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What are the most important skills of a project manager?
The most important skills of a project manager include leadership, communication, time management, negotiating, team management, and critical thinking. Furthermore, he/she must also be able to keep up with the project management trends and use the tools they have to their fullest.
Project management is a tedious job accompanied by numerous tasks that project managers need to do right, including project initiation, planning and execution, and control and closure. What makes it even more challenging is when such are delegated to teams who are given a set of goals, a timeline, and a specific budget. To make matters a bit more complicated, project managers need to see to it that everything goes smoothly to ensure a project’s success.
This article points out the skills needed to accomplish the works stated above. These include technical, business, and management capabilities, along with a few soft skills. This fairly short read also mentions some of the tools that are helpful for project managers, as pointed out in this guide to project management software. This way, you can better equip yourself to meet the demands of the project management industry.
Important Skills of Project Managers
However, such skills need to be accompanied by the necessary tools that make project management much more easier. The purpose of project management software is primarily to automate processes, promote collaboration and foster communication among team members. These technologies have been rapidly growing in popularity. In fact, the global project management software market is expected to reach more than $1 billion by the year 2020.
Indeed, project managers’ skills have become a very important commodity for businesses of all kinds nowadays. This is because current project management trends require them to step up their game. Such trends, if met head-on and strategically by project managers could spell success for projects. That’s why one of the reasons behind the success of high performing companies is providing project management training. According to one study about the state of the project management office, here’s the training these companies provide:
Source: PMSolutions
In this article, we’ll answer the question, “What are the most important skills of a project manager?” to help you improve your project management capabilities and, in effect, achieve your 6-figure income goal. We will also detail some examples of project management software that are currently available in the market.
10 Most Important Project Management Skills to Have
Project managers require a variety of skills to be able to effectively do their jobs and ultimately benefit both their respective organizations and project stakeholders. These capabilities can be gleaned from experience and take years to master. However, they offer great benefits that could significantly contribute to managers’ career development. The following are some of the best project management skills that project managers should possess:
1. Leadership
The issue of project leadership has always been and always will be a focal point among businesses. This is why it is undoubtedly at the top of a project manager’s most important skills. This skill enables project managers to come up with corporate visions and lead teams effectively. Boosting this skill will greatly improve the project managers’ career advancement.
2. Communication
Communication goes hand-in-hand with leadership skills. To be an effective leader, one has to be able to make clear what project teams must do. However, communication is not limited to the project team, it also applies to all stakeholders, including vendors, contractors, and customers. Such can be done through the use of technologies such as reporting tools, chat or file sharing. Such tools facilitate person-to-person and group communication alike.
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3. Scheduling Capability
Another one of the project manager’s most important skills is the ability to create project schedules cannot be undermined. However, it has been established that many project managers are lacking in this skill, an area where improvements are greatly needed.
4. Risk Management
The proliferation of unique projects has resulted in project managers becoming more adept at risk management. Unlike common projects, which are often outsourced or assigned to less seasoned project managers, these unique undertakings entail more complicated efforts that only mature project managers are capable of handling. Having this skill is a sign of having control over your project. Besides, it’s an effective way of assuring project sponsors that their investments are in good hands.
5. Negotiating
Project managers who have excellent negotiating skills are likely to resolve conflicts that may arise among project stakeholders. This could lead to the formulation of ideal scenarios that could prove to be amicable to all concerned.
6. Contract Management
The ability to manage contracts is very useful in maintaining relationships with suppliers. As every project involves material supply, such skill really comes in handy for project managers. Managing purchases is basically the cream of contract management. As such functions have previously been handled by finance departments, relegating it to project managers makes the process much simpler.
7. Team Management
Needless to say, most members of project teams need guidance from project managers and the most effective way to do this is by coaching. Having this skill will enable you to make up for employee shortcomings such as inadequate project experience and therefore, need coaching. And besides, coaching has been proven to help students to significantly boost their performance.
8. Cost Management
An essential project management skill, cost management is of critical importance to most businesses. Failure to comply with this need could hurt organizations that run on tight budgets. Project managers who are knowledgeable in this area can deliver projects not only on time but within the budget as well.
9. Critical Thinking
It is a fact that critical thinking is the basis of all sound decisions and corporate decisions are no exception to this rule. Project managers who consider the pros and cons of potential answers to specific problems, practice critical thinking. This skill separates those who are adept at managing issues from those who are not. The development of critical thinking skills require practice and tools that can help you logically structure arguments before coming up with a decision.
10. Task Management
An effective project manager should also be adept at task management. This skill involves the ability to come up with task lists and delegate them while keeping absolute control over the project. To be able to harness this skill, one must learn the process of making lists. Strategies for ensuring that one is constantly on top of such a list should also be developed. This is known to ensure that project completion time is always on time.
One more thing… sense of humor
Although this may sound absurd, this skill is definitely no laughing matter as far as project management is concerned. In fact, a good sense of humor is one of the most important skills that a project manager could possess. Aside from allowing one to see a problem from an alternative point of view, it is effective in relieving both managers’ and teams’ stress. Relieving stress allows key people to focus on generating ideas as opposed to working in a tension-filled environment.
Project Management Trends
As project management reaches new heights, project managers should be abreast of new developments in the field. Having the right skillset and tools does not necessarily denote success, one should likewise be on the lookout for changes in the area of project management. The following highlights the current project management trends that managers should be aware of.
- Business Agile. As more and more organizations adopt the Agile development framework, many have been reaping its benefits to project management. The methodology has proved to be effective in boosting communication, making teams more receptive to change and improving returns on investment. What’s even more appealing is that the use of the framework is known to start from small to mid-size businesses. It caters specifically to younger workers as they have a more flexible work mindset. Another reason for the framework’s popularity is the proliferation of tools that help in its implementation. These tools include artificial intelligence, which automates project management decisions such as in the case of task assignments
- Focus on Project Strategy. As businesses are constantly affected by competition, lack of resources and time and budgetary difficulties, project managers must focus more on reaching corporate goals. This can be done by shifting away from industry-specific information as a way to reach objectives by identifying organizational strengths and weaknesses.
- Leveraging Staff Strength by Shifting Away from Hierarchies. Even as executives commonly influence corporate culture, employee-level concerns can impact corporate culture one way or another. Employee recognition is a sure-fire way of improving the work environment. Managers should seek ways by which to boost employee strengths, which can positively impact the organization.
- Accountability and Social Responsibility. Contrary to popular belief, profitability is not the most crucial thing for a business. There are also aspects of social responsibility and accountability that come with projects. Companies are now under pressure to consider social and environmental factors when executing projects. Besides, doing so can significantly boost the corporate image as both people and businesses prefer to deal with transparent organizations.
- Remote Project Management Tools, Labor, and Security. The need for remote project management tools and labor stemmed from the rise of the mobile workforce. The popularity of such tools has been steadily increasing. With this development comes the need for security policies and processes as ways of safekeeping client data in view of the use of mobile devices. However, the above-mentioned makeup but the tip of the iceberg as project managers have so many more responsibilities.
Examples of Project Management Software
There are a lot of project management systems to choose from out there. These more popular ones are well known to fulfill the purpose of project management software. So to help you get an idea of what you should be looking for in this type of technology, we have listed a few examples of project management solutions below and provided the details of their features, functionalities, and pricing.
1. monday.com
A leading collaboration and communication application designed for project management teams, monday.com syncs all data in a single location and facilitates decision-making for team members and agents alike. It streamlines contributions, boosting teams and departments’ performance. Progress data is assembled and displayed logically and can be understood by all users. The platform likewise ensures that users get to have the needed incentives to help with tasks and assignments, even those not related to their roles. The interface is neat, well-organized and designed for collaboration. Its simplicity eliminates the need for formal user training, letting you use the app upon installation. However, the vendor thought it prudent to compile training materials for those who want them. What’s even better about monday.com is its scheduling feature, which can be used for both task and project management, helping you get rid of paperwork. monday.com is available in a variety of pricing plans starting at $49/month.
You can use all the features for free for a period of time to see if the software matches your needs.
monday.com
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2. Wrike
Online project management software Wrike is designed to speed up projects both in co-located and distributed teams. It is highly flexible, allowing for team collaboration from a single location. Using the software, you can prioritize, schedule, discuss and monitor both work and project progress in real-time, all it takes is but a few clicks. The solution sports a myriad of business collaboration and information management features that are bound to boost your business. Wrike’s easy-to-use navigation feature makes project management easy for both managers and teams. It likewise has top-of-the-line security measures that make sure that only project-relevant individuals have access to vital information. Its mobile applications let you track project progress from your mobile at any given time and place. The software’s three-pane layout enables you to view important data, allowing for a clear view of project operations. It also allows you to work on subtasks or move across different projects. Wrike is sold at a variety of pricing plans starting at $9.80/user per month. If you require only basic functionalities, a free version is available.
You may further inspect the features that this product has to offer if you take advantage of their free trial plan.
Wrike
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3. ConnectWise Manage
This project management solution is designed to provide a core platform for crucial business processes. ConnectWise Manage not only serves as a single source of truth for businesses, but it also helps streamline business operations, allowing you to maximize your resources. Among the business processes that ConnectWise Manage supports are sales and procurement. Billing your clients is also faster and more efficient with the help of automation systems that streamline the billing process from gathering all necessary details to generating invoices.
ConnectWise Manage also provides error-proof ticketing with service dashboards for a faster and more efficient way of tracking and resolving customer issues. In terms of reporting, this cloud-based solution is equipped with robust reporting options to help you make strategic data-driven business decisions.
ConnectWise Manage
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4. Zoho Projects
Aiming to provide its users with the ultimate project management experience, Zoho Projects is equipped with tools that help project leaders achieve their goals. With features that are both highly customizable and fully-automated, the entire project management process, from initial to closing, is handled more efficiently and effectively. For instance, its milestone mapping tool makes project planning and collaboration between team members smoother and less complicated. Every progress in tasks is also being tracked in real-time so that you can easily gauge your teams’ productivity and take actions to ensure you are operating within your timetable. Zoho Projects offer a free plan for up to five users and four paid packages starting from $150/year. There’s a 10-day trial for each paid plan.
The vendor has an appealing free trial where you can tinker with the features at no cost.
5. Smartsheet
Smartsheet is an industry-leading collaboration tool that caters to your needs for project management, crowdsourcing, and team task management to name a few. It’s a versatile software that is ideal for businesses in the construction, education, retail, technology, manufacturing, and other industries. With its wide range of functionalities, Smartsheet isn’t for project managers alone but is also useful for your personnel in other departments including HR, sales, marketing, and IT. The system also provides transparency into your team’s actions through their activity logs, shared views, detailed history, etc. This improves the accountability of your staff. There are three pricing packages offered by Smartsheet – Individual, Business, and Enterprise. The first two plans are available for $14/user/month and $25/user/month respectively. The Enterprise plan is available by quote.
The vendor offers a comprehensive free trial to get you up to speed with the features.
Smartsheet
Try out Smartsheet with their free trial
More Articles for Project Managers to Read
So, there you have it — the most important skills that project managers need to possess to step up their game. If you’re a project manager, you can try to improve on some of these skills as they will work to your advantage. These capabilities will not only benefit your organization but your management career as well.
If you’re interested in learning more about this trade, go check this article discussing the purpose of project management. It also provides some helpful pointers like how to choose the best project management software and how to efficiently roll out a project management system.
Moreover, if you want to learn the figures surrounding this industry, take a look at our project management statistics. This shows the reasons for project failure, how much is spent by companies for each project, the key developments in project management software, and a lot more. With this information at your fingertips, you can stay abreast of what’s new in the industry and remain one step ahead at all times.
Learning Outcomes
- Explain the concept of scientific management.
- Summarize the work of Frederick W. Taylor.
- Summarize the work of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth.
- Summarize the work of Henry Gantt.
Prior to the early 1900s, there was no management theory as we think of it today. Work happened as it always had—those with the skills did the work in the way they thought best (usually the way it had always been done). The concept that work could be studied and the work process improved did not formally exist before the ideas of Frederick Winslow Taylor.
The scientific management movement produced revolutionary ideas for the time—ideas such as employee training and implementing standardized best practices to improve productivity. Taylor’s theory was called scientific because to develop it, he employed techniques borrowed from botanists and chemists, such as analysis, observation, synthesis, rationality, and logic. You may decide as you read more about Taylor that by today’s criteria he was not the worker’s “friend.” However, Taylor must be given credit for creating the concept of an organization being run “as a business” or in a “businesslike manner,” meaning efficiently and productively.
Frederick W. Taylor
Frederick Taylor (1856–1915) is called the Father of Scientific Management.
Before the Industrial Revolution, most businesses were small operations, averaging three or four people. Owners frequently labored next to employees, knew what they were capable of, and closely directed their work. The dynamics of the workplace changed dramatically in the United States with the Industrial Revolution. Factory owners and managers did not possess close relationships with their employees. The workers “on the floor” controlled the work process and generally worked only hard enough to make sure they would not be fired. There was little or no incentive to work harder than the next man (or woman).
Taylor was a mechanical engineer who was primarily interested in the type of work done in factories and mechanical shops. He observed that the owners and managers of the factories knew little about what actually took place in the workshops. Taylor believed that the system could be improved, and he looked around for an incentive. He settled on money. He believed a worker should get “a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work”—no more, no less. If the worker couldn’t work to the target, then the person shouldn’t be working at all. Taylor also believed that management and labor should cooperate and work together to meet goals. He was the first to suggest that the primary functions of managers should be planning and training.
In 1909, Taylor published The Principles of Scientific Management. In this book, he suggested that productivity would increase if jobs were optimized and simplified. He also proposed matching a worker to a particular job that suited the person’s skill level and then training the worker to do that job in a specific way. Taylor first developed the idea of breaking down each job into component parts and timing each part to determine the most efficient method of working. Soon afterward, two management theorists, Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, came up with the idea of filming workers to analyze their motions. Their ideas have since been combined into one process (called time and motion studies) for analyzing the most productive way to complete a task.
Scientific management has at its heart four core principles that also apply to organizations today. They include the following:
- Look at each job or task scientifically to determine the “one best way” to perform the job. This is a change from the previous “rule of thumb” method where workers devised their own ways to do the job.
- Hire the right workers for each job, and train them to work at maximum efficiency.
- Monitor worker performance, and provide instruction and training when needed.
- Divide the work between management and labor so that management can plan and train, and workers can execute the task efficiently.
Taylor designed his approach for use in places where the work could be quantified, systemized, and standardized, such as in factories. In scientific management, there is one right way to do a task; workers were not encouraged (in fact, they were forbidden) to make decisions or evaluate actions that might produce a better result. Taylor was concerned about the output more than worker satisfaction or motivation. Taylor’s work introduced for the first time the idea of systematic training and selection, and it encouraged business owners to work with employees to increase productivity and efficiency. And he introduced a “first-class worker” concept to set the standard for what a worker should be able to produce in a set period of time. Scientific management grew in popularity among big businesses because productivity rose, proving that it worked.
Today, an updated version of his original theory is used by such companies as FedEx and Amazon. Digital Taylorism is based on maximizing efficiency by standardizing the tools and techniques for completing each task involved with a given job. Every task is broken down to the smallest motion and translated into an exact procedure that must be followed to complete that task. Because everyone is operating in the same mechanistic way, it increases predictability and consistency while reducing errors. It is relatively easy for managers to replace workers and retain the same productivity. The criticism of this type of management approach is similar to that of Taylor’s original theory: It reduces worker creativity; it requires management to monitor all aspects of employee behavior; and it is unforgiving to workers who don’t meet the standard.
Frank and Lillian Gilbreth
Two more pioneers in the field of management theory were Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, who conducted research about the same time as Taylor. Like Taylor, the Gilbreths were interested in worker productivity, specifically how movement and motion affected efficiency.
Lillian Gilbreth. The book and film Cheaper By the Dozen were based on her and Frank’s experiences raising twelve children according to their theories of time and motion studies.
As stated above, the Gilbreths used films to analyze worker activity. They would break the tasks into discrete elements and movements and record the time it took to complete one element. In this way, they were able to predict the most efficient workflow for a particular job. The films the Gilbreths made were also useful for creating training videos to instruct employees in how to work productively.
Taylor and the Gilbreths belonged to the classical school of management, which emphasized increasing worker productivity by scientific analysis. They differed, however, on the importance of the worker. Taylor’s emphasis was on profitability and productivity; the Gilbreths were also focused on worker welfare and motivation. They believed that by reducing the amount of motions associated with a particular task, they could also increase the worker’s well-being. Their research, along with Taylor’s, provided many important principles later incorporated into quality assurance and quality control programs begun in the 1920s and 1930s. Eventually, their work led to the science of ergonomics and industrial psychology. (Ergonomics is the study of people in their operating environment, with the goal of increasing productivity and reducing risk of work-related injury.)
You can watch some of the Gilbreths’ films below to get an idea of how they documented their time and motion studies in an effort to increase efficiency and safety.
Henry Gantt
Henry Gantt (1861–1919) was also an associate of Taylor. He is probably best known for two key contributions to classical management theory: the Gantt chart and the task and bonus system.
The Gantt chart is a tool that provides a visual (graphic) representation of what occurs over the course of a project. The focus of the chart is the sequential performance of tasks that make up a project. Freememory pro v1 7 2. It identifies key tasks, assigns an estimated time to complete the task, and determines a starting date for each element of a task. Gantt differentiated between a terminal element that must be completed as part of a larger task. The related terminal elements together created what he called the summary element.
The Gantt chart has multiple benefits for project management:
- It aids in the breakdown of tasks into specific elements.
- It allows for the monitoring of projected timelines.
- It identifies which tasks are dependent upon a prior task or element and which are independent and can be completed at any time.
Let’s apply the Gantt chart principles to a simple project. Imagine that you want to paint a room. The summary element is the finished, painted room. The individual terminal tasks might include calculating the square footage of the room, preparing the walls, choosing the paint, purchasing the paint, putting down the drop cloth, taping the windows, applying the paint, and final cleanup. Some of these elements are independent, and some elements are dependent upon others. Purchasing the paint is dependent upon knowing the square footage and choosing the paint color. Before painting can start, the walls must be prepared and the paint must be purchased. But purchasing the paint is not dependent upon preparing the walls—these tasks could be started at the same time.
There are several distinct tasks involved in painting a room.
Gantt also promoted the task and bonus plan that modified Taylor’s “a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work” premise. Gantt wanted to establish a standard (average) time for a piece of work or task. Then, if a worker took more that the standard time, his pay was docked. But if he took less time, he was paid for the additional pieces of work and a bonus of up to 20 percent more. Also known as the progressive rate system, this plan was preferred by workers who were willing to work harder for additional wages.
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Although Gantt is not the best known of the classic management theorists, many of his ideas are still being used in project management.
Key Points
Scientific management was the first widespread promotion of rational processes to improve efficiency. The goal was to develop a standard against which work performance could be measured. Training became an important part of the management process. By the 1930s, however, many unions and workers were suspicious of the intentions of scientific management.
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