What Are The Essential Skills To Be A Successful Project Manager?

Considering what a vital component of the modern corporate world project management has become it can often be an intangible art to accurately define. No two project managers (PMs) are exactly alike and many work to very different ideals utilising a variety of divergent methods. It is safe to say that there is no definitive explanation of how to be a great project manager but there is enough research and experiential knowledge to be able to outline the general qualities that a successful PM must embody.

At the heart of every successful project is a clear understanding of what needs to be achieved and what the expectations are for the project's end results. In reality this means having a firm grip on two intrinsic factors: time and money. What is the deadline for the project and what is the budget. These two elements will dictate every decision that the project manager takes and where a project fails it generally does so because the timeframe and budgetary requirements have either not been properly taken into account at the start of the project or the PM has got so carried away creatively that they have lost sight of these original strictures.

And yet the project manager can not afford to blame the failure of the task on these two issues; it is up to them to bring the project to satisfactory completion whilst operating within these constraints. As long as all the details are disclosed and clarified at the outset then the PM can have no cause to whinge about lack of money or time.

Once these fundamentals have been accepted then the most important thing that the project manager can do is plan. Meticulous planning is absolutely essential within modern project management as projects are so susceptible to sudden changes or last minute obstructions that the PM has to have complete control of the process. Only then will they be able to find suitable alternatives to any problems that arise.

No project has ever gone 100% smoothly from start to finish no matter how minutely it has been planned; there will always be outside factors and things beyond the PM's control that will affect its progress. But the projects that quickly adapt and recover from these setbacks are the ones that have been carefully and expansively considered and pre-planned.

And this planning must not only be at the nuts and bolts practical level. A project manager is a manager of people and people can be the most unpredictable commodity of them all. Constantly engaging, motivating and driving a team on is crucial to maintaining momentum in what can be a very arduous and emotionally draining process. A good project manager has to be emotionally intelligent as well as highly skilled in administration and organisation.

These are merely a few of the facets that a successful project manager must possess in abundance but they are the cornerstones of what the job is all about. If these considerations are met then it will be significantly easier for the PM to stamp their authority on matters and oversee the smooth running of a task.