Fostering a workplace atmosphere that helps bring out the best in his or her team.Offering less tangible and more emotional support to help a team stay focused on the ultimate goal.

Creating a vision around the project to provide team members with a sense of purpose and motivation.

Ensuring the team remains focused and on track, including addressing any conflicts or bottlenecks.

Communicating with team members, including relaying briefs, connecting daily tasks to larger goals, and providing context and support.

While a project leader is responsible for:

Managing every moving part in relation to milestones, including schedules, documentation, staffing and, sometimes, HR concerns.

Ensuring the project is sticking to the agreed-upon budget.

Tracking sprint deliverables and providing updates to relevant stakeholders.

Setting deadlines and ensuring that projects remain on schedule.

Implementing product strategy, including product improvement, feature prioritization, costing, and release.

With no clear definitions to work off of, the easiest way to see the difference between the two roles is to look at their key responsibilities. In many situations, a project leader is a project manager (just with extra responsibilities). The reason it’s so hard to find clear definitions between what a project manager and project leader do is that their jobs often overlap. What’s the difference between a project leader and a project manager?Īs project management expert Jim Highsmith wrote in his book Agile Leaders, “most projects are over-managed and under-led.”

You don’t always need a title to be a leaderįinish Projects on Time and Budget.The 7 essential project leadership skills.Why a project leader isn’t a project lead or a product manager.Project leader and manager aren’t always distinct roles.What’s the difference between a project leader and a project manager?.If you’re unsure of what’s expected of you, it’s always best to speak with a manager or HR to remove any uncertainty. In this guide, we’ll cover the key difference between some of the most similar sounding project management roles, define the key characteristics of being a project leader, and provide some simple ways you can start showing off your project leadership skills today.īefore we dive in: At the end of the day, your roles and responsibilities depend on what’s expected of you at your company, regardless of title. So what does it take to get your team up on top of their standing desks reciting “ O Captain, my captain!” to you? And if you have ambitions to lead a project team, then you need to understand exactly what makes a project leader different from a project manager.

Leadership is a hot topic in every part of a growing business. If you’ve ever gone hunting for a definitive answer to this question, you probably ended up disappointed.ĭepending on your company’s size, policies, and management, these terms might be used interchangeably or they might signify wildly different roles. What’s the difference between a project manager and a project leader? Project Manager: The 7 Essential Project Leadership Skills

Product manager vs project manager