# What is a project manager (and do you need one)?

- **Episode:** [145](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/145.md) (2024-11-14)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** project-manager, business-needs
- **Time:** 4:44–6:43 (start 284s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/145?t=284](https://truthliesandwork.com/145?t=284)

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[4:44] midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge): I'm not from the corporate world. I haven't had a job since 2002. And although I do know what a project is, what the heck is the difference between someone who's managing a project and someone who is a perfect professional Project manager, I can't even say it. And where does Agile come in? Scrum? Waterfall? I don't get it
[5:04] Al Elliott: Yeah, I mean, I've got your back, Al. I asked Laura this exact question. Laura, school Al for me, will you? Can we just define what a project is? Because I think a lot of people manage projects, few people are project managers. What's the difference between somebody who manages a project and a professional project manager?
[5:23] Laura Barnard: So here's the thing. The industry will say that it's based on your certification and years of training and Experience and and all of this stuff that you must be to be a project manager. But I disagree. I think anybody that manages projects, which is pretty much all of us, is a project manager, whether they have the title or not. Because you know, think about it. If you're the person in your family that ends up being the one that has to plan all the family vacations, you're a project manager. Anybody that has to do the work to define a clear deliverable or an outcome they're trying to achieve, and it's changing. something, that's a project. I mean, people in our space, in the industry, tend to overcomplicate it. Anyone that's got a goal they want to achieve, a place they want to go, a service that they need to produce, an outcome they're trying to drive, the way you get there is through change. And change, the way you deliver change is through projects. I've been in all kinds of industries around the world, a small business owner myself, and I find that even all the way up to the C-suite, we sometimes have to be the one that's managing the projects in order to get them done. And there's really great techniques and simple ways that you can do it better to make sure you're not just creating a thing, but that that thing is actually driving the better business outcomes you're trying to achieve