Which project manager would be more successful? Why?
A) Advanced PM skills + Average technical skills
B) Advanced technical skills + Average PM skills
C) Average technical and PM skills + Advanced soft skills Saving Changes...
What I can say, actually repeat it, is that in many projects the decisions that are technical in nature are crucial for the success. This means that a PM that has average technical skills or no technical skills at all would not be able to take some crucial decisions that would impact the success. The team member with the best technical skills would take such decisions, at least in his/her functional area.
My favorite would have been Advanced Technical Skills, Average PM skills and advanced soft skills. Since this option is not there I vote C.
I believe that the soft skills are the most important since if you have an extraordinary relationship with your key stakeholders you can overcome, to a large extent, many problems.
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1 reply by Eric Isom
Oct 12, 2018 2:50 AM
Eric Isom
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A PM with great soft skills will know people with great technical skills that can help make the right technical decisions.
I would vote for choice 1 IE.. Advanced PM skills plus avg technical skills.
As a PM you are like a mini entrepreneur, you own the project, the deliverables. You need to have a grasp of what is going on in the project hence need some technical skills. However you could rely upon SMEs to get the understanding. Then you need to take the route of estimations, planning, scheduling, tracking, risk management, status reporting etc and finally bring the project to conclusion. Hence you need star level PM skills, avg technical skills ok. Saving Changes...
Anton OosthuizenSenior Business Analyst / Project Manager| Self EmployedPretoria, Gauteng, South Africa
You spell success with a C. But in the real world you have to consider other factors. If the PM has to take over a failing project the technical knowledge will be more beneficial that PM knowledge to get up to speed. All things being equal I will stick with C. Saving Changes...
Eric IsomOwner| learn.pmguaranteed.comUt, United States
Oct 12, 2018 12:53 AM
Replying to Adrian Carlogea
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What I can say, actually repeat it, is that in many projects the decisions that are technical in nature are crucial for the success. This means that a PM that has average technical skills or no technical skills at all would not be able to take some crucial decisions that would impact the success. The team member with the best technical skills would take such decisions, at least in his/her functional area.
My favorite would have been Advanced Technical Skills, Average PM skills and advanced soft skills. Since this option is not there I vote C.
I believe that the soft skills are the most important since if you have an extraordinary relationship with your key stakeholders you can overcome, to a large extent, many problems.
A PM with great soft skills will know people with great technical skills that can help make the right technical decisions. Saving Changes...
Arun PrasadProject Manager| KPMG Global ServicesBangalore, Karnataka, India
I will go with C. Since soft skills can influence any individual and bring change when it most matters in a project. Saving Changes...
Thank you all for your responses. It seems that most of the answers are "A" while in the marketplace and in practice, employers usually prefer to have "B" type project managers. This is probably a challenge between "Knowledge" and "Practice".
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1 reply by Henry Hattenrath
Oct 28, 2018 5:42 PM
Henry Hattenrath
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While responses continue, it appears that A) is selected by PMI professionals. B) is selected by voting members representing an Owner/Client or consultants proposing on PM service contract. C) is selected by Client or Consultant with lessons learned on projects showing a success factor is using soft skills to create superior project team performance.
Saving Changes...
Mark StewardDirector| Arrow Zee AustraliaSydney, Nsw, Australia
It very much depends on the project as to what skills are required Saving Changes...
A is the perfect answer. by the time, you become PM you acquire most of technical skills and you need management skills to control things
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1 reply by Adrian Carlogea
Oct 28, 2018 2:33 PM
Adrian Carlogea
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The problem is that if you don't have very good technical skills you can't really control a project. With average, low or no technical skills at all you can just track, report and raise issues but you can't take corrective measures by yourself. You must ask others to take such measures.
For me a PM without very good technical knowledge and who is unable to do the main work by himself is like a pilot that flies an airplane on autopilot. If he disables the autopilot such a PM would not be able to fly on manual mode and would crush the plane once the autopilot is disabled.
If the autopilot, that is the technical expert, makes mistakes the PM can only watch how the plane crashes without being able to do anything about it. Eventually he could ask for another autopilot in the hope that it would be better. :)
I go for another option that is not on the list: advanced PM skills + advanced soft skills as PMs because it is about making all ends come together. I dealt with many people who could handle things they have little knowledge on. As leadership is about the ability of making people who smarter than us work together to achieve the goals we agreed on. That's why project management is a cross-industrial field. On the other hand accomplishing missions needs new bloods. Saving Changes...
