Importance of Essential Skills for Project Managers
Discuss about the Project Management Principles for Construction Industry.
A successful Project Manager is not built upon the learned skills. It takes a lot of experience for a person designated as a Project Manager to acquire these skills overtime (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). Following are the 5 significant skills that a Project Manager should possess in order to become successful in Construction Industry:
- Communication Skills: Mostly in the entire life span of a Project Manager, the maximum skill that is exercised is the communication power. It is essentially required that a project manager has the efficiency to be able to convey any message absolutely effectively (Binder, 2016). Along with that, it is also expected that a project manager possesses necessary communication skills to convey his or her visions regarding the project, ideas of project propagation, goals that the project is currently targeting at and the issues that are faced during the project progression clearly between all the people who are in accordance with the project. However, communication as a topic can be considered broad (Janssen, Voort & Veenstra, 2015). Therefore, to encompass it as a significant skill of a project manager as a whole is quite a difficult process. This can be approached with a good presentation skill, which would emphasize every conveyed message throughout the project life-cycle, including the kick-off meetings and the pitching to the stakeholders and clients (Larson et al., 2014).
- Leadership: It is specifically important for a Project Manager to brush up his or her skill as a leader rather than a person who just persuades his or her entire team to follow orders. If a Project Manager can lead a team successfully, only then the person can expect his or her allocated project to be delivered on time and with successful productivity (Rosemann & Brocke, 2015). It is often found nowadays that a Project Manager is highly skilful but lacks in solid leadership skills. There is a need to skilfully handle and proceed with a project and there are enough resources that can add to a Project Manager’s skill to enhance their ability to lead a team successfully.
- Personal Organization: There is a close proximity that a skill one does not possess cannot be carried forward. This means that if a Project Manager do not possess skills of becoming one, it is unjust to expect that the assigned project team would perform any better (Olechowski et al., 2016). Therefore, first and foremost a Project Manager should possess skills for the correct way to complete an assigned task in an organized way and handle the disorientation the project has with ease (Bassi, 2015). Organizing every work, even in personal life helps a person acquire the skills of a successful Project Manager.
- Risk and Incident Management: Every project goes through several incidents that may lead towards a possible risk which may in turn harm the in the future. It is the duty of a project manager to predict and create the solutions of those in pending issues even before they occur it might increase the chances of delivering a project successfully (Fleming, & Koppelman, 2016). Project Managers are expected to own the skills of having a proper skill to handle all these risks. Projects may also have few incidents occurring during the project propagation which might give rise to potential risks that may transform into an issue. A successful project manager should have the rightful skills for handling all these issues even before they arise (Harrison & Lock, 2017). How Everest may not be an urgency feeling to address these would mean the project much bigger harm that have not been predicted before.
- Negotiation: This project management skill is an extension of the communication skill that a project manager should possibly possess (Kerzner, 2018). A lot of Communication of this kind goes on with the negotiation of resource using budgeting scheduling keeping up of scopes and other compromising situations that may vary but however are unavoidable (Schwalbe, 2015). If a project manager knows exactly how to negotiate appropriately so that everybody associated with the project a satisfied starting from the project stakeholders to the project parties and the clients this would be a key skill for a successful project manager.
According to the skills mentioned above that a project manager should possess it can easily be seen that few of the skills required by a person and others are developed over time through experience and training (Harris, 2016). When a person trains him or her to be a successful project manager that person acquires skills like communication negotiation and others. Horrible leadership skills and organising themselves are some skills that cannot be acquired entirely through training procedures (Nicholas & Steyn, 2017). These are mostly the personal traits of an individual that differentiate between a project team member and a project manager. Organising a person’s own self is something an individual learn right from the beginning of the life and slowly with experience the skill gets polished further. Leadership is also something that a person is born with. Inspiring people to carry on with their work and deliver the sin works in time is something a person cannot acquire by training. Therefore not all skills that a successful project manager has are acquired knowledges and skills but some of them are a person’s individual treat as well.
Based on the performances that I have presented as a project manager and the supervisor in my previous experience definitely the notes that amongst the five significant skills that have been presented in the document before I happen to own the power of communication skills as the best skills I have as a project manager (Uhl & Gollenia, 2016). I have seen that when I am in charge of a project I communicate well with all the hierarchy levels of a project team and also the knowledge transfer is smooth and transparent throughout the entire team. I know that miscommunication and wrong knowledge transformation may lead to disastrous conditions in a project therefore I make sure that whatever I have stated as a knowledge transfer to my team is documented well and kept check on regularly by monitoring and taking a feedback from my team. I understand that taking a feedback from the people I have transferred my knowledge to will make me understand that how well am I communicating with my project team and how well are they going through the entire process to progress with the tasks and have the deliverables within the given time. As a part of communication skills are also happened to process the proper knowledge of negotiation. Negotiation does not always mean financially but also negotiating with my hierarchy levels in a project team of the organisation for project deliverable times, project budgeting or team allocation.
The Role of Communication and Negotiation Skills
A project is generally an organisational unit that remain focused on attaining a special goal. The gold is usually mentioned as a successful completion of a development and delivering the requirements of the clients on time and within the given budget. This deliverables and conformance with some specifications that have been determined before (Verzuh, 2015). It is a process that includes many people at a time but it usually functions with the help of one project manager who is responsible for organising planning directing coordinating and controlling the entire fourth of a project management team combined to perform the functions and stuff groups in a completion of project objectives.
The techniques that make a successful project manager according to me from the aspect of a Project Management are:
- Planning the Project
- Work Breakdown Structures
- Work Packages
- Cost Accounts
- Schedule Planning
- Financial Planning
- Work Authorization Process
The specifications that are needed for the statement of work in compliance with the company policies and procedures from the base of planning for a project (Mir & Pinnington, 2014). The planning of a project required technical effort and also all the technical requirements that are needed for a Wholesome project including the labours the materials recruitment scheduling the funding and the facilities.
This is followed by work breakdown structure or WBS. Above the ground structure forms the basic milestone of a project management work. It holds all the information of a logical subdivision of the Planning for the required project (Svejvig & Andersen, 2015). This logical subdivision includes the control and breakdown of each and every item of the work packages of the team members in a project.
The specific what packages of different team members in a project should be handled according to the project schedule that includes the development of project master schedules to ensure that every element in the project requirements are delivered on time and also the service provided by the team members are performed on accordance to the prescribed time (Marchewka, 2014).
Following this it is necessary that Gantt chart describing the plan performances and the PERT chart for performance evaluation is also maintained.
Following these techniques would make a successful Project Manager who would be able to carry on seamlessly with his or her project delivering the client requirements exactly on time.
References
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Binder, J. (2016). Global project management: communication, collaboration and management across borders. Routledge.
Fleming, Q. W., & Koppelman, J. M. (2016, December). Earned value project management. Project Management Institute.
Harris, P. E. (2016). Planning and Control Using Microsoft® Project 2013 Or 2016 and PMBOK® Guide Fifth Edition. Eastwood Harris Pty Limited.
Harrison, F., & Lock, D. (2017). Advanced project management: a structured approach. Routledge.
Janssen, M., Van Der Voort, H., & van Veenstra, A. F. (2015). Failure of large transformation projects from the viewpoint of complex adaptive systems: Management principles for dealing with project dynamics. Information Systems Frontiers, 17(1), 15-29.
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Marchewka, J. T. (2014). Information technology project management. John Wiley & Sons.
Mir, F. A., & Pinnington, A. H. (2014). Exploring the value of project management: linking project management performance and project success. International journal of project managem
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Nicholas, J. M., & Steyn, H. (2017). Project management for engineering, business and technology. Routledge.
Olechowski, A., Oehmen, J., Seering, W., & Ben-Daya, M. (2016). The professionalization of risk management: What role can the ISO 31000 risk management principles play?. International Journal of Project Management, 34(8), 1568-1578.
Rosemann, M., & vom Brocke, J. (2015). The six core elements of business process management. In Handbook on business process management 1 (pp. 105-122). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Schwalbe, K. (2015). Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.
Svejvig, P., & Andersen, P. (2015). Rethinking project management: A structured literature review with a critical look at the brave new world. International Journal of Project Management, 33(2), 278-290.
Uhl, A., & Gollenia, L. A. (Eds.). (2016). Business transformation management methodology. Routledge.
Verzuh, E. (2015). The fast forward MBA in project management. John Wiley & Sons.
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