Forecasted Talent Gap.

Akin Fadare
The projected shortage of nearly 30 million project professionals by 2035 (PMI Talent Gap Report, 2025) must not be seen as a crisis of capacity alone.
It’s a challenge of responsibility, mindset and systems thinking.

PMI’s recent Project Success Report (2025) makes this clear: to elevate our profession, we must learn to deliver M.O.R.E. — not just in volume, but in meaning.

M.O.R.E.™ as a Transformational Response

- Manage Perceptions
Success today is not only about KPIs
Iit’s about stakeholder perception of value.
Project professionals must become narrators of value, capable of aligning expectations and translating outcomes into meaning for customers, sponsors and society.

- Own Project Success
It’s time to move beyond "project management success."
We must own the delivery of outcomes, steward benefits realization, and make visible the intangible impacts that matter most.
Project managers are no longer just executors, we are strategic partners in value creation.

- Relentlessly Reassess
Projects exist in living systems.
From AI disruption to climate shifts, stakeholder priorities evolve and so must we.
Success depends on our ability to continuously sense, reframe, and adapt without losing coherence.

- Expand Perspective
Every project is part of something larger - a program, a purpose, a planetary system.
Delivering “value worth the effort and expense” (PMI’s new definition of project success) means embracing a systems view, integrating ethical, social and environmental dimensions into how we lead.

This is a regenerative moment for project leadership

The talent gap isn’t just about filling seats
It’s about cultivating professionals capable of stewarding change in complex, uncertain times.

If we want to elevate our profession and its impact, we must stop asking “How do we fill the gap?” and start asking:

- “How do we grow leaders who can deliver M.O.R.E.?”

Let’s move forward, not with fear, but with expanded accountability, broader intelligence, and deeper alignment with purpose.

projected gap isn’t just about numbers it’s about readiness. We’ll need a mix of reskilling, stronger talent pipelines, and redefining what project management means in modern industries. If we can highlight PM as a career of purpose and impact, we can draw new generations in while preparing today’s workforce for tomorrow’s challenges.