10 essential project management skills to add to your resume LogRocket Blog

Tasks are little jobs that make up the execution phase of project management. They need to be created, organized, assigned to team members and tracked to make sure they meet the project constraints. Project management software helps you manage tasks and fosters collaboration among your project team. Project scope is the documentation of the project’s goals, deliverables, tasks, costs and deadlines. This document is called a project scope statement and is sometimes referred to as the terms of reference. Find university-led courses on project management skills, tools and techniques through sites that offer mass open online courses (MOOCs), including Coursera and edX.

• Changes such as these are jumpstarting an evolution of the project manager role, which must also contend with supply chain shortages and other disruptions that threaten to upend project plans and deliverables.
• Upper management provides the resources needed to successfully complete the project on time and within budget.
• As a technical project manager, you must communicate regularly with management to inform them about the project’s progress.
• It takes great strength and determination to maintain both simultaneously throughout projects plagued with setbacks.
• While the term “soft skills” makes them sound fluffy (or squishy, or mushy), the impact they have on your team’s performance is rock-solid — and 80% of project management professionals agree.

To be a good leader, you need to incorporate many of the other project management skills on this list. As companies strive to deliver complex projects in hyper-competitive environments, the demand for skilled project managers is higher than ever before. In fact, the Project Management Institute estimates that by 2027, the number of project management roles will increase by 33 percent, creating project manager courses nearly 22 million new jobs for qualified project managers. While the soft skills mentioned above are applicable for many work skills, these seven hard skills are relevant specifically to project management. Developing these will help you become a more well rounded and efficient project manager. In project management, collaboration helps you get work done quickly and more efficiently.

Leadership Skills

You must efficiently use all the resources available and your team is the best resource you have. Team management is a part of being an effective leader and how you handle this responsibility can have a significant impact on your project. Leadership skills are essential to motivate and inspire the project team to achieve the project objectives. Leadership skills are also required to effectively communicate the project vision and objectives to all stakeholders and resolve any conflicts that may arise during the project.

A risk management plan identifies and foresees potential liabilities, the likelihood that they’ll arise, and their impact. Agile project management software was designed to help organizations deliver benefits and value to customers efficiently. Instead of making a huge investment in a project, agile project management allows an organization to deliver work in smaller increments. An agile approach to project management empowers participants to respond to change or roadblocks gracefully. The impact can also be seen as measurable results in areas such as data metrics, employee performance, and project outcomes.

Workload management

They’re also known as the technical skills or project management know-how that’s needed to plan, schedule and manage projects. As a technical project manager, you are expected to understand the relevant technical tools and methodologies in-depth. You should be able to break down complex technical projects into manageable tasks and communicate technical jargon effectively to ensure the project is completed on time and within budget. Effective risk, time, and team management is essential to successful projects. Project managers use these strategies to identify a project’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and potential threats.

When you can coordinate across teams, you gain valuable insights into your project that you might not find within your team. If more minds are involved in the work, projects are inherently more creative and well developed. Modern project management evolved from traditional project management in two distinct ways. As companies and teams democratized their project management processes, they needed more team members and team leads who were able to manage a process from conception to completion. In order to support those team leads, project management software has also evolved, from complex mechanisms to flexible and easy-to-use tools.

We hope that this list was helpful to you and you’ll use these skills to become a great project manager for your company. Even after meticulous planning, surprises can happen and it’s very important that you salvage as much as possible in order to stay on track and complete the project successfully. Skillful project managers can generally identify potential problems before they occur and come up with a project risk management strategy. Project managers must be able to ensure that projects meet or exceed quality standards and that any issues are addressed promptly. A project manager’s ability to control quality is key to successfully completing work for clients. Project managers must be able to identify and manage risks that could impact the success of a project.

The ability to plan and forecast effectively requires a deep understanding of the project’s goals and a keen eye for detail. Furthermore, it is also important to consider potential risks and setbacks and have contingency plans in place if things don’t go according to plan. While it might not seem important, especially as the workforce embraces a more casual attire, a professional appearance is still a valuable asset for project managers. It communicates responsibility, leadership and gives both stakeholders and team members a sense that they’re in good hands.

Having a shared calendar helps the whole team to keep track of the important tasks and milestones so you never lose sight of when things are due. Not only that, but it also makes it easier to know when people are available so you can schedule meetings with less fuss. And when it comes to things like annual leave, it even helps you to spot any potential resourcing issues before they become problems. Try creating a filtered calendar for your project team (or subteams within your project team) to make it even easier. By remaining objective, analyzing the facts, and evaluating options without bias, project managers are able to solve complex problems for organizations while delivering results on time and within budget. Since risks are, by definition, uncertain events, it’s easy for project managers to ignore them and assume they will not happen.