If you look at the constant reports year after year on how projects fail you have to ask yourself what organizations are concluding in how to help prevent that. There was one report a few years ago that stated that organizations who admitted to project failures believed that they needed to bring more structure and process around their project methodology and also to find the right person to lead them. This led me to look at what makes a good Project Manager and I did some background reading with a number of articles to see if there as consistency in what everyone thought.

The conclusion is that the right person is the mixture of Art vs Science and the Leader vs Manager characteristics. These are –

– Art/Leader = vision, communication, interpersonal skills
– Science/Manager = knowledge of methodology, strong analysis, problem solving skills

The research went on to conclude that “project management is the craft of managing tasks and leading people” and that a consistent list of required traits were:

– Self confident, professional, passionate about what they do
– Effective communicator, good listener
– Team player, able to gain respect of project team
– Capable of reacting dynamically, making decisions quickly
– Knowledgeable about project management and methodologies, processes and tools

It looks like a good list to review any Project Management candidates as you go through the hiring process. I will leave you with my favorite quote from the research I did

“Some say the BEST project managers exhibit extraordinary energy levels, phenomenal political skills and an absolute obsession with results.”