You found our list of essential project management skills.
Project management skills are necessary abilities to plan and carry out a project. Examples include communication, leadership, and risk management. Project managers often have a group of individuals working under their direction, and the group must coordinate their efforts to meet the project’s objectives.
These competencies are a subset of management skills. Project leads can also benefit from project management tools and books on project management.
This article contains:
- project management skills for students
- project management technical skills
- project management hard skills
- project management soft skills
- agile project management skills
Let’s get started!
List of project management soft skills
Non-technical skills, or “soft skills,” are abilities that may increase the quality of your job without the need for any specialized equipment or training. Soft skills are also known as “people skills” or “interpersonal skills,” and they come in handy while interacting with coworkers. You will need the following soft skills for a successful project management career.
1. Risk Management
In project management, risk management means identifying and preparing for potential problems that could affect a project. This process involves a step-by-step approach to understanding uncertainties and taking action to reduce their impact. Good risk management helps project managers anticipate and handle challenges, making projects run more smoothly. Steps include spotting risks, thinking about what might go wrong, deciding which risks are most important, and planning how to deal with them. When leaders manage risks well, projects go more smoothly, and the team involved feels more confident.
2. Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence, or EQ, is about understanding and dealing with emotions, both personal and teamwide. In project management, having a high EQ helps build strong relationships, solve problems, and lead teams. Leaders with good EQ can understand how others feel, which builds trust and teamwork. These managers can also effectively control their own emotions, staying calm when projects get tough and making smart decisions. EQ improves communication, helps with working with others, and makes projects a positive place where all members feel important and heard.
Get our free team building toolbox
- icebreaker games
- bingo cards
- DIY guides
by teams at FedEx, Amazon, Deloitte and 73,930+ others
3. Ethical Decision-Making
Ethical decision-making in project management is about making choices that are morally right and fair. Project managers often have to balance different interests, like getting results on time and budget while staying honest and fair. Ethical decisions mean considering how actions affect individuals, the project, and the community. This process involves being honest, open, unbiased, and doing what is right, even when that is tough. By making ethical choices, project managers build trust, keep a good reputation, and help projects and organizations succeed in the long run.
4. Leadership skills
Leadership is the single most crucial skill for every prospective project manager. You may lead and inspire your team with different leadership styles, each with strengths and weaknesses. An efficient leader knows when to delegate responsibility to subordinates and when to step in and take charge. Even if you do not consider yourself a leader, your team will still turn to you as the project manager for direction.
A project manager should recognize the distinction between management and leadership. The management adheres to standard operating procedures and project management practices and ensures every team member complies. However, leadership requires technical and interpersonal abilities. A project leader must be able to motivate and inspire every member working on the project. Taking a compassionate and analytical stance can help you grow as a leader. Influential leaders unite their teams and make them feel safe enough to work together.
Read about leadership skills
5. Collaboration
Successful project management rests on the back of teamwork. Collaboration is key to effective project management because it allows efficient and accurate task completion. When working on a project with other groups, you might get perspectives you would not get working alone. Incorporating extra brainpower into a project always results in better ideas and more thorough planning.
You can hone collaboration competency through communication. For example, use active listening methods to keep your mind and attention on the speaker at all times. Learning to share ideas freely, break down barriers, and work together effectively are all skills essential to any effective collaborative team.
Read more about collaboration.
6. Communication
Miscommunication sometimes occurs in group settings. Projects will be smoother and more fun if team members learn to communicate well and avoid common pitfalls. To develop your communication skills, you should practice being forthright and truthful with your colleagues. As a team, you will need to trust each other. Establishing this confidence requires that you indulge all ideas, including those you strongly disagree with, from your team members during the conversation.
Check out these lists of communication books and communication activities.
7. Time Management
Time management and organization skills intersect. As you become better at prioritizing and arranging your work, you will have a more accurate picture of what you have to do and how long it will take. Getting to business and focusing on pending tasks is not always easy. Establishing priorities might help you avoid procrastination and get tasks done faster. Knowing which chores are most important, you may focus on them first and avoid dropping the ball.
Here is a list of books on time management.
8. Solution-Focused Thinking
Focus on the results makes problem solvers successful. Solving problems well does not require having the “correct” answer every time. The problem-solving skill requires you to be able to look at issues from several angles and systematically work toward a resolution. Solution-focused thinking is one of the most important project management skills for students.
Regular analyses and decision-making frameworks based on data are advisable to improve your problem-solving skills. If, for instance, you want to increase sales by 15 percent compared to the competition, you may do a competitive study to see where you stand. Then, you can use the data garnered to increase sales. For this situation, you and your sales staff may work together to create a brand-new marketing plan.
Here is a list of problem-solving activities.
9. Flexibility
When working on projects, you may expect to make adjustments to some of your initial assumptions. In addition, you may have had to make some changes to your process because of a modification in your timeline or priorities. The best project managers can quickly adjust course to keep their team moving in the correct path.
Learning when and how to pivot is the key to adaptability. Self-awareness is essential for this skill. Having a better understanding of and control over your emotions, which are often in a state of flux during times of transition, is greatly facilitated by developing other soft skills, such as self-awareness and mindfulness.
10. Conflict Resolution
All the initiatives you oversee will have some degree of contention. In some instances, it may be necessary to revise the project’s scope to accommodate the needs of all parties involved. Perhaps you overspent or failed to meet a deadline. Conflict resolution aims to ensure that all parties involved feel like their opinions matter. Assuming there have been victims, it is important to hear them out and negotiate a compromise. If no perfect solution exists, then addressing the discussion with patience and empathy may help defuse a potentially unpleasant situation and lead to a better outcome.
Here is a list of conflict resolution activities.
List of project management hard skills
Hard skills, in contrast to soft skills, are quantifiable. These hard skills are directly related to project management. Improving these skills will make you a more capable project manager overall. The following are critical hard skills that every successful project manager should have.
1. Planning
The foundation of each successful project is a well-thought-out plan, sometimes known as a “project charter.” You may expect the following components to be in each project plan:
- Project goals and objectives
- Success indicators
- Stakeholders and Functions
- Budget
- Project scope
- Deliverables, milestones, and dependencies
- Scheduling and timeline
- Communication channels
Your project’s brief or road plan may already include some of these aspects, such as your objectives and major milestones. Your project plan, however, is where these disparate parts of your job join together to form a whole.
2. Scoping
The project scope includes the size, objectives, and constraints, such as timeline and money. Progress and possibilities entirely depend on the scope of your project and the accompanying budget. If you do not take the time to define your project’s scope at the outset clearly, you may find that your final deliverables end up being far broader than originally planned.
Setting project scope early and regularly will help you become more proficient. Once you have settled on the parameters of your project, it is important to ensure that every stakeholder is aware of and understands them. In addition, you can refer to the project scope so you may confidently decline requests in the future.
3. Scheduling Tools and Software
Scheduling tools and software are computer programs designed to help project managers plan and organize tasks within a project. These tools provide a visual representation of tasks, timelines, and dependencies. These programs make it easier to allocate resources, set deadlines, and track progress. Additionally, these tools allow project managers to create schedules, assign responsibilities, and adjust plans as needed. Popular examples include Microsoft Project, Trello, and Asana. This software can streamline project management by ensuring the whole team knows what needs to be done and when.
Here is a list of task management software.
4. Kickoff Execution
A launch meeting is necessary to get every stakeholder on the same page for the project. At this point, it is a good idea to go through the project’s intended outcomes and deliverables and distribute relevant papers such as a project brief, a project roadmap, a bill of materials for a marketing campaign, or a creative brief for a design team.
If your launch meeting goes well, you should plan on giving the stakeholders the materials you have compiled. The next step is to have a Q&A or brainstorming session to ensure every team member understands the project’s scope, timeline, cost, and deliverables.
5. Road-Mapping
In project management, a roadmap is a high-level plan outlining a project’s significant milestones and expected completion timeframe. If you are working on a large, complicated project with many different stakeholders involved, then a project plan can help individuals get on the same page immediately.
Created with Gantt chart-like software, project roadmaps set out your whole project’s timeline in a horizontal bar chart format. You can use a tool like Asana’s Timeline to sketch up a rough timeline for your project, then fill in significant milestones and dependencies.
6. Forecasting
Any competent project manager must be proficient in this aspect of business management. Having a project manager who lacks knowledge of project management techniques and forecasting is impossible. Forecasting is essential for a project manager’s regular activities, including arranging and prioritizing work, keeping tabs on progress, and making situation-specific judgments.
Cost management is another essential ability that ties in to forecasting. Budgetary restrictions apply to every project. With careful preparation, you may avoid costly mistakes and unexpected setbacks to your project timeline and budget.
7. Quality Management
Quality management is the practice of ensuring that a project or product meets established standards and expectations. This step involves using clear processes and techniques to deliver a high-quality outcome. Quality management includes activities such as defining quality standards, preventing defects, and detecting and correcting defects. By focusing on quality, project managers and teams can meet or exceed customer expectations, reduce errors, and enhance overall project performance. Ultimately, this care leads to increased customer satisfaction and project success.
8. Data Analysis
Data analysis is the process of examining and interpreting data to extract meaningful insights and make informed decisions. In project management, data analysis involves collecting and analyzing relevant project information to assess progress, identify trends, and support decision-making. This process can include using spreadsheets to track project metrics, creating visual charts and graphs to display data, and applying statistical methods to draw conclusions. Data analysis helps project managers understand how a project is performing, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven choices to keep the project on track. This step plays a crucial role in monitoring and improving project outcomes.
List of project management technical skills
Technical skills relate to how well-versed you are in various applications and programs when discussing project management. The tools used in contemporary project management are intuitive and simple to grasp. You should learn these skills to use them effectively in your project management jobs. Here is a list of some of the most essential skills project managers should know.
1. Regulatory Compliance
Regulatory compliance means following the rules and laws that apply to a project or business. This process involves making sure the project is done legally and according to the specific rules that apply to the industry or location. Project managers need to pay attention to these rules and work with experts to make sure the project stays within the law.
2. Stakeholder Analysis
Stakeholder analysis is a way to understand the individuals or groups who care about a project. This knowledge helps project managers figure out who these groups are, what they care about, and how much influence they have. This understanding helps in working well with stakeholders, listening to their opinions, and preventing problems, which is important for the project’s success.
3. Gantt Charts
Gantt charts allow you to see your project as a horizontal bar chart, with each bar representing an activity and its duration represented by the bar’s length. The chart contains:
- Dependencies
- Project Milestones
- Project updates in real-time
- Start and end dates
Since traditional Gantt chart technology may be difficult to use and has a restricted scope, Timeline from Asana is a Gantt-chart-like tool that offers the same functions.
4. Kanban Boards
The Kanban board is another common visual project management. The different columns on a Kanban board include New, In Progress, and Completed. Cards, which indicate tasks, move horizontally across the grid until all of the columns are empty.
Lean project management teams, such as those working on products, engineering, or software development, often find success using Kanban boards or similar visual project management tools. Kanban boards are an Agile methodology that emphasizes flexibility and adaptability to meet changing requirements for software development in real time.
5. Agile Management
Agile management is a lean project management technique popular in the product, engineering, and software development sectors. Agile revolves around a process of iterative development and incremental improvement. Agile also incorporates several lean approaches, such as lean portfolio management, Scrum, and Kanban.
The project manager’s role in an Agile team is to facilitate communication among team members and maintain a flexible mindset. The project timeline may need adjustment, or the teams may need to coordinate with others working on a separate project or even keep in contact often. Agile project management skills are critical to the project’s success.
6. Workloads Management
Anyone who has managed a project knows how difficult it can be to determine who is responsible for each task. You can evaluate your team’s capacity via workload management to prevent over- or underutilization of their skills. A competent project manager would constantly check their team’s workload to ensure no one is burning out since this is an iterative process with no clear starting or ending point.
Workload management software involves a two-stage process. The first stage is determining your team’s available resources, skill sets, and current workload. Then, you can allocate resources to tasks depending on individual workloads or make adjustments as necessary.
Conclusion
It may seem daunting to have to master all project management skills. Some methodologies, such as Agile, are only applicable to select groups. However, the right mindset and tools can make skills like organization seem effortless. Mastering project management requires practice. Rather than aiming to master every skill at once, try to hone in on mastering one or two specific skills for each project. For instance, learning a new visual method of project management like Kanban or writing your first project plan.
Next, check out these lists of employee management software and online collaboration tools.
