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Cost/Budget management
A project manager may have all liberties, whether that be re-planning, team organisation, resource selection, or task re-sequencing, one factor that PM will not dare to play around or take risk about is "cost" ! PM should regularly review the project status and analyse its impact on cost or planned budget numbers. The idea is to know spent budget, check upcoming cost, check any changes to what was estimated, and then take corrective actions.
Competition
"Keep friends close and enemies closer !" may be overkill, but knowing competitor's pulse is certainly important. The implications of not keeping watch on competition could be as disastrous as losing future projects. Knowing competition is not PM's direct responsibility, but due to criticality of its (indirect) impact on project, knowing it does make sense.
Risks
Murphy's law states "If something is going to go wrong, will go wrong !", so why not be prepared for it ?! Risk management is about identifying those events which if happen would strain 4 coordinates of project in a major way. The events are usually associated with critical resources or resources that fall in critical paths.
Once appropriate risks are identified, it is project manager's responsibility to monitor risks and/or put preventive actions in place. Due to ever changing project conditions, it is difficult to know the exact amount of damage risk would cause. It is advisable to do impact analysis, estimate the damage, and to put preventive actions/recovery plans/backup plans in place as soon as the risk is known.
Dependencies
Dependencies here mean dependencies among tasks; output of one task becomes input for next task. The dependencies could be internal - which can be taken care of by proper planning - or external (among projects) - which need impact analysis and more elaborate planning.
Poor sequencing of tasks would lead to less efficient use of resources. On the other hand, smart sequencing would give Project Manager much needed buffer in schedule to play around with.
3rd party, contractor, supplier, auditor management
Collaboration with entities external to organisation or department, Services from contract employees or external vendors, Equipments/hardwares/softwares bought or rented from suppliers, Quality/process/product evaluations done by external auditors all fall under this category. Project Manager will usually require assistance in handling this as this is a very important activity requiring full time attention.
A good PM would regularly interface with external entities to track the expected deliverables. This way he/she will have better control over work items/tasks - those having dependency on external entites.
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