Samad: I agree with you that these skills are often what makes the difference between success and failure. The traditional view has been that if the PM applies the correct tools / techniques (hard skills) in the correct way at the correct time, then the project will be automatically successful.

Of course, this is nonsense and the neglect of soft skills is indeed contributing to the dismal project failure statistics. I will be writing some more articles focussing on soft skills over the next while so keep an eye out for them on PM Hut.

And that’s just one-shovel deep in outsourcing schemes, wherein cheap labor ought to bring about heady outcomes.

Anatoly I. Tatarco
translator consultant
Russia

Thank you for this gift. This is great stuff that is not talked about in PM literature. We need more of this. I think we have been so focused over the last few years on the technical aspect of the PM job that it is rare to find this body of knowledge referred to often as “soft skills” or lumped under “communication skills”. I don’t think PMI has helped in this regard, given that these topics were only given just one chapter or appendix in the latest PMBOK. I find myself going outside of the traditional project management and PMI books to learn about such concepts.

In my view, lack of knowledge about this aspect of project management is what is actually causing PMs a lot of stress and even failure on some of the projects that involve many stakeholders with conflicting interests and heavy dose of politics. And as you know, such projects are now becoming the new normal. We PMs who came from heady technical background, such as IT, struggle the most I think.

By the way, do you have other writings you have done on this topic or do you know where I can find more of these concepts.

Thank you again for taking the time to write such a good piece.

Samad Aidane
IT Project Manager
Seattle, WA