10 Essential Project Management Skills

Elena Humeniuk

PPM Consultant

Project management is a complex job. It involves ensuring that activities are on time and cost-efficient, managing others, solving issues, and consistently delivering results. Although certifications can be pivotal in building the foundation, they are insufficient. Real success requires a blend of technical skills and the human factor, which can only be acquired through experience and learning. This article presents the ten most crucial project management skills any PM should possess.

What are Project Management Skills?

Project management skills entail technical and interpersonal aspects. You can acquire soft skills from any form of education or work experience. These are also called people or interpersonal skills because they enable you to deal with people in your working environment. On the other hand, you acquire hard skills through a project management course or working as a PM. Building these will assist you in being a balanced and effective project manager.

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What Are Typical Project Management Skills?

The following is the project management skills list.

Soft Skills Required for a Project Manager

The following are inherent qualities that you need to possess as a PM:

1. Leadership

Although you may not directly lead projects as a PM, strong leadership skills are crucial. They allow the project manager to coordinate and motivate the team. Good leadership also creates an environment where team members can share ideas, develop plans, and complete the project successfully.

2. Time management

Time management is also among the top project management skills needed for successful project development. Each project has a timeframe in which it must be completed. Similarly, each activity in the project has a deadline. The project manager must be very organized to ensure the project is on track. In many cases, the project manager must set the schedule and ensure that all the team members perform their roles.

3. Communication

Effective communication is essential for successful project management. You are the contact person for other parties in a project who may not directly interact with each other. In addition, you must ensure that everyone is working in a team.

You should be comfortable translating the needs of one group or department and presenting them to another.

You’ll most likely be tasked with mediating stakeholder issues and negotiating time, cost, and scope. You must comprehend every individual’s role and perspective while speaking politely.

Project managers should be experts in written, verbal, and visual communication. You’ll undoubtedly encounter all three in your role.

4. Adaptability

Tools and tactics for project management constantly evolve toward improving efficiency, teamwork, and communication. You should actively participate in learning new programs and approaches swiftly and encourage others to join.

To succeed with new technology and techniques, you must be willing to learn and adopt them, regardless of your starting level of tech know-how.

A responsive mindset is also crucial for the success of your team. You need their support to maintain clear communication and ensure tasks are on track. This can only be obtained if you possess IT project manager skills and are entirely on board with new ideas.

5. Critical thinking

In any project management position, critical thinking will be necessary to make decisions within the given framework and predict the possible consequences for the future of a project.

Critical thinking helps you translate the data and information provided to you in the planning phase. You can then apply that knowledge as conditions evolve throughout the project. This skill assists you in communicating as and when necessary to negotiate constraints and ensure stakeholders deliver.

6. Patience

As a facilitator of multiple teams trying to collaborate towards a common goal, you are responsible for handling various expectations and goals. It is also your role to negotiate, solve conflicts, and communicate the needs of your teams. You are also responsible for ensuring that all the people around you function within the given limitations for a particular project. This requires a lot of patience, one of the most critical and overlooked project development skills.

Contributing to a project’s success is impossible if you get frustrated when problems or goals are not accomplished. You can’t help people communicate and work together if you take on the anger or resentment that teams may express.

Your ability to endure challenges can motivate others to persevere and prevent conflict escalation. On the other hand, your irritability or anger can easily dishearten people and worsen situations.

Hard Skills for Project Managers

These are the technical PM skills required to manage projects effectively. You can acquire them through a course, training, or work experience.

1. Cost management

As a PM, you will either get a budget for a project or be required to prepare a cost estimate for the decision-makers to consider. You must monitor the costs throughout the project and ensure that it does not exceed the set budget.

Cost in project management is one of the three constraints of project management, also known as the triple constraint or the project management triangle. The other constraints are scope and time.

Cost management is, therefore, among the critical project management skills and a trade-off between cost and the other two constraints.

Employers generally seek individuals who are capable of recognizing costly areas. You should then develop ideas for managing the project within the set budget, time, and scope.

2. Risk management

Risk management is one of the top project management and leadership skills and is the act of making rational choices. This skill enhances the benefits of the activities being carried out in the business while reducing the costs associated with the risks.

A project manager must always know whether a project will likely profit or lose and the actions that could lead to that outcome.

With good project management skills, you should know how much risk your company (or the department) is willing to take. Does it have a budget for experiments, or must every project be profitable? With that framework, you can moderate decisions regarding the project’s schedule, resources, and objectives.

3. Planning and forecasting

Another essential responsibility of the project manager is to develop a plan that will outline the direction of the project as well as the roles of other stakeholders. Remember that there are many project management methodologies, so you should define which is best for the particular case.

You should have a flair for organization. As part of the array of technical project manager skills, you should have a passion for tangible objectives. You should also know instruments such as Gantt, PERT charts, and other graphical illustrations of the project’s time scale.

You should be able to forecast and share the project’s profitability with the managers and the company’s leadership. One must be at ease with data analysis to understand how previous projects have fared and apply the results to the future of the current project.

4. Reading and writing

Literacy entails the ability to read and write effectively. Literacy skills are helpful in almost any field and significantly help you manage project knowledge.

You may be required to analyze technical papers or legal texts in a field without background knowledge. You’ll then have to transform that information into briefs that everyone involved in the project will understand.

How to Develop PM Skills

Here are ways to hone your project management skills and knowledge.

1. PMP certification

Project Management Professional (PMP) certification is one of the most common ways of developing PM skills. This certification course is administered by the PMI (Project Management Institute). This certification will show you possess the technical knowledge, soft skills, and business strategy comprehension necessary for successful project management.

You must have work experience and project management training to prepare for your exam. The time for this will depend on whether you hold a degree. Thankfully, you can easily take PMP training through online courses.

2. Agile certifications

This is a good choice for those who prefer applying agile methodologies for project management. Earning this certification will equip you with the technical know-how necessary for practical completion of projects.

3. Free online courses

You can also learn project management skills through free online courses. These courses may or may not contribute to the training hours for PMP certification. Nonetheless, they will help you hone your soft and hard skills for project management.

4. Work experience

You may also hone your skills for project management without going through formal training. You can gain skills on the job. Learn the day-to-day work of the project manager by observing and asking them questions regarding their role. You should also take up roles that will allow you to apply the knowledge you may have gained from the PM.

Conclusion

Those mentioned above are the core competencies that are crucial for project management. Although certifications are a good starting point, real success comes from a combination of technical skills and people skills. Leadership, communication, time management, and adaptability skills will enable one to overcome the challenges of managing projects and teams. Moreover, technical competencies such as cost and risk control, planning, and forecasting will allow you to achieve project goals. Courses or certifications and practical experience will prepare you with the competencies required to succeed and effectively manage projects in any setting.