PROJ6000 Principles of Project Management

Assessment1

By

Student Name
Personal traits competences important for project managers in the context of global project

management

A project manager is an important role in handling global projects. Personal traits and

competencies are essential for a project manager in improving the performance of a project.

Personal traits and competencies are defined as the qualities, skills, abilities, and characteristics

of a project manager in performing different roles. The competencies need to be possessed by the

project managers are divided into three categories including knowledge, performance, and

personal.

The knowledge competencies essential in global project management include general

management skills, industry skills, and project management skills. General management skills

required include team building, communication, negotiation, and leadership skills. Among these,

leadership competencies are essential for project management in providing a vision to project

team members, facilitating directions to team, making sound judgments, conflicts and issue

resolution, mentoring team members, and making good decisions. Team building competencies

required to find suitable members to perform various roles and responsibilities. Communication

is required to convey project goals and objectives and negotiation is to resolve complaints of

team members[ CITATION Pro192 \l 1033 ] . The industry competencies are to the effective

management of global projects throughout its project life cycle and application knowledge.

Project management skills needed to project managers include techniques and tools such as

Gantt chart, work breakdown structure, and critical path method and nine knowledge areas and

project phases of project management.

Performance-related competencies are based on the experience of project managers. The

experience is required in terms of handling project milestones and deliverables to reach business
needs within allocated budget and time, the proper definition of the project requirements to meet

the customer needs within the accepted timeline, following strategic approaches in managing the

real issues and interdependencies presented in the project, capabilities in managing teams that

have problems, creating effective work processes to ensure smooth flow of work, and experience

in handling projects with different scope and sizes. Before selecting a project manager, his track

record must be checked to understand how he handles the stakeholder’s needs and influences on

project success[ CITATION Jac17 \l 1033 ]. The project managers should have the ability to handle

the interaction between project team members and client and experience on the project

management areas including scope management, communication management, resource

management, etc.

Personal competencies are the characteristics possessed by the project manager and these are

divided into two aspects including people management skills and personal characteristics. People

management skills include active listening of team member’s ideas and problems, maintaining

fairness in responsibility allocation, interpersonal relationships with team members, verbal

communication, problem-solving, politically sensitive, capabilities to influence positive project

outcomes, and integrity[ CITATION Jen06 \l 1033 ]. The personal characteristics must be possessed

by global project managers include commitment and confidence towards the achievement of

project goals, pro-active to avoid critical situations, aptitude towards adopting changes in an

external global environment and understanding cultural differences of teams, common sense,

open-mindedness towards challenges encountered, capabilities to a delegation of tasks to

improve employee participation, understanding and balancing the prioritized activities,

trustworthy towards the project clients, and creative in providing solutions to client and
employee problems. Abilities to work under budget and tight schedule without changing project

scope are important skills for project managers.

References
Gido, J., Clements, J., & Baker, R. (2017). Successful Project Management (7th ed.). USA:
Cengage Learning.
Krahn, J. (2006). Effective project leadership a combination of project manager skills and
competencies in context. New Directions in Project Management. Montreal: Project
Management Institute.
Project Management Institute. (2019). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge
(PMBOK(R) Guide-Sixth Edition / Agile Practice Guide Bundle (HINDI). USA: Project
Management Institute.

To

Student

Comments

Good discussion. You have made good efforts to describe the personal traits required for project

managers and methods used for the selection of the projects. You provided a clear description of

the skills required for the project manager including communication skills, a delegation of tasks,

time management, leadership skills, and risk management. These are related to project activities

to describe their importance for project managers. It is good to discuss the project management

competencies including techniques and tools used for handling project activities of budget

estimation, schedule creation, and management of scope. There are other important competencies

required judgment abilities about selecting good projects, negotiating the clients on the project

requirements, team development, and mentoring abilities to provide guidelines for team

members[ CITATION Pro172 \l 1033 ]. Experience in the effective definition of requirements of a

project, managing the problems of team members, effective organization of the project activities,

and handling the schedule and budget to meet the project goals. Project managers need to be
possessed several personal characteristics including trustworthy, creative, open-mindedness,

commitment and confidence, proactive nature towards avoiding problems, and common sense to

resolve conflicts between project team members. These are required to align with a project

culture and handling changes proposed to a project. You have selected a good project in the

Australian context that has several benefits to Australian people and a good description for the

project is provided effectively. To select this project, analyzing the quotes prepared by different

companies. But, you haven’t discussed the methods used for analyzing the profitability and

feasibility of financial success.

References

Project Management Institute. (2017). Project Manager Competency Development Framework –

Third Edition. Project Management Institute.