Project administrator. What is important for a leader?

With the growing popularity of project management in an increasing number of companies, we can find roles and positions that were not previously represented in these companies (project manager, project planner, project management system methodologist, etc.). If previously such roles existed somewhere, they were performed by employees who occupied positions that were more common at that time - heads of departments, specialists of various categories, engineers, etc.
The situation is the same with project administrators - recently such a position has begun to appear in companies that, in one way or another, implement projects of varying levels of complexity. But what functions are assigned to employees who occupy this position?

Unfortunately, the position of administrator is often perceived as nothing more than a kind of "lowest position on the team." Accordingly, the employee is assigned the most low-skilled functions - manual rough work in the "bring-and-give" mode.
A standard situation is the use of a project administrator on a "hands-free" basis - preparing presentations, performing local unexpected tasks, preparing numerous tables in which the same numbers are structured differently, etc.
Sometimes the situation reaches the point of absurdity - I had to observe how the project manager regularly sends the administrator to the store for tea, cookies, etc., and while he goes shopping, the manager himself does his work - for example, draws up the minutes of a completed meeting or updates the Order Control Log.

Reasons All of the above is due to the incompetence of the company's managers in general and the project manager in particular - there is no understanding of what functionality the administrator can and should be given to facilitate their own work and improve the quality of the project management system.
By incorrectly using the administrator, the project manager condemns himself to routine work, which takes up his time and does not allow him to concentrate on forecasting, risk and change management. And this, in turn, increases the likelihood of problems and unforeseen situations that require prompt extinguishing. It turns out to be a vicious circle - we are overloaded with routine, we "manage the future" less, we get more problems in the future, we are overloaded solving them, we have no time for forecasting, etc.

In addition, as we all remember, project management involves complex integration, for the implementation of which it is necessary to shift as many current tasks to others as possible. No matter how cynical it may sound, the project manager should be lazy enough not to do the work for his subordinates.
Let's formulate what the project manager first of all needs from the administrator (the actions listed below are not listed in descending or ascending order of priority, but in the order in which they begin to be performed from the start date of the project):

1. Formation and updating of the contact register.
The administrator must begin performing this task immediately after his appointment, placing the registry in the workspace (archive), and then informing all project participants where this registry is located. Every employee should be able to quickly contact any team member from day one. It is necessary to minimize the likelihood of a situation where, in search of someone's contact, they constantly turn to the project manager, thereby wasting his time. Also, proper maintenance of the register allows you to avoid excuses from employees in the style of "I didn't know how to contact him."
In addition to names, positions, roles, contact information, such a register should contain information about the departments from which they were recruited for the project, and the full names of their functional managers.

2. Encoding.
It is necessary to quickly develop rules for encoding documents and letters, and subsequently constantly monitor the implementation of these rules. The project manager should be able to find the required document or letter as quickly as possible without additional requests. We often see how at meetings, when it is necessary to find some kind of document that can resolve a dispute, a lot of time is spent searching - everyone is looking in gadgets, they start calling assistants, a confusion of versions arises ("this is the previous version, it is not relevant" - "I don't have anything new!", etc.). Encoding will help minimize the likelihood of such situations.

3. Creation and maintenance of an archive.
The project administrator must keep the archive (workspace) of the project up to date. The structure of the archive should be as simple as possible. Documents in the archive should be distributed in intuitive folders and in accordance with the specified encoding rules for names (see point 2). The situation should be excluded when the archive simultaneously contains folders with names, for example, "Working materials", "Project execution" and "Management documentation". If you need to find the minutes of a meeting two weeks ago, you will have to rummage through all such folders.
The project administrator should be the only employee who enters documents into the archive - this will prevent the risk of confusion in versions.

4. Organization and recording of meetings.
A plan for holding regular meetings should be prepared at least a month in advance, participants should be notified in advance, and an agenda should be drawn up and sent to the participants at least a day before the meeting. During the meeting, a protocol is drawn up, the wording of which is agreed upon on the spot - if approval is left for the period after the meeting, this period may be delayed.
Instructions from the protocols are entered into the Assignment Control Journal - one of the main management tools, and at the same time one of those tools, the maintenance of which can be 80% delegated to the project administrator. His task is to remind the executors that the deadline for completing the order is approaching, tracking the implementation, receiving a document confirming the fulfillment of the order, placing it in the archive and entering a link to this document in the Control Log.

5. Collection and processing of time sheets.
Often on projects, managers neglect such a tool as a time sheet. However, experience shows that its proper use helps the project manager "keep abreast" of the situation with the team's workload, the effectiveness of individual employees, and also allows him to justify the additional need for human resources with numbers in hand. Also, a summary report card for the team as a whole provides important statistics for subsequent projects in terms of team building and task distribution.
The project administrator must distribute the timesheet format approved by the manager among the project team members and convey the procedure and regularity for filling out and submitting the timesheet. Subsequently, the project administrator aggregates the information from employee timesheets into a consolidated timesheet and reports to the manager on such things as (a few examples below):

• Regular overtime of employees (to further determine the reasons).
• Significantly different times for similar operations to be performed by different employees (to assess and understand the reasons and develop measures to level out the difference).
• Increase in time spent on meetings and preparation for them (to assess the need for the number and duration of such meetings).

6. Development of reporting formats.
The administrator, being immersed in the project, must offer several options for the report format (both for the manager and for the project customer) taking into account an understanding of the needs - to reflect exactly the information that is necessary to assess the situation on the project.

7. Control over the provision of regular reporting (and reports upon request), integration of reports.
This task correlates with the task of maintaining the Order Control Journal. The administrator sends an automatically repeated notification about the preparation and sending of the report (it must arrive at least one day before the reporting date), enters the corresponding item in the Order Control Journal, and then controls the provision of reports. If the report does not arrive on time (or arrives, but in an incorrect format), the issue is escalated to the project manager. If the report is submitted on time, then the project manager's work begins to assess the status of the work performed by the performers.

8. Development and updating of the schedule network model of the project (optional).
Of course, any project must involve a professional planner who is responsible for developing a schedule network model, entering actual work completion data into it, generating automated reporting, etc. However, there are relatively small projects for which it is not practical to allocate a separate scheduler. The administrator can take over the management of a relatively small schedule network model. To do this, he needs basic knowledge and skills in working with relevant software products.

If the project administrator effectively performs at least the tasks described above, the project manager has freed up time for forecasting, managing changes, managing risks, motivating the team and resolving key problematic issues. At the same time, the workload for routine and immediate or repetitive tasks is reduced. This increases the likelihood of successful implementation of the project - the more you manage to "organize the future, the less often you will have to face unforeseen problems in this future.

The qualifications of a project manager are determined not only by the ability to use the tools presented in various standards, not only by "soft" skills (leadership, ability to motivate, communication skills, etc.). A competent project manager makes the most of the capabilities of his subordinates - this is the only way he can increase the output of all project team members and increase the efficiency of the team as a whole.