am not fully convinced by this argument! But this means I believe project managers provide benefits above and beyond what a subject matter expert could. I can think of a few, but I’m interested to hear what you think. So, how about it? What do full-time project managers provide to a project that a part-timer can’t?