They’re soft skills as much as the hard ones you were trained on.īalancing between the soft and hard project management skills isn’t always easy. That’s why the essential project management skills don’t always seem obvious. Technical training in project management doesn’t set you up for all the nuanced situations you’ll experience throughout your career. And factors completely out of your control suddenly have a huge impact on how your project moves forward. And unlike working with steel, wood, or even code, it’s impossible to know what you’re going to get out of your team each day.
Project manager capabilities how to#
And just because you know the steps of the software development lifecycle or how to write a statement of work doesn’t mean you can successfully manage a project.Īs a project manager, your raw materials are people. What we’ve just covered is, at best, only part of the technical side of project management. To do this, they use project management tools ( like Planio!) to keep their teams organized, document lessons learned, and manage tasks from start to finish.Īnd while that sounds like a lot of work, it’s barely scratching the surface. That means communicating with their team and project stakeholders, setting realistic requirements, running meetings, assigning tasks, and managing time, budgets, and expectations. With Planio.įrom the outside, a project manager spends their days initiating, planning, running projects. What do project managers do? The answer isn’t as simple as you think.Īsk a random person on the street what a project manager does and you’ll probably get a variation of the same answer (or a pretty weird look as they speed walk away from you).
So what project management skills does it take to become a truly great project manager in 2019 (and beyond)? Let’s find out. It’s why the best project managers seem to just have something others don’t. While some of the most important project management skills are pretty obvious-like planning, communicating, and staying organized-others are more nuanced, peculiar, and downright mysterious. And to be successful at all these not-so-easy jobs, there’s a wide range of project management skills you need to master. There’s no single project management skill that’s more important than the others because, at its core, project management isn’t a single job.Īt best, you could say that project management is a combination of several not-so-easy jobs done concurrently. What makes a truly great project manager? Is it being organized? Driven and motivated? A great communicator? All of the above and more. 14 min read What makes a great project manager? The 10 most crucial project management skills for 2019 (and how to develop them).