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It’s a must. Large or small, as a business, you need to drive your projects to their goal with focus and intentionality.
Businesses that rely on our engineering talent:
MassageBook is America's leading online platform for massage therapists and bodywork professionals.
Revolutionary data modeling tool that introduces traditional database design concepts to No SQL.
An innovative app that allows real-time booking of healthcare staff used by dozens of American hospitals.
A leader in the ticketing industry in South Africa with outreach to a more than 50-million person market.
Leading provider of software development kits for PDF and EPUB technologies.
Perform Group is one of the world's biggest digital sports content providers.
A revolutionary mobile app to place trades on the forex and cryptocurrency markets in less than a minute.
Swissphone is a leading international supplier of modern and reliable alerting and communication solutions.
Can an outsourced PM really help my business?
Binary PMs will help you architect and build your product, with the focus on quality and time-to-market. Together with our engineers, we are here to ensure that you get it done right the first time. You will work with a Project Manager who is skilled at planning and implementing processes, managing budget and timelines. Our Project Managers have specialized training, experience and additional skills that allow them to succeed in all types of businesses.
How can a PM become your partner?
The Project Manager will understand your business model, your market competition, actively research competitors, suggest improvements, manage your Binary team alongside other teams and vendors if necessary. Overall, the PM will do everything to make your business successful.
What’s the role of a PM in a dedicated development team?
The role of a Project Manager is to assure successful project delivery - that is software that meets its specifications, that is delivered on time, and within budget. Binary Project Manager will: set up the right teams, make sure they have the right amount of time to complete their tasks and deliver on time meeting quality requirements.
If I have a PM does it really mean that I will not miss my deadlines?
With a dedicated Project Manager on board, there are fewer chances for you or your team to miss a deadline. This benefits not only your project but also your company in general. The Project Manager should be able to identify potential risks before they become problems and help prevent them from happening.
What’s the difference between a coordinator and a manager?
Project managers and project coordinators are both professionals within the project management industry who have a specific role to play. The differences between them is their level of influence, the tasks they perform, and the skills required in order to undertake their assigned duties.
The Project Manager is a more senior-level role with greater responsibility. The Project Manager is responsible for the project as a whole. This includes the team, the tasks, costs, relationships with internal and external stakeholders such as suppliers, contractors, local authorities and so on.
The project coordinator usually takes over the administrative and “mechanical” tasks in a project. To relieve the Project Manager so that he can focus on handling communication, taking decisions, solving critical issues or coaching team members — you can call this leadership work.
How will hiring a Project Manager actually help optimize my software development budget?
Hiring a Project Manager can help optimize your software development budget in several ways. First and foremost, PM will help improve the accuracy of estimates. Secondly, they ensure changes to a project are managed effectively. Finally, Project Managers conduct thorough reviews of a project to assess risks and work on mitigating/avoiding them with your team and creating detailed contingency plans. PM will also reduce scope and/or duration of the project as well as optimize resources if necessary.
What’s the difference between a full-time and part-time PM?
When hiring a full-time Project Manager it means one who is dedicated to and focused exclusively on your project in the role of a PM on a full-time basis. They are involved in managing all aspects of your project from its scope and cost to risk and quality management, and more. However, you might hire a part-time Project Manager to manage a smaller scope of work, for example with smaller teams or specific components of a software project.
Will the PM join my internal activities and meetings?
The Project Manager will take care of all sprint planning, and calls with you and the developers, at a minimum. However, the Project Manager is there to make your life easier when it comes to managing the project. Where agreed, you may invite the PM to other internal meetings with business stakeholders and delegate tasks to assist with the smooth flow of communications and decisions.
How do I know if I need full-time or part-time PM?
The answer here depends on several factors including the size and complexity of your project and teams. A good starting point is to consider having one full-time Project Manager for every 2 to 3 development teams. A full-time PM can optimally manage “teams of teams” involving about 20 team members. For smaller teams of 3 to 9 members, you may only need a part-time PM or rely upon Team Leads to spend a portion of their time in this capacity.
At what stage do I need a PM?
Project managers are essential from the very beginning of a project to make sure it starts off and stays on the right track. Ideally, they should be one of the very first people you hire. The PM will intimately familiar with your project’s requirements and actively involved in selecting its team members. They take care of the onboarding of your team and orientating them to your work processes, as well as your business and technical objectives.
Do I need an external PM if I have my own?
If you already have an internal Project Manager, an additional external PM is likely not necessary. You can consider hiring an additional PM if you:
want to increase your current PM’s capacity to speed up scope planning, improve risk or release management and overall improve efficiency of SDLC;
have a large Binary Studio team, and you want us to manage the team we’ve provided to you;
want another expert in your management team for their expertise and to help achieve your project’s goals.
Do I need a PM if I have my own Tech Lead?
Actually, yes. Tech leads and PMs have quite different roles, though with smaller organizations their responsibilities can sometimes overlap. One of the core distinctions is that tech leads code though they may have other functions, too. Project managers don’t code, they focus on processes and team management and must have very strong communication skills.
I’m a small business founder - do I need a PM?
We are asked this and similar questions quite frequently, like “Do I need a PM if I can prepare tasks for developers myself?” Probably the most important issue here is the opportunity-cost for startup founders and senior management in SMBs or enterprises. Are functions like scheduling and assigning tasks in JIRA (or other project management software) the most valuable activity on your agenda?
In most cases, it’s likely that you are able to engage on a more strategic basis to bring value to your business, while the PM engages in a more tactical fashion. However, we do have clients with startups who directly manage the tasks for their developers though they also tend to have considerable project management experience.
Ultimately, in most cases it’s best to hire a Project Manager. In the absence of doing so, the PM’s tasks should be clearly spread between the founder and initial team members to balance time requirements between management and development.
If I have a committed team, why do I need a PM?
A Project Manager is instrumental to making sure that your software is developed according to specifications, on time and within budget. They accomplish this with a combination of risk management, team management, optimal allocation of resources, and keeping everyone clear on their tasks and progress. The one thing a PM does not do is code.
You’ll likely want all of your developers focused either on coding, design, or testing to the fullest extent possible. Here, the PM helps developers to be more productive and efficient with clear and unambiguous tasks, work processes, and more, as we explored above in how PM’s help to optimize your software development budget.
Do I need a PM if my team is small?
Hiring a Binary Studio Project Manager is valuable for any size of team and project regardless of the project’s complexity and team composition. Generally speaking, the smaller a team is, the more likely it can get by hiring a Project Manager on a part-time basis.
How often do I need to communicate with PM?
You can meet as often as you’ve agreed upon with your PM. We recommend holding regularly weekly or bi-weekly meetings based on your project’s needs.
How many people can one PM manage?
The real answer depends on several variables including the Project Manager’s experience, the project’s complexity, business objectives, anticipated growth rate, the number of development teams involved, team size and structure, for starters. With the training and vetting process for PMs that we use in Binary Studio, we’ve found the greatest success rates when a PM is responsible for managing a maximum of 20 team members.
This figure is based on functional guidelines inferred by the Agile methodology, guidelines for efficiency such as the Ringelmann Effect and Metcalfe’s Law, but also over 19 years of software development and project management experience. It’s best to focus on number of development teams and the PM’s role in managing teams of teams. An Agile development team tends to range from 3 to 9 members, with an industry-wide median of 7 members per team.
But, not all organizations practice the Agile methodology - they could be working with Waterfall, pure Scrum or Kanban. And not all organizations have a hierarchical structure. We understand that and are happy to work with your organization to achieve the ideal composition and workflows to match your requirements.
Who manages the budget?
You and your designated representatives (CFO, CTO, Vendor Manager, and the like under various titles) retain control over your budget. The Project Manager’s responsibility is to prioritize the allocation of the budget you’ve authorized for the allocation of effort to achieve your business goals.
Will PM support share our company values?
Project managers follow what is important to the Client - your values, processes, etc. They serve to support the success of your project, and your company.
Will the PM be different depending on the development framework?
Not always. Frameworks are only a combination of structures and tools for a Project Manager to do his job well. Different frameworks require different time investments of the team. When starting a project, we will help you pick the optimal framework and the PM who has experience using it.
What will change in the process if you change the PM?
This really depends on why the previous Project Manager needed to be replaced or otherwise vacated their position. Certainly, consideration would be given to having the new PM focus on improving any issues deemed lacking with the previous Project Manager.
Will the PM test my app?
The Project Manager is not involved in hands-on testing. However, they do coordinate with Team Leads and QA Specialists to ensure the software is properly tested and to validate that it meets usability and performance specifications.
Do I need to spend this much money on one more manager?
As your team gets larger or you if you have multiple Agile teams, it’s highly likely that adding additional Project Managers will be essential to the success of your software. Again, at a minimum, successful software is delivered according to specifications, on schedule and within its budget. The larger your project, the more complex it is, and the greater the chances of encountering risks to its delivery.
Does it mean that if we add a PM, the approach to development will change?
It really depends on the current state of your team, project, and goals, though processes are likely to be improved upon in all scenarios. When an early stage startup adds a Project Manager, for example, there are likely to be numerous changes to establish proper commit policies, definitions of done, communications plans, etc. An established SMB seeking to expand an already mature development team may see few if any changes in development processes, but a focus on optimize existing efforts.