Some people naturally possess project management skills. You know who you are. The innate ability to keep things in order and keep people on task is valuable in a team environment, and you can actually make a living out of it. To formally turn those strengths into a career as a project manager, identify and hone these 10 essential project management skills.
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Related: Best Project Management Software
What Are Project Management Skills?
You need a variety of both hard and soft skills to be a successful project manager.
The soft skills are those you can develop through any education or work experience, and they help you shape the right temperament for project management. The hard skills are those you need to learn specifically for this role, and you can learn them through formal project management training or on the job as a project manager.
You’ll also need to learn common project management techniques and tools, which you can pick up through training or work experience. We didn’t include those in the list here (but they are in the FAQs below) because the exact techniques and tools you need depend on preferences in your industry, company and team, and you have a wide variety to choose from.
Hard Skills for Project Management
Aside from learning specific project management methods and tools, these are the hard skills you can gain from formal training or on-the-job experience in project management.
1. Risk Management
The process of making conscious decisions to maximize the upsides and minimize the downsides of actions in your business is known as risk management.
As a project manager, you have to be aware of a project’s potential for profit or loss and the decisions that could lead to either. Throughout the project, you should be attuned to the stakeholders’ measures of success and how each person’s decisions and actions could contribute to—or detract from—achieving those aims.
You should understand your company’s (or the department’s) risk tolerance—do they have a budget dedicated to experimentation, or does every project need to yield a profit? With that framework, you can mediate decisions about the project’s timeline, resources and goals.
2. Cost Management
You’ll either receive a budget for a project or be tasked with presenting a cost estimate for decision makers to approve. It’s your job throughout the project to stay aware of the costs and keep the project from going over budget.
Cost in project management is one part of what’s called the “triple constraint” or the “project management triangle”—the three boundaries of cost, time and scope that define the project.
Managing cost includes balancing that constraint with the other two. You have to stay within budget while keeping the timeline on track and fulfilling but not exceeding the scope.
3. Reading and Writing
Reading comprehension and clear writing are vital skills for project managers. Strong reading and writing skills are important for just about any job, and they play a particularly prominent role in project management.
You may be tasked with reading and interpreting technical documents or legal jargon with which you have no subject matter expertise. Then you need to turn that information into briefs everyone involved with the project can follow.
4. Planning and Forecasting
One of the key roles of the project manager is creating a roadmap for the project that’ll guide all other stakeholders in their roles. Understand that different scenarios will require different project management methodologies, and you should know how to determine which is the best option for each situation.
You should have a penchant for order and organization; a quiet love for clear, measurable goals; and an understanding of tools like Gantt and PERT charts and other visual representations of project timelines and milestones.
Forecasting involves providing a prediction of project outcomes—profitability, in particular—for managers and company leadership. You have to be comfortable with data analysis so you can interpret how past projects have performed and use the information to inform the future of the current project.
Soft Skills for Project Management
You can’t learn specific processes or practices for these project management skills, but these innate strengths are important to your success in a project management role.
5. Leadership
Though you don’t spearhead projects yourself in this role, your entire job is guiding others through a project. That requires management and leadership skills to feel comfortable doing things like facilitating meetings, holding participants accountable and enforcing constraints.
A project manager faces a particularly tough task in this role, because you have to be able to provide leadership for the project without being in a leadership or decision-making position.
6. Communication
Hand in hand with leadership is strong communication. You’re the point of contact for parties in a project who may have no other contact with each other, and you have to facilitate cohesive teamwork within that environment.
You should feel confident interpreting the needs of one group or department and explaining them to another.
You’ll likely also mediate conflicts among stakeholders and handle negotiations about time, cost and scope. You have to be able to understand everyone’s role and perspective while diplomatically communicating them across the project.
Project managers should be masters of written, verbal and visual communication. You’ll face instances of all three, and mastering them all lets you communicate effectively with a diverse group of project stakeholders.
7. Time Management
In addition to learning hard skills for planning, forecasting and scheduling projects, you should possess or develop a personal strength for time management.
Do you feel comfortable juggling multiple deadlines, constraints and stakeholder needs—or do you become overwhelmed when you’re faced with too many priorities at once?
Learning to calmly and consistently manage a complex timeline and help others stay on task is a vital skill for project management. So is the innate ability to foresee complications that could derail your timeline and suggest solutions to stay on track.
This is a soft skill you can learn, but project management is probably best suited for those who have a natural tendency toward organization and order.
8. Patience
Being at the center of multiple teams attempting to work together toward a common goal can be rewarding—and it can be frustrating.
You’re in charge of managing disparate expectations and objectives, all while mediating conflict,communicating needs and helping everyone around you work within the constraints you’re given for a project. All of these require serious patience.
You can’t help a project achieve success if you give into frustration when challenges arise or milestones aren’t met. You can’t facilitate communication and teamwork if you absorb the frustrations or resentments boiling among teams.
Your ability to remain a calm, neutral party is vital to your success as a project manager, as well as the success of a project and the success and satisfaction of the people working on it. Your patience through challenges can inspire persistence and diffuse conflicts, while your impatience or frustration could equally demoralize and exacerbate problems.
9. Adaptability
Tools and strategies for project management are constantly evolving toward better efficiency, teamwork and communication. You should enjoy and excel at learning new programs and methods quickly and encouraging others to get on board.
A measure of tech-savviness is important because much of your role is understanding and properly using project management software like Trello, as well as other tools for things such as analytics, document creation and sharing and communication.
Soft skills like adaptability and flexibility are equally important here, too. You have to exhibit a willingness to learn and adopt new technology and techniques before you can learn the hard skills to use them. A nimble mindset sets you up for success with anything new that’ll be thrown at you, regardless of your starting level of tech know-how.
Your mindset is also important for the success of the people you work with. You need their buy-in to keep communication clear and tasks on track, and you can only get that if you’re fully onboard with new tools and methods yourself.
10. Critical Thinking
Key for any management role, critical thinking will come into play daily in project management. You have to be able to make quick decisions within a set of constraints, foreseeing the potential implications for the future of a project.
Critical thinking in project management supports your ability to analyze the data and information you’re given to make decisions in the planning stage then carry that knowledge throughout the project as conditions change. It helps you make calls as needed to negotiate constraints and hold stakeholders accountable.
How to Develop Project Management Skills
You can hone your skills and knowledge through formal education,work experience or both.
PMP Certification
A common route in project management is to earn your Project Management Professional Certification (PMP), which is administered by the Project Management Institute (PMI).
The certification shows you have the soft skills, technical knowledge and understanding of business strategy necessary to succeed as a project manager, including specific experience or training with the most common project management methods: agile, waterfall and hybrid.
To prepare for the exam—and learn the necessary project management skills—you must gain work experience and project management training. The required number of hours for each depends on whether you have a four-year degree or not.
You can take PMP training through PMI or other online courses, which are focused on things like project management methods, the process, tools and more.
A certification validates your skill set for potential employers, so it could make you more attractive to companies and improve your pay. But a certification isn’t required to do the job, and it’s not a guarantee you’ll find work or success in the field.
Agile Certifications
If it’s your preference to use Agile methodologies for project management, you may want to consider getting certified. Much like the PMP, being able to say that you’ve completed the coursework for Agile certifications can help you complete projects more efficiently (not to mention earn you a higher salary).
Free Online Courses
You can learn project management skills through free online courses that may or may not contribute to required training hours for PMP certification, but they will teach you the hard and soft skills needed to do the job.
Find university-led courses on project management skills, tools and techniques through sites that offer mass open online courses (MOOCs), including Coursera and edX.
Work Experience
You can get started as a project manager without any formal training or courses. Your natural strengths might set you up for success in the role and make it easy for you to adopt the tools and techniques you need.
To gain skills on the job, pay attention to projects you’re involved with first. Keep an eye on the project manager’s day-to-day work, and ask them questions to understand what they do. Being attuned to the process can give you great insight into the skills you need to do the job.
Then, take advantage of any opportunities in your existing role to lead projects, manage people or organize any processes or events. The skills and experience you develop in this kind of work can transfer to success in a project manager role, even if it doesn’t follow formal project management processes.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What does a project manager do on a daily basis?
A project manager’s job is to oversee the timeline, costs and scope of a project within a team or company. Day-to-day tasks vary and may include facilitating meetings, writing briefs and reports, analyzing data, communicating with stakeholders and advocating to leadership for project needs.
What’s the first thing a project manager should do on a project?
The five phases of project management include initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and closure. A project manager’s first step on a project is initiation: Define the project and determine whether it’s feasible for the company to undertake it. If the answer is yes, you create a project charter that outlines the needs, stakeholders and business case for the project.
What are the best project management tools?
Project management tools should facilitate communication, task management, planning and forecasting for projects. Some of the best project management software includes Wrike, Asana, Monday, Basecamp and Jira. Which is best for your project depends on the industry and the project’s needs.
What are the top project management techniques?
The top project management techniques are the traditional waterfall, also known as predictive or linear project management; agile or adaptive; and hybrid, which combines the two. Common tools and techniques you can use within each method include work breakdown structure (WBS), Gantt charts, critical path method (CPM), Kanban and scrum.
What should every project manager know?
Project managers should be familiar with the common project management methods and tools, including agile and waterfall. You should also have necessary soft skills needed for leadership, communication, time management, adaptation and critical thinking on projects.
What are the qualifications of a project manager?
Some companies require a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification, which requires a four-year degree, 36 months leading projects and 35 hours of training; or a high school diploma, 60 months leading projects and 35 hours of training. You can be a project manager without the certification, however, as long as you master the hard and soft skills mentioned above.
How do I become a project manager with no experience?
You can become a project manager with no experience or education simply by gaining experience and knowledge in areas such as time management, task management and leadership. Hone the soft skills listed above, and look for free online training to learn the hard skills and project management methods and tools. You can also get formal training and qualify to take an exam to earn a Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) credential without project management work experience.
