Project managers can have different job description in different organizations and industries, however there are some shared and common goals every project manager aim to perform (Schwalbe, 2010, p.22). Project managers aim to plan, schedule, communicate, and allocate resources, and a lot more. For them to be able to perform their job there are key competencies every project manger need to develop, as well key skills that help them achieve their objectives.
Project manager need to develop his/her knowledge in nine main areas to be able to perform his/her task efficiently, those are scope, time, cost and quality project management. Those four are considered core knowledge areas, without them a project manager will fail in his/her tasks. Other four areas that smooth his/her job are HR, communication, risk and procurement project management. The ninth is integration management that is affected and affects the previously listed knowledge areas (Schwalbe, 2010, p.22). Each of these knowledge areas has special tools and techniques that assist project managers and project stakeholders developing knowledge in those areas, and effectively run projects.
One of the main factors that affect project success rates and failures is having a good project manager, his/her role is crucial as he/she communicates with all stakeholders, should take critical decisions, properly allocate resources and budget, team motivator, and a lot more. A project manager has in addition to developing his/her knowledge, develop soft skills that will help him/her, lead, manage, communicate, motivate and take decisions to make a project successful. A good project manager is the one who has the ability to get things done, manage project stakeholders expectations and motivate people. This requires the project manager to have good communication and leadership skills. Many projects fail due to the lack of communication and not sharing the right information with the right project stakeholders at the right time, which creates huge gaps between the planned and actual progress and may cause scope changes that lead to extra costs. Managing project communication requires a great deal of commitment, and may take more than 80% of the project manager's time for a certain project.
A project manager can create a full communication plan that states what type of communication should be carried out, the frequency of this communication, and who is responsible for this communication, who it should be distributed to and in what format, but still he has to be able to enforce applying this communication plan and adjust it according to the situation. On another note, a project manager has to be able to motivate the project team, the customer and the project sponsor. Motivation can be achieved in many ways; one of the most important ways is to involve the project stakeholders in the planning phase and defining the requirements, this way he can gain their buy-in and make them feel that they own this project and keen to make the project successful.
Flannes and Levin listed four main roles project manager should play in able to be successful and effective, those main four skills roles are “Leader, Manager, Facilitator, and mentor” (Flannes & Levin, n.d. cited in Indelicato, 2005). Each of those roles require special skills, such as stakeholders motivations, being a good listener, strong at building trust (Book, 2010, 25), conflict management skills, problem solver, critical thinker, and gas good verbal communication skills. A skill is learned by definition; Knapp defined the skill as ”learned ability to bring pre-determined results with maximum certainty, often with minimum outlay of time and energy or both” (Knapp, 1964, cited in Pinkowska, Lent, & Keretho, 2011). For that all soft skills or interpersonal skill required and important for project managers to effectively mange projects are learned. In addition to that, Carbone & Gholston based on their survey concluded that graduate programs and project management training develop soft skills along with project management skills (Carbone & Gholston, 2004)
But if soft skills are learned, and key knowledge areas that project mangers need to develop knowledge in are learned, then what differentiate project managers, and how come there are some project managers better than the others? I personally believe that a project manger can develop his/her knowledge and soft skills to a certain level, but some people by nature have tendency to lead better than others, and developing skills of such a perform will give him/her and edge over others. It applies to all skills, all can be learned, by mastering those skills is dependent on each person, surrounding environment, projects, industry and a lot more.
Reference:
Carbone, T, & Gholston, S 2004, 'Project Manager Skill Development: A Survey of Programs and Practitioners', Engineering Management Journal, 16, 3, pp. 10-16, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, Accessed on 3 December 2011
Indelicato, G 2005, 'ESSENTIAL PEOPLE SKILLS FOR PROJECT MANAGERS', Project Management Journal, 36, 4, p. 81, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, Accessed on 3 December 2011
Pinkowska, Lent, & Keretho, 2011, ‘Process Based Identification of Software Project Manager Soft Skills’, Computer Science and Software Engineering (JCSSE), pp. 343 – 348, [Online], IEEE, Accessed on 3 December 2011
Schwalbe, K., (2010), Information Technology Project Management (with Microsoft Project 2007 CD-ROM), 6th ed., Course Technology, 2010, ISBN 978-0-324-78692-7
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