November 06, 2023
Summary.
Traditional project management skills, such as project governance or project management methodology, aren’t sufficient to meet changing organizational needs. Gartner recently surveyed 373 project management leaders to identify the “next generation” skills — from organizational awareness to financial acumen — that have a disproportionate impact on performance. They also identified three future-focused project manager roles: the teacher, the fixer, and the orchestrator — all of which highlight the uniquely human aspects of project management that go beyond performing discrete, repetitive tasks.
The future of the project manager role has been hotly debated as a number of trends shift organizational dynamics:
- Gartner research has found that businesses are increasingly adopting agile development and product management models, with 44% of work now delivered through agile methods and 39% through product models.
- Traditional project management activities, such as validating requirements, maintaining scope and measuring benefits, have become the domain of autonomous delivery teams (i.e., multidisciplinary teams accountable for business outcomes) such as scrum and fusion teams.
- Moreover, recent technological advancements — most notably, in generative AI — mean many project manager tasks, such as resource utilization tracking and business case creation, can be successfully automated.
Two popular agile reference manuals — the Scrum Guide and SAFe Reference Guide — omit the project manager role altogether.
Yet, a recent global Gartner survey suggests that project manager is actually expected to be one of the fastest-growing project management office (PMO) roles across the next two to three years. If project managers aren’t going anywhere, how can they continue to provide value in a changing context?
10 Next-Generation Skills Project Managers Need
Project managers have a decisive role to play in this new environment, where autonomous delivery teams must address complex challenges, such as overcoming organizational silos, managing hidden interdependencies, and realizing cross-team efficiencies. While AI offers promising benefits for project management, machines will never be able to replicate the uniquely human aspects of the job, such as relationship building and stakeholder management.
However, traditional project manager skills, such as project governance and project management methodology, won’t be sufficient to deliver on these changing organizational needs. Gartner predicts that by 2026, two-thirds of project managers’ skills and roles will be redesigned to meet the needs of their new operating context.
To understand the skills today’s project managers need to succeed, we surveyed 373 project management leaders and identified 10 “next-generation” skills that have a disproportionate impact on performance. Project managers proficient in these skills were found to be 1.4 times more effective at achieving key business and functional outcomes. What’s more, our research found these skills were far more impactful than organizational tenure or formal project management certifications. The next-generation skills include:
- Organizational awareness
- Data acumen
- Cross-functional collaboration
- Decision making
- Willingness to explore and adopt new technology
- Financial acumen
- Process and framework expertise (i.e., business process improvement, agile, organizational change management, risk)
- Customer centricity
- Growth mindset
- The ability to coach and motivate their teams
Organizational awareness, cross-functional collaboration, and customer centricity are especially important in the context of agile and product-centric delivery, where the nature of work involves bridging organizational silos and delivering enterprise-wide value. For example, creating and maintaining a mobile app requires coordination across many different business units and internal functions like finance and supply chain in order to provide a seamless customer experience. Project managers are at the intersection of a growing number of customers and stakeholders. As such, they must operate with a wider purview and more strategically to maximize business value.
Moreover, data acumen and digital adoption are two skills that we expect will only become more critical over time. We’ve arrived at a juncture where the rate at which organizations are amassing data and the rate of technological advancements are outpacing the average employee’s capacity to leverage them.
Three Future-Focused Project Manager Roles
Gartner has identified three critical roles project managers can play to meet organizations’ future needs: teacher, fixer, and orchestrator. At times, project managers may need to play a mix of roles at the same time to meet the needs of different parts of the organization.
The Teacher: For organizations early in their digital journey.
A teacher project manager helps bolster the competencies distributed delivery teams need to succeed. They’re particularly skilled in coaching and motivating individuals and teams; project management processes and frameworks; and adopting new technologies. They also have strong communication skills that enable them to effectively coach stakeholders on a wide variety of complex concepts, for example, regulatory and compliance activities.
This style of project manager is particularly valuable for organizations with product owners who are relatively immature in their role. Organizations without a strict 1-to-1 ratio of product owners to delivery teams can also benefit from teacher project managers who can more easily move across multiple teams to ensure they adopt an uncompromising focus on shared accountability and enterprise outcomes, rather than arguing over local ownership or outputs.
The Fixer: For organizations seeking to boost their delivery efficiency.
Organizations that need support identifying, resolving, and mitigating challenges in workflows and complex portfolios can benefit from the fixer project manager role.
Fixer project managers are adept at cross-functional collaboration, decision-making, and financial acumen. The fixer can creatively address complex problems, identify and manage risks at both a project and a cross-portfolio level, and operate in complex portfolios.
Organizations that are undergoing digital business transformation or shifting operating models can reap benefits from the fixer project manager. So, too, can organizations with a significant amount of cross-silo dependency who see delivery execution suffering from a lack of engagement and alignment with business partners.
The Orchestrator: For organizations that need improved cross-functional coordination.
Enterprise digital transformation initiatives need project managers who can manage high levels of complexity and support delivery teams in a resource-constrained environment. Orchestrator project managers are true stewards of the organization’s resources and insights, ensuring that delivery of work is aligned and correctly prioritized.
Orchestrator project managers are expertly skilled at data acumen, customer centricity and organizational awareness. They collate diverse information and insights, align it with strategic imperatives, and translate into executable actions. The orchestrator also has strong organizational awareness and cross-functional stakeholder management skills, with specific experience operating in significantly complex portfolios, especially those with dispersed stakeholders.
The organizations that most benefit from the orchestrator focus on customer-facing initiatives. Organizations that are challenged by capacity management or resourcing decisions across silos can also gain significant advantages.
Developing project managers to exhibit a different set of skills and play new roles won’t happen overnight. To set project managers up for success in today’s environment, organizations need to invest in training and development initiatives that focus on the 10 next-generation skills.
What’s notable about the next-generation skills is not that they’re new in and of themselves; rather, it’s that they collectively highlight the uniquely human aspects of project management that go beyond performing discrete, repetitive project management tasks.
Yes, project managers still need to know how to create business cases and generate reports. However, it’s their sound judgment in decision making — whether that involves people, data, or technology — and their ability to make an impact beyond themselves through their coaching and relationship building that truly differentiates the next-generation project manager.
Article link: https://hbr.org/2023/11/what-the-next-generation-of-project-management-will-look-like?
- Rachel Longhurst is a director within the Gartner IT Leaders and Tech Professionals research practice advising clients on strategic portfolio management, including project and portfolio management and application portfolio management.
- WCWoojin Choi is a senior principal within the Gartner IT Leaders and Tech Professionals research practice advising clients on strategic portfolio management.
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