Digital Project Manager

Functions

A Digital Project Manager is the conductor of a web project: he coordinates the technical, creative and production teams. He is responsible for scheduling and supervising the project. He identifies needs, assesses technical feasibility, writes the technical specifications and defines the amount of work time needed for each phase. This position can also be compared to a functional project manager.

A Digital Project Manager may be a mobile specialist, which means he has expertise in developing mobile sites or applications for mobile devices (Apple, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone). As such, his role is to orchestrate mobile sites or mobile applications as part of a launch, a redesign or improvements to initial versions.

The main goal of the Digital Project Manager is to make sure the project sticks to the budget and timeline defined at the outset. He should also plan for future developments to the website. A Functional Project Manager may work for multi-channel sites: Internet, digital tablets, mobile applications, etc.

The nature of the work means Internet Project Managers must work with developers, web designers and web marketing managers.

Qualities

While they are not experts themselves, Digital Project Managers (who may be mobile specialists) have a working knowledge of web development (HTML, PHP, ASP, .NET, etc.) that enables them to propose solutions to the problems encountered.

Their ability to analyse and synthesise helps them coordinate the teams involved and anticipate and solve any technical problems that arise while remaining proactive.

As the conductors, they must be organised and rigorous to see the project through to its conclusion before the pre-determined deadline. They are curious and practical. They are always observing trends in their field, which is constantly changing, so they can anticipate coming changes in the market.

Project Managers are good at analysing and synthesising, which allows them to oversee multiple projects. In general, they are very organised and rigorous individuals.

Tools

CMS (WordPress, Joomla, Prestashop, Magento, etc.)
A/B Testing, MVT
Balsamiq, Axure
Excel, Powerpoint
A mobile specialist will also have:
Knowledge of operating systems and special characteristics of mobile terminals
W3C web mobile initiative, XHTML, DOM, CSS