Project managers are multi talented folks. You need to master several skills for success in the field of project management.
By far the most important skill you will need to success as a project manager is communication. People Management skills are probably the second most important skills you will need for successful career in project management. There are also technical skills such as project risk management, cost management and schedule management which can be learned through education or training.
Project management allows you to learn about and gain experience in many different industries. As a project manager, you don’t necessarily have to be an expert in the industry you are working in because your expertise is in managing projects. Having said that, some exposure in your industry will definitely give you a leg up when competing with the other project managers.
In this article we will look at top 15 must have project management skills which will help you drive through your project with flying colors. For better understanding, I have separated these skills as soft skills and hard skills. In the end, you will also get some practical advice and tips to acquire these skills.
Lets look at them one by one.
Project Management soft skills
Some of the most important soft skills you need as project manager are strong oral and written communication skills, good organisation skills, negotiation and problem solving skills and people skills. Project management is really more about knowing little bit about a lot of things.
Project managers are a mile wide and an inch deep – their skills cover a broad range of general management disciplines.
Project Management JumpStart, Kim Heldmen, 2018
Communication skills
The most important skills a project manager possesses are communication skills. It includes good verbal skills as well as good writing skills. As project manager, you will be the one generating almost all of the communication that will take place on a project. You will talk to stakeholders, team members, customers, vendors, senior management, and so on. You will create status reports, generate truck load of project documentation, write emails and more.
Communicating the right information to the right people at the right time helps ensure project success
A good and consistent communication will lead to common understanding of what the project status is at any point in time and what is still to come.
Remember, even if you maintain a good communication plan, you will still likely to get into tussles with stakeholders or team members
Time Management skills
Each of us has only 24 hours to accomplish our tasks for that day. However, it seems some people can get twice the amount of work done in that amount of time as others. They do not have more time available to them than we do, so how do they do it? They accomplish this with good time management techniques.
Time management is an absolutely essential skill for a project manager. It is all about controlling the priorities over your time. As project manager, you may get assigned to multiple projects, dealing with multiple issues at same time. It all boils down to how you set up the project priorities to work on. Which projects are absolutely critical, have some time buffer therefor can wait, and which email to answer first? and the list goes on.
It starts with keeping your calendar up to date and maintaining a task list of things to do each day. These two things can go a long way toward keeping your day from getting out of control.
Several time organizer tools are available in the market. You can find these organizers in paper and electronic format. I always prefer to use one organizer tool or app for all the appointments, tasks, and contacts. Combining business and personal information in one place don’t end up in scheduling conflicts.
People Management Skills
People management is vast topic. The majority of your workday will be spent interacting with people, so it is important to understand how people behave, what motivates them, and how to keep them focused and on task.
People management skills are not learned from reading a book. You will have to learn them while managing real world project.
Emotional Intelligence (EI), also known as Emotional Quotient (EQ) plays a major role in building people management skills. It helps you to understand the emotions of others, respond to them with empathy, and communicate effectively.
Negotiation skills
Everything about a project is negotiable. As a project manager you negotiate project budget, timeline, scope and even roles and responsibilities.
One of the principles of effective negotiating is to go for win-win. That should be your only acceptable outcome. Negotiation is also about minimizing and distributing the loss so it has least negative outcome. This helps in getting the new vendors on to the project, especially if it involves development work.
Organisational skills
If senior stakeholder in project asks you for the information, could you get him the information within couple of minutes. Or do you always look for project documentation that is buried in piles or spread all over the company intranet? If so, you may have to look at your organisation skills. If you are not organised, you will end up wasting valuable time that could be spent on more meaningful work.
So how do you sniff through all the project information and differentiate between important messages and problems during the course of the day? Some basic organisational techniques will get you off to a good start. Putting all the project information in one location will help keep you organised instantly.
Problem solving skills
Problem-solving skills enable project managers to resolve and handle challenges or issues. The best way to improve your problem-solving skills is by making data-driven decisions.
My experience suggests that project managers should prioritize quickly eliminating potential causes of problems, rather than immediately seeking root causes. This approach would seem to be counter-intuitive, yet in practice this approach is the one factor that makes the difference between project back on track in no time and status quo due to analysis paralysis.
Interpersonal skills
The most effective project managers report that interpersonal abilities are essential when managing projects and people, and often make the biggest difference in retaining key talent, growing the business, or losing one project after another.
Interpersonal skills are so important on projects. It is aptly quoted by Gandhi
I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles, but today it means getting along with people
Gandhi
Interpersonal skills are required to marshal all resources to common goals.
Project Management technical skills
On can not ignore the importance technical skills. Technical competencies are key ingredient in every project. Technical skills are those in which we are trained to address technical requirements of a project. For e.g. our proficiency in programming skills, experience with mechanical equipment or competency with project management tools.
Historically, managers select prospective project managers primarily based on their stated technical skills. Let’s look at the technical skills from project management perspective.
Risk Management skill
Risk is uncertain event that may occur, which, if it does, will impact on one or more project’s objectives, e.g. time, cost, scope or another project’s success criteria.
Here is an article on Risk Management, if you are interested in learning more.
To manage risk, project manager must understand risk management process. This is structured process that enables project risk to be identified, understood and managed proactively. This leads to minimizing threats and maximizing the opportunities.
Project Scheduling skill
Scheduling means planning when activities are carried out. A project schedule consists activities which are time based and linked to each other with logical constraints. Each activity is assigned to a resource. The graphical representation of a project schedule is called as Gantt chart.
Understanding scheduling involves preparing , and monitoring the schedule and analyzing the critical path. Critical path in a schedule decides the project duration, therefor delay to any critical activity will result in a delay to the Project Completion Date.
Prepare your first project schedule by following this article on project scheduling
If the project sponsor asks project manager to shorten the duration of a project, he must possess requisite skills to prepare Gantt chart, analyse critical path from a schedule, and inform sponsor about likely change in project duration.
Microsoft has a project scheduling software called Microsoft Projects. Knowing how to use the tool will tremendously help project manager to come up with the most likely estimates of the project duration.
Project finance and budgeting skill
Project budget is a cost plan i.e. what money will need to be spent and when. The project budget will be used throughout the remainder of the project to track project expenses and measure the money actually spent on project activities against the estimates given for those activities.
It is essential to understand how to assign costs to various resources. Project manager need to know how to monitor expenditures, create cost management plan and implement measures to control costs. Adhering to budget is as important as meeting the project schedule, and cost management can help you to so.
Quality Management skill
Quality management is a vital skill that most people underestimate. Developing this skill will help you meet the project’s objectives while exceeding customer and stakeholder expectations.
Quality assurance involves preventing problems by following the set standards and processes to maintain consistent quality during the project. Quality management plan for a project outlines acceptance criterion for the project deliverable.
Please note, compliance with ISO 9001:2015 must not be confused with project quality management that is project specific and ensures the project deliverables meet the laid down quality standards.
Resource management skill
In projects resources are the people, equipment, facilities or any other entity that is needed to complete as activity.
Resource Management skills enable you to manage, source, and plan a project’s financial, human, and other resources. This includes maximizing resources to enhance efficiency, resolving resource conflicts and manage resource utilization.
Monitoring and Controlling the project
How do you know the current status of a project? How do you ensure your clients know the status of a project?
Monitoring and Controlling involve range of activities such as: comparing planned results against actual progress, reporting the project performance, determining if corrective action is required, ensuring project deliverables are correct as per the quality plan, acquiring the sign-off on deliverables by authorized stakeholders.
In other words, project managers use monitoring and controlling processes to translate project execution data from information into knowledge
This knowledge is then used to make the right management decisions and to take the right actions at the right time.
Project Management software
Managing projects manually can be challenging, time-consuming, and lead to errors. Project management software has emerged as a solution to these challenges, providing a wide range of features and functionalities.
Having know-how of various project management software is added advantage as using these tools, project manager can automate some of the tasks and have better control on the project plans.
Project forecasting skill
Project forecasting involves statistically predict the project final cost and schedule result using earned value management tools.
The earned value concept allows it to reliably predict the cost and time schedule using cost performance index and schedule performance index efficiency factor. There is a separate theory on earned value management, and having hands on knowledge on this technique helps project manager to reliably build the forecasts.
How to develop your project management skills
Project management is a profession, and as with any profession, it is essential to keep developing your skills. Project management is ever-evolving, for example, the advent of Agile, Hybrid, and other project management methodologies expanded its reach in diverse fields of applications. Further, we have seen technological developments such as application of AI in project management, and more digital, online and cloud applications. Staying current with changing technology and industry trend is must.
To develop project management skills consider following steps:
- Study the fundamentals. Learn the basics of project management, including methodologies, tools and techniques. The key is not to limit the focus on one method, tool. Learn the fundamentals about all
- Gain hands-on experience: Practice managing projects using various techniques, no matter how small, to get real-world experience. This experience will help you understand the application of theory in practice.
- Network with other project managers: Connect with them to learn from their experiences and best (and perhaps worst) practices.
- Find a mentor inside or outside the company to support your project management journey. Before you approach to a mentor, have a plan. Identify a problem you want help solving – it could be a area of project management, specific project management tool or domain specific advice.
- Study past projects in your company’s knowledge database. If your company does not have extensive record of past projects, speak to the project managers who have handled similar projects. Learn from their experience.
- Develop organisational and leadership skills. Participate in cross functional teams working on specific issue, reach out to department managers to learn about the processes of their department, request a meeting with senior management and present them a new initiative you would like to start by clearly outlining its benefits to the organisation.
There are many different ways to develop your project management skills. However, as with any other field of study, you learn more by doing!
One learns from books and example only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things.
Frank Herbert
How to study project management
There are several ways to study project management
- Online courses: There are numerous online courses on platforms like Coursera, Udemy, or LinkedIn Learning that cover the basics of project management and offer certifications. You can also check local colleges for evening classes. That is a great way to learn business and project management subjects and a great place to network. People who work day jobs attend evening classes from all levels in organizations and industries.
- Books: Reading books on project management can be a great way to learn about the concepts and methodologies. A good place to start is with this book by Harvard Business Review: Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook: How to Launch, Lead, and Sponsor Successful Projects. In this book you will find everything you need to know about project management in practical, nontechnical language
- Earn a certification: Earning a certificate, such as the PMP (Project Management Professional) orCAPM(Certified Associate in Project Management) offered by PMI, is an objective third-party demonstration of your knowledge of project management fundamentals.
- Join a professional organization: Consider joining a professional organization or PMI, where you can network with other project managers and have access to resources and training opportunities.
Summary
If you enjoy working with people at all levels of the organisation, performing a variety of activities, managing and controlling variety of different issues and solving problems, you will love the world of project management. It is diverse career because no two projects are ever the same.
We started out by outlining project management soft skills – these skills take care of human side of project management. Then we looked at technical skills – these skills take care of project management tools which can be used to automate and track different project management processes
In the end of he article, you gained some practical advice on developing and learning project management skills.
Its your turn
I want you to introspect on your project management skills. Which skills do you possess and which ones you are lacking? Do you have a plan in place to develop the new skills? Share your comments in the comments section below. I would love to read your comments.
