This is an excellent list of skills, some learned and some arguably born with. But being an effective project manager is more than these skills. There are fundamental knowledge required to do the job of managing project, programs, or portfolios. These includes developing schedules (project management), managing integration between projects (program management), assessing and handling risks (risk management), and realizing business value across a bundle of projects and programs.

Te Wu’s comments on the Beth English article titled, “Project Management : Eating the Elephant One Bite at a Time”.

Beth English for Nojitter.com writes:  Given the right tools and processes, can anyone successfully manage projects? Does it take a certain personality type to be an excellent project manager or can the skills needed be learned?

Last month I talked about making meetings more productive. This month’s elephant bites will focus on the necessary skills and traits required to be a truly effective project manager.

Many organizations are in the process of making major communications changes to their environment, such as converting multi-location, traditional PBXs to hosted, premises or hybrid VoIP, or converting from legacy to SIP trunks. These types of projects are usually very critical and highly visible. When undergoing these projects, selected vendors will most likely assign a “project manager,” who may have come from the ranks of their technical sales, system administration, or technician staff, or may or may not be a certified Professional Project Manager (PMP).

Correspondingly, the organization that holds the contract may or may not assign an internal project manager to represent the company. And, even if the assigned resources are PMP certified, are they are up to the task? Is someone immediately a good PM just by virtue of the fact that they were able to pass the certification exam? Will they navigate the project to a successful conclusion or allow the project to deteriorate into chaos? How can you tell if you have a great project management team?  SNIP, the article continues @ Nojitter.com, click here to continue reading….