Individual assignment of project management

Individual Assignment of Project Management
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What skills do you believe a Project Manager needs to be effective?
Please provide an overview of these skills and explain why you believe that these
skills are important.
What three skills do you believe would be your strongest?
Provide details, with examples, on why you think these skills are your strongest
What three skills do you believe would be your weakest?
Provide details, with examples, on why you think these skills are your weakest.
Using the above six skills, what can you do to build on your strongest skills
and improve your weakest skills?

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. FOREWORD...............................................................................................................3
II. ESSENTIAL SKILLS OF A PROJECT MANAGER AND THEIR
IMPORTANCE.............................................................................................................3
1. Integration skills.........................................................................................................4
2. People skills.................................................................................................................4
3. Project skills................................................................................................................4
4. Technical skills............................................................................................................6
5. Knowledge of the organization...................................................................................7
III. MY STRONGEST AND WEAKEST SKILLS....................................................7
1. My three strongest skills.............................................................................................7

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2. My three weakest skills...............................................................................................8
3. Building on my strongest skills and improving my weakest skills.............................9
IV. CONCLUSION.....................................................................................................10
REFERENCES.............................................................................................................11

I. FOREWORD
To the context of the demand for development of nations in general and enterprises in
particularly, for the establishment of material facilities (technical and economic
infrastructure, products and services...) or the arrangement of specific operational
programmes, people have to execute the projects in different fields. The success of a project
depends on many factors, including the important role of the project manager.
On the basis of scientific theory about project management and the author’s personal
experience, the scope of this research will mention all sorts of essential skills of a project
manager, and their importance to assure the manager of effectively managing on-going
projects. At the same time, the research will also deal with the author’s strongest and
weakest skills to conclude some solutions for building on his strongest skills and improving
his weakest skills.
II. ESSENTIAL SKILLS OF A PROJECT MANAGER AND THEIR IMPORTANCE
Project management is the scientific research profession of planning, organizing and
managing, supervising projects’ process in order to ensure timely accomplishment of the


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projects with approved budget, to assure the projects’ quality, and to achieve the aimed
objectives and purposes of the projects effectively 1. On the other aspect, project management
is a set of principals, methods, and techniques that people use to effectively plan and control
project work2.
The fundamental of project management represents that the tasks should be completed as

required and quality assured, budget unexceeded, on schedule and the project’s scale
remained unchanged, which means to optimize project cost, time and quality.
To the best implementation of a project based on the above requirement, the project manager
should equip himself with basic skills on project management, generally speaking:
integration skills, people skills, technical skills, project management skills and knowledge of
the organization3.

The importance of mentioned skills in assisting the managers to effectively manage and
control the projects can be seen as:
1. Integration skills
One of the key duties of a project manager is to coordinate many elements of the
project, such as the project teams, the clients, the customers, and other stakeholders. In
each step of the project, receiving and processing the issues concerning these elements
require the manager to timely and accurately be aware of the influence of each element
to the projects’ efficiency.
Besides, the project manager needs to perform many roles of project coordination,
which are similar to the performance of business administrators to run their businesses.
Therefore, the integration skills are crucial to the project manager, as they comprise of
the general operation skills like job orientation, risk management, change management,
decision making, and controlling skills.
2. People skills
As refer to the people, the project manager need to utilize both the negotiation and
direct authorization, as well as to understand the right time and approach used that best
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Project Management - Pro. Sean T. Ngo

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Project Management - Pro. Sean T. Ngo


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suits particular individuals. Therefore, the project manager should be good at
communication skills and skills in crisis management and human resources
management.
Of the named skills, team working is very essential, for the interaction between team
members the push the work-flow. Working as a team, to aim for the objectives, every
team member needs to develop their best characteristic to complement each other’s
weak points. Hence, the project manager should perform this skill productively, as well
as communicate to the project team to grasp and carry out this skill well.
3. Project skills
The 10 key project leader skills 4 indicate the importance of each skill to the project
management, as follows:
3.1. Developing a grand vision: The project manager should have a broad and grand
vision about the job, which means they are able to identify the success factors of
the project, at the same time, to recognize the implicit risks, their happening time
and their impact on the project implementation in order to have timely decisions
on coping with problems arising.
3.2. Building the project management team and leading the team: the team
members have to be well-informed about their tasks and authoritiy, the working
relationships in between, their effectivity or shortcomings…
3.3. Leadership skills; building and leading the project team: The implementation
of the project always exist difficulty for the project managers or teams, so the
managers have to make opportune decisions or harsh actions to reboost the team
spirit.
This requires the managers to be able to lead others in their ways aiming for

common goals. The great project managers are the one who can control others by
being a good example. This skill is also one of the most essential requirements of
project management, as impact building and influence team members.
Of all the management skills, problem solving plays a considerable role. Because
that is how the managers brainstorming to make clear the situation and figure out
practical ways to consistently aim for the set purpose, when facing obstacles or
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Project Management – Pro. Sean T. Ngo


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limited conditions to finish the purpose 5. That helps the project manager to direct
their team better in the process of implementing the project.
3.4. Communication skills: Communication is the most essential skill, for 90% of the
project workload of the project manager is communication.
If the project manager wants to achieve a certain productivity level, he has to
communicate and present his information and ideas in the most effective way. If
not, his project ideas will not be received accurately, that may cause
misunderstanding and create barriers for processing the measures and project
goals.
3.5. People-management skills: The project manager has to optimize their staff
competency, utilize their authority to set priorities and supply concrete guidance to
members and departments of the project, at the same time, to modify the resources
if necessary to assure the project schedule and rate of progress.
3.6. Facilitation skills: The project manager has to effectively facilitate the operations
of the projects by re-allocating the resources of the minor activities or opportune
modifying the resources in line with critical path first.
3.7. Skills at interfacing across the organization: Such skills help the project
manager to be able to contact with the entire project in the most useful way, to

present the information at the perfect time and recieve feedback in pursuing the
identified goals.
3.8. Ability to accept criticism, feedback, and input from others: This will help the
project manager to learn from the criticism and make them their own experience.
This is one of the most challenging skills, that it reflects the project manager’s
attitude when he/she behaves to such criticism to show his willingness for the
improvement of the project manager.
3.9. Skills in using team-based tools: This ability helps the project manager a lot in
building the basis of setting up high degree of unainimty, empowering for the
individuals’ tasks, creating the harmonious collaboration of the team members.
On the other hand, the team-based tools will help the project manager in
encouraging the dynamic team-work that enhances the effeciency of the tasks in
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the way that the competency of both the individuals and the group can be
optimized.
3.10. Selling skills; the ability to promote and sell the project: The project manager
is also the person who adds in value for the projects by mastering this skill.
4. Technical skills
A project manager should understand what items are in need to be performed
technically. But he cannot have a thorough knowledge of the field as what experts can
do, which means the project manager is not necessarily required to be a technical
specialist.
However, technical skills expect the project manager to be well-informed about the
tools using in planning, controlling, supervising the projects (such as charts, network
diagrams, critical path...).

5. Knowledge of the organization
This is essential for the project manager to have a comprehensive understanding of.
Because if he fails to grasp the organizational elements like culture, policies,
characteristics and political issues, the project’s management progress will face
numerous troubles and the risk of being unsuccessful.
III. MY STRONGEST AND WEAKEST SKILLS
1. My three strongest skills
Through the presentation of the essential skills of the project managers and my
personal remarks on my own experience career path, as well as from the knowledge of
the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)6, I found out my three strongest skills, as
follows:
1.1. Communication
By contrasting with the indicators of the MBTI, I realized that my personality is the
type of: easy-going, having great interest in humans and things, liking to contact with
people, then I compared to my knowledge about human-beings that I have collected
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and learnt a lot from theory and in real practice. I am also impressive to people that I
have once talked to.
Through positive, friendly and clear information exchange, I build up the trust of my
partner(s) in a conversation. This helps me a lot in executing the tasks and establishing
the social relations.
For instance, when being in a conversation, I always use critical requirements of
communication skills, such as active listening, demand awareness, avoiding criticism
and ironicalness, avoiding sensitive differences (about religions, custom,...) and always
show respect to the issues that my partners take interest in.
1.2. Team-working

I always have a clear understanding and full respect given to the disparity between
individuals about their personalities, competencies and emotions... Therefore, when
working in a team (whether being a team member or leader), I always encourage and
motivate people to show their best abilities to complement each other and to achieve
the set goals.
For instance, as being a team leader, I encourage my team members to actively
exchange information. When someone gives his voice, I always ask the rest to listen
carefully and positively raise discuss or opponent to his ideas to keep going straight on
our path.
1.3. Change management
For psychological makings, I am of the stuff of flexibility. So when dealing with the
problems arising from myself’s activities, I can quickly adapt to the change, be it
positively or negatively.
Speaking about conciousness, I always assume that changing is inevitable, especially in
the situation of negative occurence that saves us from unexpected depression. At the
same time, it drags us to the difficult cases when we have to brainstorm hard to find the
appropriate solutions. Just by then, we grow up, are brave in life and get better in our
profession.
For instance, I once gave out a lot of time and effort in drafting a complex trading
contract, but at the finish line, my General Director asked to re-do the work in a totally
different approach because of the demand from our clients to adjust trading method.
Facing such situation, I always seek the reasons for the adjustment, the pros and cons


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of the old and new methods use. This helps me to have a deeper understanding on the
decisions made by businesspeople in the changing context of the transaction.
2. My three weakest skills
Besides my strongest skills mentioned above, I personally recognized the 03 skills that
are my weakest, which are:

2.1. Decision-making
For my respect for the team members’ opinions and active listening to them, and my
regard for others concerns, and at the same time, my avoidance to unconvincing
choices, I always hesitate about making specific decisions.
For instance, when I have to decide on the delegation for my subordinators, I prefer
personal willingness to constrain them with my power and demand. Therefore, when I
need to make a quick decision about my staff, I tend to look at their attitude
beforehand.

2.2. Risk management
One of my strongest points is adapting to the change, while my skill of risk
management remains one of my weaknesses. Changing brings about the risks that may
get beyond my expectation, and that is when I get confused by my relative ability of
emotional control (as refer to the trait of a flexible person), specifically, I can easily get
furious and angry about the overexpected risks happened.
For instance, in the event when I delegated to a staff to deal with customers, in the
making of the task, he received alternation from the customers but as being subjective
about the issue, he did not inform me about the problem. That resulted to the late
adjustment and failed to meet the customers’ demand.
The situation led to the risk that the customer’s complaint to the company and my
General Director blamed me for that. I was very angry and scolded my staff seriously.
After some days, I realized that on delegating the task, I had not given him my full
advice and instructions for the process of information reporting.
2.3. Making impact and influencing others
I tend to choose the employees who have high spirit of self-awareness and giving their
best to the job. Therefore, facing the situation when my staff is indifferent to or lack


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interest in the task received, I will appoint another person for the task or do it myself to

save time. That means, the impact level of me on my personnel is not high enough,
because they still cannont be fully aware of the task demand given to them by their
manager.
For instance, when I need to fax a document to the customers acknowledging that my
staff is focusing on another job, I shall ask another person to finish faxing, although
that is not their job doing so. This will influence the staff in changing his reluctant
mood; on the other hand, it will also give the staff the habit of relying on others, for
knowing that there will be other people can do the job instead of him.
3. Building on my strongest skills and improving my weakest
skills
For getting to know my strongest and weakest skills, in the future, I will build on my
strongest and improve my weakest by practicing the following methods:

3.1. Building on my strongest skills
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For communication skill, I will research and learn more about body language, that I
can understand humans’ gestures and behaviours expressed in the communicating
process. This will help me to improve my skill and be more productive in
communicating with others.

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For working in a team, I will share my knowledge in the field to my members in the
groups that I join in; I will express my opinions so that they can understand the
benefit and efficiency of team working in a correct way, that not only improving the
productivity but also connecting the teams’ individuals.

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For adapting to change, I will train my employees to master such skill in order to
perform new tasks (when the situation or demand changes). This can help my
people to have a better mood than being depressed or upset about job alternation.

3.2. Improving my weakest skills
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For making decisions, I will try to absorb the fundamentals of Management
Decision Making that I am pursuing in the coming time. I will contrast my


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shortcomings to the theory given, as well as to observe and study more often form
the decision-making skills of business managers that I have a chance to work with.
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For managing risks, I will consider to give supplementary steps in working and
delegating processes, especially pay special attention to receiving report and
feedback from my employees (in the middle of the project progress) to avoid
unexpected risks.

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For building impact and influence on others, I will change my way of job
assignment by entrust my staff with the task that he will pay his full attention on
and receive comprehensive instructions beforehand. I will make clear their
mistakes, as well as praise them for their contribution to prove my positive impact
on their job done.

IV. CONCLUSION

Through my presentation about the essential skills that a project manager should equipped
him/her with to assure the effectiveness of the projects, the importance of the mentioned
skills is obvious to the project managers for fulfilling their projects with flying colours.
While other people involved in the implementation just bare parts of the responsibility, the
project manager is responsible for the entire final result. Therefore, the full set of essential
skills is inevitable to the project manager in the process of managing and performing a
project.
By referring to some of the strongest and weakest skills of the author, which is necessary for
the author to review his strengths and weaknesses in his personal career and professional
path. By then, on the basis of the scientific theory and practical observation, the author
suggests some solutions to build on his strongest skills and improve his weakest skills, in
order to contribute to his operational management in general, and project management in
particular./.
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REFERENCES
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