Developing a Project Manager's Competencies: A Collective View of the Most Important Competencies

Abstract

The project management literature often presents many different recommendable requirements, skills, characteristics and roles for a successful project manager. The purpose of this article is to contribute to the discussion by reporting the results of project managers’ self-evaluations regarding personal and social competencies. The requirements of project managers’ working life skills and competency theories affect, at least in the background, their competencies. The web-based self-evaluation was performed by a large group (N = 750) of project managers, but also students, whose studies were considered as their “projects.” This paper introduces a self-evaluation method to collect and analyze the data of a project manager's work-role based competencies. It is worth noting that the competency self-evaluation does not evaluate competencies directly but statements related to a project manager's work. As a valuable result, it shows a collective view of the most important competencies in a project manager's work, which should be considered when recruiting and developing project managers.