While traditional Project Managers require a lot of planning, organizing, and managing resources and tasks to complete a project, Agile Project Management is a self-organizing team. Nobody micromanages them. The agile approach is most practical and is capable of delivering projects with evolving changes. Agile Project Managers usually focus more on facilitation and removing roadblocks for the team.

Soft Skills are essential if you are a budding Agile Project Manager as it will make your approach more effective. It also helps you evolve within your role and possibly, into that of a Scrum Master. As an Agile Project Manager, soft skills will increase the focus on individuals and interactions.

It is crucial to equip yourself with the six top soft skills to perform your tasks more efficiently.

Issue Resolution / Escalation

This will remove the roadblocks you're encountering along the way to achieve your project's objective. These can be some factors that are beyond your control. Once you have learned about these issues, it will be easier for you to determine how to get things done effectively. You may use your negotiation skills to arbitrate disputes. Your diplomacy and listening skills are useful in obtaining issue resolution.

Problem Solving

You will be helping the team to solve problems on their own. You can unlock team creativity in brainstorming activities. You may also use root cause analysis (Ishikawa Fish Bone Diagrams) or six thinking hats to find where the issue comes from and find the best solution to resolve it.

Team Building

Everyone needs to be jointly accountable for the work performed. Knowing that every team member is different, building your team in a fun, free, and open environment can help you determine your team's capabilities. The communication lines should be honest, and norms or standard behaviors should be shared as you expect the team to meet them.

Coaching

All team members need coaching about the practicalities within agile. Coaching helps make sure people understand what you are expecting from them. In coaching, you may need to move people from a fixed mindset into a growth mindset, into someone that accepts challenges and criticisms that help them grow. Your questioning and listening skills can help you achieve this.

Change Management

As an agile project manager, you can add value by initiating change within the organization structure. Agile builds a positive culture and principles that are deep within the organization.

Create the Right Environment

Follow these steps to have a productive, empowered, and supportive culture where team members feel safe to ask questions and share their opinions with the team. An open door approach is vital as it will help the team breathe fresh air in a toxic environment.

We discovered the soft skills that can make all the difference in your agile project management career. But, if you want to become a top-performing project manager and learn everything else, don't miss this chance to learn from the best and take your PM career to the next level - Contact us now!

Aside from the lucrative salary, a Technical Project Manager role is not only for those who are technically advanced but those with excellent people and communication skills.

Technical Project Managers are the backbone of every successful company. Typically, days are busy, tedious, but never dull.

If you are considering shifting careers or are on your way to becoming a technical PM, know these eleven traits successful, technical project managers have.

Strong Leadership Skills

You joined the team to step up and take responsibility. You are there to lead; therefore, everyone working on a project will adapt to how capable you are at leading them down the right path. If you lack in this area, the team will be a collection of individuals.

Be the Subject Matter Expert

You can quickly get up to speed on a variety of technical subjects. You might be assigned a project that you never had exposure to. Do your homework. You don't need to be an expert, but you can quickly study on most technology to know where the project is leaning.

See the Big Picture

Step back a little on a project and see it as a big old puzzle. By looking at the project with that perspective, you will better determine what works and what needs to improve to have success.

Be the Project Priority Evaluator

Before any project starts, you have no idea about the outcome or the problems you will encounter. You should have the ability to set, stick, and re-evaluate project priorities. As a Technical Project Manager, you should be the one to set the requirements and figure the steps to be successful. Always be open and honest about what is working and what is not.

Excellent Listening Skills

As a Technical Project Manager, you should be able to listen as much as you speak. You must listen to other's feedback to know what the business wants and what the team needs.

Great communicator

You cannot work in technical project management without communication skills. You will be working with team members stationed locally and other working globally. You should be able to communicate clearly and concisely. Strong written communication skills are essential; as they say, if it isn't written down, it doesn't exist. Communicate what has been discussed and maintain consensus to minimize confusion.

Detailed Oriented

Cathing those minor details is very important to becoming a successful Project Manager. Please focus on the most critical aspects of your project as it will make or break success.

Organized

Technical Project Managers must be process-oriented. Utilize tools and techniques to organize critical information that can affect the delivery of a project.

Persuasive

You can build a consensus and dive an outcome while productively managing stakeholders. You are selling the project even when it's completed successfully. You are the one to keep the fire burning within your team.

Proficient Connection Builder

As a Technical Project Manager, you must be skilled in building and maintaining informal networks. It would help if you were an influencer by getting feedback from groups, the team, or other stakeholders outside your network. You may never know all the ways people can help the project's success.

Positive and Motivated

You will be responsible for ensuring that everyone is motivated. Always note that a toxic PM will make a project toxic. Ensure that the team is excited and empowered but still professional to know how to handle difficult situations.

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A project will not start if it is not approved or funded. Writing an exceptional project proposal is essential to outline the plan that you are trying to achieve. Every project is specific, and you must aim to create a project proposal unique to that project. The outline may always be the same, but it can be a winning one if you effectively structure your document.

Always remember “you” are not writing the project proposal alone. You want to ensure that the plan gets developed with stakeholder input. Your project proposal can be refined by actively lobbying and seeking feedback from decision-makers to hone understanding in the document.

It will only take five seconds to determine whether the document kills or thrills your audience. 

Decision-makers are looking for a killer project proposal that creates a significant impact. Start with these seven steps:

Problem

This section should draw a picture of the organization’s problem and depict how it is solved with the project as the solution. You may provide a specific example(s) where opportunities have been missed and how they would have been achieved if the project solution was in place. Avoid showing efficiency gains or general skills uplift when looking for a problem benefit as it will not strike a core to the decision-makers.

Vision

The vision should tie your project to a long-range strategy or a long-term goal. The vision should fit what the company is doing.

Benefits

This section should provide measurable things that can be delivered within the project. This should be concise and specific.

Deliverables

These are the artifacts that key stakeholders can expect from your project, including how they will be delivered.

Success Criteria

Critical to be outlined in a project proposal. Use the S.M.A.R.T. acronym for success criteria of your project: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. Once these are met, stakeholders have 100% confidence that your project will be successful.

Deadlines / Plan / Approach

This section should have a clear picture of your process. Deadlines should be listed, Project Plans come together, and what approach you're going to use (methodologies, external/internal staff) for the deliverables to be produced.

Cost / Budget

This section should show the funding plan for your project and how it's going to achieve the deadline. It should also show the dollar value of the completed project's benefits to the organization.

Take time and consolidate Problem, Vision, and Benefits in an executive summary as decision-makers will take 5 minutes looking at your proposal to determine whether or not they will fund it. Remember the flow as if you are telling a story or painting a picture with a caption, from showcasing the problem to the discussion of the budget. Do not introduce any new topics or approaches as everything should coordinate with each other. Once you’ve done this, you can be sure that you’ll get your exceptional project proposal approved.

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Even where there is no collaboration, and people work in silos, someone still needs to own the process of building a strategic plan and utilize techniques to prepare and lead efforts when the organization pursues significant objectives.

Project Managers develop and manage a strategic plan and understand project alignment within your organization's strategy. Strategic planning will help you focus and define where the team is going and how you will get there.

Take a look at these five winning strategic planning techniques and the PM tools that you can use and apply to ensure that your Strategic Planning session will be a success.

Understand the Environment

Our environment is continuously changing. As a Project Manager, you have to understand what is going on inside and outside your environment. You have to modify the approach continually. Be aware of what is going on by asking questions. Interview leaders and stakeholders and find out what are the needs of your customers. What can potentially change in the industry? You may also ask, what are you worried about? Or Where do you see the industry in 5-10 years? What are the threats out there? It is also essential to know changes in the risk and regulatory laws or within the infrastructure and the industry.

PM tools:
Stakeholder analysis
SWOT analysis
Project Initiation
Charter Development

Create a Vision

The project vision should be simple, easy to communicate, and easy to understand. The concept must align with the organization's values and overall plans. Creating an inspirational vision that empowers your team to go beyond their usual boundaries to reach excellence should never limit your group to one product or service. The project vision should be the organization's view of success.

PM Tools:
Project Initiation
Charter Development – Business Objective
Communication Plan
Project Success Criteria

Define the Path

Sequencing efforts is the most time-consuming part of strategic planning. You are creating a strategy to achieve your vision, and now you need to determine the efforts to make it happen. You may want to validate the work by getting your team or certified SMEs to help you build the scheduling infrastructure. Next, you have to prioritize initiatives as to which one will come first, and how vital each deliverable is to the project. And for the job to be completed successfully, you have to assign ownership as it will drive planning within the organization.

PM Tools:
Work Breakdown Structure
Project Schedule
Critical Path Analysis
Cost / Benefit Analysis
entire PMBoK processes

Tell the Story

As a Project Manager, you have to develop clear and simple messages to summarize the story. You will start from the vision, explaining why the project is essential and how the outcome will influence the organization. Describe critical tasks and how stakeholders can get involved and contribute. You can also leverage technology to deliver messaging through social media, internet sites, and blogs. Continue to communicate the team as well as the stakeholders and remember to celebrate success periodically.

PM Tools:
Stakeholder analysis
Communication plan

Measure the Results

Achieving goals requires results to be measured continuously. Whether you use Monthly or Quarterly Business reviews, implement a scorecard and key metrics within your team. Some Project Management tools such as Jira or Microsoft Project can track milestones that ensure timely project delivery, analyze data, and provide reports. Please don't forget Customer Satisfaction. It is essential to listen to the voice of the customers and net promoter scores. Revisit assumptions, staffing, and supporting models.

PM Tools:
Project Schedule
Business Benefits (ROI, NPV)
Time / Cost / Scope
Communication Plan
Change Control

When you land a Project Management interview, you have entered the first step of getting that Project Management role you've always wanted. Not only are they looking at the years and type of experience you have as a PM, but you must also remember hiring managers will use these three types of questions during the interview.

Technical

You know that you have these skills. But what if you have just passed your PMP certification and you feel you don't have enough experience? Note that a hiring manager is looking at how a person can bring success into the group and what you can do technically as a PM. Hiring managers will be looking for competencies specific to the theme of the project. If you have experience solving similar problems to the ones the team will face, ensure you present your ability to create solutions that help move the group through delivery impediments and interpersonal issues.

Behavior

A hiring manager will be looking for what makes a candidate tick, what sort of things you have done in the past, and how you react to certain situations. You may get asked what the most creative solution you have developed in the past was. They may ask you to name the most influential person or event in your life, or what your manager says you need to work on the most and what have you done to fix it. Maybe how you handle difficult team members? Note hiring managers will focus on your attitude towards the work and see whether you are adaptable to the company's environment.

Reference

Anyone can boast something without really giving the real picture of who you are. Always remember that in any new job, character references from previous roles are essential in getting the job. Hiring managers will get the good and not so good feedback from your last employer on how you performed on the job, or if the company considers hiring you back again. Hearing from other people who genuinely enjoyed working with you helps a hiring manager envision what a person can do within their team.

There's always a process of how hiring managers conduct their interviews. Be mindful of the minor and slight qualities that may or may not make you the perfect candidate for the job. Recruiters and hiring managers rarely offer feedback, so ask many questions when you get that chance. Quality, thoughtfulness, and eagerness indicate that you want and fit that Project Management role.

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