10 Essential 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.

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.

Risk registers, such as the ones used on monday.com, can help you anticipate potential problems.

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. Read our monday.com review if you’re in need of project management software.

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 road map 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.

Gantt charts are just one of many task and work management tools project managers can use for planning.

You should have a penchant for order and organization; a quiet love for clear, measurable goals; and an understanding of tools such as Gantt and PERT charts and other visual representations of project timelines and milestones. If you need software that offers Gantt charts but are unsure where to start, our roundup of the best Gantt chart software will help.

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.

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 such as facilitating meetings, holding participants accountable and enforcing constraints.

A project manager faces a particularly tough task in this role, because they 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.

Many project management platforms offer real-time chat tools that can be used to message team members and groups instantly.

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. Communicating effectively is now easier than ever, thanks to many of the best project management software platforms offering real-time chat tools.

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 succeed if you give in to 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.

Learning to use tools such as Trello will help make your job easier.

A measure of tech-savviness is important because much of your role is understanding and properly using project management software such as Trello, as well as other tools for things such as analytics, document creation and sharing and communication.

Soft skills such as 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 on board 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, and then carry that knowledge throughout the project as conditions change. It helps you make calls as needed to negotiate constraints and hold stakeholders accountable.

You can hone your skills and knowledge through formal education,work experience or both.

Project Management Certifications

A common route in project management is to acquire project manager certifications such as the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification, which is administered by the Project Management Institute (PMI).

Individuals holding the Project Management Institute’s PMP certification will stand out from the crowd when applying for a new role.

The PMP 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. Below are a few other project management certifications you might want to consider.

• Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM): The CAPM certification, offered by PMI, is an entry-level certification for those wanting to show they have the foundational skills and knowledge required to be effective team leaders. You can learn more in our CAPM certification guide.
• PRINCE2 Foundational: An internationally recognized certification that will show you’re ready to join a team that tackles projects using the PRINCE2 methodology. The PRINCE2 Foundation certification will help you learn PRINCE2’s terminology, processes and techniques.
• Master Project Manager (MPM): The American Academy of Project Management (A.A.P.M.) administers the Master Project Manager certification. Project managers with plenty of experience only need to apply as this certification requires three-plus years of project management experience and a thorough understanding of project management methods.
• Professional in Project Management (PPM): Offered by the Global Association for Quality Management (GAQM), the PPM certification is for individuals wanting to learn how to plan and execute projects correctly.

Agile Certifications

If it’s your preference to use Agile methodologies for project management, you may want to consider getting certified.

After earning a certification, you’ll be able to say that you’ve completed Agile certifications that can help you complete projects more efficiently (not to mention earn you a higher salary). Below, we’ll share a few of the Agile certifications to consider.

• Certified Scrum Master (CSM): The CSM certification offered by the Scrum Alliance is for individuals who want to become a Scrum master and lead Agile teams. This certification will help you understand Scrum and how to apply Scrum values to your team and projects.
• Professional Scrum Master (PSM): Similar to the CSM certification, the PSM certification from Scrum.org will show potential employers that you can lead Scrum teams, interact with stakeholders and apply Scrum principles.
• SAFe Practice Consultant: If working on scaled Agile projects sounds like your cup of tea, the SAFe Practice Consultant certification could be for you. The certification will prove that you understand value streams, can effectively launch Agile Release Trains (ARTs) or a team of Scrum teams, and apply SAFe values to projects.
• PRINCE2 Agile Foundation: The PRINCE2 Agile Foundation certification will help you learn how to mix PRINCE2’s structured approach to project management with Agile delivery methods. You can learn more about hybrid project management approaches in our guide to project management.

The Certified Scrum Master certification can help improve job prospects and earning potential.

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.

Dana Miranda, Adam Hardy and Rob Watts contributed to this article.

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