The project manager core competencies to project success

Abstract

Purpose The past few decades have produced a number of investigations into the correlation between project managers’ competencies and project success. As a result, competencies lists have become extensive “shopping lists.” The purpose of this paper is to define the most important competencies to project success and investigate their correlations. Design/methodology/approach The authors surveyed project managers on the importance of 28 project manager competencies to project success. Data were analyzed using univariate and multivariate procedures. Findings Data show that communication, commitment and leadership appear as the three most relevant aspects. Multivariate analysis identified seven groups of competencies: leadership, self-management, interpersonal, communication, technical, productivity and managerial. Practical implications The results confirm a growing trend toward soft skills and reinforce the need for an update on project management education to fill the gap between theory and practice. Originality/value Project manager competencies lists have become too extensive, and the field is in constant change; therefore, this study updates the discussion and downsizes the number of competencies to fewer, more relevant items.

Generation Z: Fitting Project Management Soft Skills Competencies—A Mixed-Method Approach

“…These findings seem consistent with other works found in the literature [16,[50][51][52]. Table 1 identifies the most important project management competencies, merging the contributions of Takey and Carvalho [29] and Alvarenga et al [1]. There seems to be a shifting of concern from hard skills, which are discipline-specific and technically oriented, to soft skills, which are interpersonally related [53].…”

“…To link the Generation Z profile to PM soft skills competencies, we selected the emotional intelligence scale since it is considered as a PM soft skill. Its dimensions are related to a set of project management competencies broke down in Table 1: development of others, interpersonal relationships, self-control, work under pressure, and self-awareness [1,29].…”

“…Working on a project means being involved in teams. Teamwork was identified by Alvarenga et al [1] as one of the 28 most important project management skills found in the literature (Table 1). Our results point to average levels of 'agreeableness', revealing that the participants are oriented to others.…”

“…Under such a context, we witness a project-oriented trend and the growing importance of projects and project management (PM). Project management is crucial for competitive advantage and success [1]. However, as organizations define more of their activities as projects, projects continue to fail [2].…”

“…To downsize the range of project management competencies to the most important ones, Alvarenga et al [1] conducted a study that involved 257 project managers with over ten years of experience in project management and identified 28 core competencies. This study revealed that respondents pointed to communication, commitment, and leadership as the most important skills.…”