The Top Seven Project Management Skills for Job Success

Companies grow and increase revenues by taking on robust and dynamic projects. To carry out and complete complex projects in today’s highly competitive market, companies require skilled project managers on their team to manage projects and team members. Because of this, there are many career opportunities for project management professionals who have the crucial skills these companies need.

Read on to learn more about project management skills and why they are so crucial in the workplace. We’ll cover the seven essential project management skills you need to succeed as a project manager and how you can learn to develop and refine these skills to impress hiring managers. Like most skills, you can develop project management skills with practice.

Good project management skills are necessary to properly manage time, resources and meet company goals. As companies take on more and more projects to stay competitive, the need for candidates who excel at productively managing and completing multiple projects becomes increasingly more important. 

 

Good project management skills help you become a good leader. Managers may not be personally involved in every project, but they still need to provide good leadership to their teams to ensure company goals and expectations are being met. Good project managers are there for their teams every step of the way, answering questions and addressing their concerns. And when problems in a project arise, managers with good project management skills step in and demonstrate leadership by navigating through conflicts to find a solution. 

 

Good project management skills also help you manage time and balance priorities. For projects to be completed on schedule, it’s up to the project managers to prioritize what projects and tasks are of the highest importance. If you’re managing multiple projects, you are bound to run into competing priorities, goals and deadlines. This is where effective project management skills allow you to identify project goals and their capacities and prioritize and schedule them for your team accordingly. 

 

Project management skills help project managers be mindful of their resources and how to utilize them best. Things like company budget, time and team bandwidth need to be managed appropriately to efficiently complete projects. A great project manager needs to fully understand their resources so team members don’t get overwhelmed by the amount of work they have to complete by a specific deadline. Good project managers are realistic about workloads and deadlines they assign to their team. Being realistic allows project managers to plan their project calendars accurately. This is important because stakeholders often review project calendars.

 

To sum up, project managers must complete projects and impress project stakeholders, but they also must motivate their project teams to complete tasks that make meaningful impacts on company goals and visions. In addition, their leadership skills and competencies must provide strategic direction for best carrying out the project plan to ensure project success.

These are the key project management skills that are needed to build effective teams and processes. 

• Effective communication

Project managers connect the company’s vision and goals with their teams. Project managers need to communicate effectively for team members to effectively understand and carry out the company’s goals without confusion. They can do this through effective communication with their team, both verbally and in writing. Effective non-verbal communication, like active listening, is also an important skill as it enables project managers to fully understand issues or concerns that arise. 

• Time management

Time management skills are crucial to effectively and efficiently completing projects on schedule. This skill set allows project managers to take complex projects and break them down into smaller and more manageable tasks that can get completed on time. However, all projects have deadlines, and to meet these deadlines, project managers need to efficiently manage their own time and the team’s time to ensure projects are completed by deadlines.

• Project planning, scheduling and budgeting

All projects require proper planning and scheduling which allows employees to complete them in the most efficient way possible. 

Good project managers should also possess the technical skills to utilize project management software, which allows them to plan, schedule and budget their tasks and meet company goals. 

• Leadership

Project managers need to display strong leadership skills and adaptability when managing project life cycles and teams. By effectively guiding and motivating their team members, project managers move projects forward and ensure positive deliverables. 

Great leaders are experts in conflict management and conflict resolution. Projects can get stressful, and conflicts can arise as deadlines approach. Therefore, project managers need to effectively manage conflicts among their team members and ensure they are recognized and valued for their contributions and achievements.

• Critical thinking

Critical thinking is a skill that practically all professionals need. The best project managers use their critical thinking skills to take on any project, regardless of its complexity, proactively. By thinking critically, project managers can come to practical conclusions and solutions to problems by using the information available to them.

• Problem-solving

By utilizing their critical thinking skills to remain objective and analyze the facts and options available, project managers can solve complex problems and deliver projects on time and within budget. 

• Risk management

Risk management involves identifying and planning for potential risks that may arise during a project’s life cycle. This is a critical skill for project managers to have as it allows them to develop alternative plans ahead of time if risks become a reality. 

You can develop project management skills with hard work and practice like virtually all skills. You can start by practicing timeline planning. To do this, begin by planning timelines for projects on a calendar, professional or personal ones. When finished with your project, review your calendar to see how accurate it was for the tasks and deadlines you set and identify where you can improve. 

 

To practice budgeting for projects, you should review mistakes from previous projects and identify where you over-budgeted or under-budgeted. Then include contingencies when budgeting future projects. This will help you account for surprises so your budget is always ready for the unexpected. The benefit of this approach is that if all goes according to plan, your project will come in under budget, reflecting well on you.

 

You can further develop and advance your project management skills by taking online courses at respected organizations like the Project Management Institute. Once completed, online courses like these offer project management certifications that you can showcase to future employers. If that isn’t an option for you at the moment, you can search online for helpful resources on project management or watch tutorials on YouTube.