Power- up your project management career with these 7 skills

Digital projects are innovative and push the edge of technology. Everyone is looking for a competitive edge. Technology is moving fast.

Too fast to keep up.

What are you to do? What can you do?

You don’t want to box yourself in a corner. You don’t want to lose your job because you can’t or don’t know how to adapt.

The Project Management Institute published an article that identified six skills for the Digital Age*.

Here are seven project management skills you can learn and develop to power up your career.

Working on the basics of project management

This skill wasn’t part of the original set of six skills identified. It is in here because without this basic skill, you will struggle through your project management career.

Even if you have been a project manager for a long time, you can hone and improve your project management capability. The best way to identify areas to work on is to get feedback from your stakeholders. Be open to them and don’t get defensive.

The easiest way to work on it is to read a book and find one lesson that you can practice to improve. A lot of the improvement with project management is on the job practice.

Understanding the new science of the modern workplace

Data science is all the rage in the modern organization. It's the study of recording, storing and analyzing data to allow you to identify insights to make decisions. You don’t need to be a data scientist.

Project managers need to understand the data and report the data to their stakeholders. This skill allows the project manager to help define the data, understand the source, analyze it and help create tables and dashboards for the project’s executives and customers.

Meeting the challenges of a dynamic environment

In a fast-paced and dynamic environment, it is critical that project managers are able to think outside the box.

Innovative thinking is a skill where you come up with creative options and solutions for your project.

You can develop this skill by building your creative muscle:

• read widely;
• brainstorm solutions and ideas regularly;
• learn techniques that help to develop creative solutions like design thinking

Protecting against the cybercriminal

Imagine finding out that your personal details were exposed. It was used to hack into your account and money was stolen. It has a devastating effect on you and your family.

A digital project manager needs to understand how these cyber-attacks work. And the technology, processes and techniques to combat them.

Privacy obligations around the world differ and digital projects straddle countries. It is important to understand privacy obligations and how to meet them.

Knowing your legal obligations

The purpose of corporate law is to ensure companies function in a fair manner. It’s also to protect the rights of the customer. What are the legal and regulatory obligations that the project needs to meet?

Digital project managers don’t need to be lawyers. They need to understand the legal requirements and its implication for the project.

They overlay their expertise in project management and domain knowledge to ensure the project complies with the law and regulations.

Making The Right Call

Data-driven decisions take intuition and gut feel out of the equation. It’s using the skill of data science to make decisions.

The project manager would need to make sense of the analysis and be able to draw conclusions to make decisions.

Leading from the front

There are many styles of leadership. In the age of digital transformation, project managers work in a matrix environment.

It’s important for them to be able to lead team members that are not direct reports.

The collaborative leadership style is the best approach for this. This style is not appropriate for all situations. The project manager would need to learn that when practising this skill.

Diving into the future

The future can be scary but you know what steps to take to make it less scary. You know the skills required to power up your project management capability.

Learn these skills, understand them and practice them every single day. This will lead to mastery. Don’t be afraid to fail.

It will allow you to lead digital projects with confidence. It will allow you to secure your future.

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*Ready To Disrupt: In the Digital Age, Project Professionals Need To Build New Skills (2018). PM Network, 32(11), 16–17.